Born on 1 January 2002

Back in 2002, life felt like it was shifting gears, caught right in that sweet spot between the old world and the digital one. If you wandered into a pub back then, you’d likely find us hunched over a pint of Stella or an alcopop, desperately trying to Compose a ringtone on a Nokia 3310 while Will Young’s "Anything is Possible" blared from the jukebox. It was the year of the Golden Jubilee, and I remember the streets draped in bunting, everyone slightly tipsy in the sunshine during that unusually scorching June.

We were all obsessed with the first *Big Brother* legends, yet we’d still hurry home to catch *The Training Day* on a VHS tape we’d recorded over. At the cinema, you couldn't move for posters of *Bend It Like Beckham* or the second *Harry Potter*, and kids in the park were swapping Yu-Gi-Oh! cards like they were currency.

I remember the sheer heartbreak when Beckham’s metatarsal became national news before the World Cup, and the way everyone seemed to be wearing those slightly flared low-rise jeans that always got soaked at the heels in the rain. It was a simpler, noisier time, full of the smell of Lynx Africa and the crackle of dial-up internet.