Born on 1 January 2010

If you were born in 2010, you arrived in a Britain that felt like it was caught between two worlds, right before everything went properly digital. It was the year of the Big Freeze; I remember scraping thick ice off the windscreen for weeks on end while Tinie Tempah’s "Pass Out" blared from the radio. We were all obsessed with the first series of *Downton Abbey* and huddled around the telly to watch Matt Smith take over as the Doctor, though everyone was really talking about that new show *Sherlock*.

It was a strange, transitional time—we were still popping into Blockbuster for a Saturday night DVD, yet we were all suddenly glued to these new iPhones, frantically flicking birds at pigs or checking Facebook to see who’d changed their relationship status. While the grown-ups fretted over the General Election and that tense Rose Garden coalition, we were mostly preoccupied with the World Cup in South Africa and that bloody vuvuzela noise echoing through every pub. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing Katy Perry or seeing kids obsessed with Silly Bandz.

We’d go for a cheeky Nando’s, argue about *Inception* at the cinema, and head home in the biting cold, never imagining how much would change by the time you grew up.