Today

glitter balls and orange chairs

Today

being in a taxi and the taxi man telling us that Diana is dead.  I’m 7, and we’ve been to see my Auntie in New Zealand and we’re on our way home. But I’ve just realised I can’t have that one because it’s 1997. It’s the first bit of ‘news’ I’ve absorbed. I just can’t understand why so many people are crying when they’ve never met her.

I’m sat under my mum’s ironing board and 9/11 is happening. 

I’m trying to think of something more pop’y but all I can think of are moments of sudden deaths. Sudden feels important. I wonder about the differences between a sudden change and a gradual one. 

Today

I write a letter to Margaret Thatcher, Prime Minister, about the butter mountains. She sends a reply.

I’m working as a dresser at the Opera House on Grease. The management say we still have to go to work and be available in case there’s an evening show.  We all go to the Ox Noble and watch the England-Scotland match, get really drunk. It’s like time isn’t happening. There are cars parked up on pavements, just abandoned and the streets are deserted.

Today

in 1998, and you are busy forming Quarantine, and I’m wearing an orange mini dress and singing ‘Viva forever, I’ll be waiting, ever lasting, like the sun, live forever, for the moment, ever searching for the one’. 

I’m Ginger Spice.

Iraq war.  I’m in third year at high school. They tell us that if we go to the protest against the war we will be suspended. My friend Sadia goes. Today I regret not going. 

9/11. My parents are in London. On the way out they were allowed to take nail scissors in their luggage. On the way back those are confiscated. 

7/7. The day of the London tube bombings. The day my nephew is born. 

Today

is the Boxing Day tsunami. 

is the Manchester arena bomb and the raids are happening around us. 

is the BREXIT referendum. 

is Jo Cox being murdered.

in terms of socio-cultural questions you’ve focused on moments rather than trends – I think there are some interesting trends: equality; wellbeing/self-care; idea of individual social-political responsibility; gig economy.

Today

is the birth of two children.

is migrant boats, closed borders and open borders

is getting married at Gretna Green

Obama, Michelle Obama

Gaddafi’s capture

Trump’s election

is taking my Father to Bala for his 80th birthday, landing on the beach.

I need to get the roof fixed, it leaks by the chimneys