Born in 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.