Thursday, 20 September 2012

Time to make you feel old

As part of my job I am responsible for enrolling new students into my faculty. This week saw kids born in 1994 turning up and it made me think back to being an 8 year old. So for this week come with me on a trip to yesteryear and take a look at what shizzle went down in the mid 90s.

Britiain and France have considered themselves rivals for a long long time, even deciding to have a bit of handbags during the 100 year war (which didn't actually last 100 years...true fact). So it was some surprise that in 1994 the two countries decided to link themselves to one another via the Channel Tunnel and thus the Eurostar was launched. The two main terminals, at London's St Pancras (or is it Pancreas) and Paris' Gare du Nord Station, saw passengers able to catch a train or drive across the channel in record time.

The tunnel famously featured in the shocking news event where Tom Cruise somehow managed to hold off being killed by a helicopter piloted by Jean Reno. This is the type of thing that happened in the 90's, you kids don't know what you missed.

November of 1994 saw the launch of the National Lottery. Featuring Mystic Meg, a craze of shoving of shoving your finger in someones face and shouting "It could be you" soon broke out across the UK as people were caught up in lottery fever. To this day the most I have won is a tenner.

1994 was the year where Sunday opening hours came about. That's right kids, before 1994 you couldn't go down t' co-op for a cheeky purchase of White Lightning (oh god you won't know what white lightning is) on a sunny Sunday afternoon as the shop would be closed. TV accounted for this, Bullseye was on.

Now onto sport. 1994 saw the World Cup arrive in America. Famously England failed to qualify for the tournament for being rather rubbish so for a couple of matches the country became Scotland and Republic of Ireland fans (not me though, especially after Ireland beat Italy). Anyway the final was between Brazil and Italy, it went to penalties and the tears of Robert Baggio as he missed his penalty will forever haunt me. Football cuts deep.

It was also in this year that the untimely and tragic death of Aryton Senna at the Imola track went beyond the Formula 1 family but was felt worldwide. I can't really do justice to the man so for anyone interested I highly recommend the film Senna.

There is only one event I can end on when looking at 1994. The film 'Four weddings and a funeral' was released and with it came the *says through gritted teeth* hit single Love is all around, performed by Scottish behemoths of rock, Wet Wet Wet, or Wet3 to their mates. It stayed at number 1 for 15 weeks, 15 bloody weeks. I am pretty sure Marti Pellow cries himself to sleep at night over what he has done.

Rant about how good it used to be is over.

Thursday Santoro

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