I’ve had a gutful of the national news, can I go back to 1987 please? – Simon Carter

The older you get, the more the sands of time seem to flow that little bit faster through the hourglass. That was certainly the case when I glimpsed a picture on Facebook of some friends of mine taking their 18-year-old daughter to start her life at university.
Student living in the Good Old Days (ie, before March). Pic: PA PhotoStudent living in the Good Old Days (ie, before March). Pic: PA Photo
Student living in the Good Old Days (ie, before March). Pic: PA Photo

Is it really 33 years since I made a similar trip, leaving my home city of Exeter to spend a year in Cardiff on a journalist’s training course? Alarmingly, and a little depressingly if I’m truthful, yes.

It was this corresponding week in September 1987 that I bundled some clothes and a few possessions into the back of my dad’s car and headed up the M5 and over the (old) Severn Bridge, a new world, a new life, awaiting me in south Wales.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The other day, when watching another gloom and doom-ridden episode of the news, I quipped to my partner: ‘I wish I could build a time machine, I’ve had a gutful of 2020.’ Sad thing is, I wasn’t joking.

Hands up, who - deep down - thought back in mid-March that covid-19 would still be holding us all in its vice-like grip come mid-September? I certainly didn’t. Since then my partner was made redundant, some of my work colleagues will soon be made redundant, and my kids couldn’t take their exams.

So forgive me if I have little sympathy for people who appear on the news complaining that they couldn’t hold a birthday party or they couldn’t go on an expensive foreign holiday. My heart is not bleeding for them. Nice parties and sun-drenched hols are life’s little luxuries - having a job, for many, is a necessity not a luxury.

Inevitably, social media is as toxic as ever, with fear, scaremongering and self-appointed health experts everywhere. We have, surely, the most inept Prime Minister in my lifetime, and there appears very little light at the end of the tunnel. When I force myself to watch the national news every evening, I can’t even see a flipping tunnel, let alone light, amidst the litany of misery they serve up.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

That’s why I want my own Tardis. That’s why I want to go back to 1987.

I close my eyes and remember the pub crawls, the curry houses, meeting new people from different parts of the country, including people from the west Midlands who I couldn’t really understand because of their accents ...

The total joy of having my entire grant paid for by the government - those were the days! - of paying 75p for a pint of lager in the student union bar, of chatting up girls who were also living in the Halls of Residence in Cyncoed who wore Def Leppard T-shirts and boasted the HUGE hair you always saw in Bonnie Tyler’s videos ...

Don’t get me wrong, we had to work hard as well - could YOU learn shorthand to 100 words a minute? Not even passing my driving test could come anywhere close to replicating the thrill of passing the shorthand exam.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

You often hear the phrase ‘schooldays are the best days of your life.’ Not for me they weren’t; mine were at South Glamorgan Institute in Cardiff. I grew up in my time there, even though it was only a 36-week long course. Those 36 weeks made me who I am, and I’m thankful I had the chance to leave home when I was 18 to experience it all.

Going to Cardiff enabled me to realise my dream of working as a sports journalist, getting paid to go and watch football and cricket games. It’s allowed me to live in some pretty exotic locations - Yeovil, Bristol, Derby. Don’t laugh, I spent a few months living in California. So what if it was California, the district of Derby, rather than the American state?

University will be very different for my friends’ daughter compared to my time in Cardiff, certainly for the first few months, and not for the better either. A totally alien Freshers’ week, possible virtual tutorials, masks and hand sanitizers galore. Forget those moaning about their summer hols being wrecked, it’s the new intake of uni students I feel more sorry for. You can go on holiday any year, but you can only start a new life at uni once.

Given what’s going on in this mad world we’re now existing in - we’re not ‘living’ anymore, not like we were prior to lockdown - I feel so fortunate I was able to enjoy the whole university package, in and out of the lecture rooms.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

So that’s why I want to go back to September 1987, a time when Rick Astley was top of the pops and, I repeat (for it’s worth repeating), a pint was 75p. You could have seven pints for £5.25! It cost me more for a cider in one Portsmouth restaurant recently. Cheers, UK2020.

Feel free to join me in my time machine. Oh, and the wearing of Def Leppard T-shirts is optional by the way ...