Born on 1 January 2018

If you were born in 2018, you arrived in a year that felt like one long, golden afternoon before everything got a bit complicated. We spent that entire summer huddled in pub gardens, sweating through the "Beast from the East" leftovers into a heatwave that seemed to last forever. Everyone was drinking pink gin or Aperol Spritz, humming George Ezra’s "Shotgun" while frantically checking their phones because, for a few glorious weeks, we genuinely believed football was coming home.

We’d huddle around the telly for *Bodyguard*, clutching our mugs of tea in genuine suspense, or debating over whether we actually liked the "flossing" dance craze all the kids were doing in the playground. It was the year of the royal wedding, too; I remember the whole street feeling a bit lighter when Harry and Meghan tied the knot. At the cinema, you couldn't move for *The Greatest Showman* posters, and honestly, we were all secretly singing those songs in the shower.

It was a simpler time of contactless payments just becoming the norm and everyone being obsessed with their succulents. It wasn't perfect, but Lord, there was a bit of magic in the air back then.