The sequel to, you guessed it, Part I.
And again, credit goes to the groovy Ziggy S.
Fast forward to February 1998 – my little sister was born and I was rather unhappy. Everyone else was thrilled and I eventually got a grip on myself too, but I was not exactly a model big brother for quite a while. Let’s just hope she forgot all that. She seemed to like me though and never cried with me around, though perhaps she was just paralyzed with fear.
1999 – I really can’t think of a single remarkable thing that happened that year. Oh yeah, New Year’s Eve 1999/2000 was probably my least favourite New Year’s Eve ever. We spent it in Northern Ireland with my parents’ friends. I didn’t know anyone and fell asleep before midnight (they woke me up in time, though).
2000 – The year we moved to England. I made a repeat performance of my - almost - skipping a grade in 1995, only this time round I moved a class down. In my defence - I wasn't that stupid, but curricula were quite different and I'd already started to struggle at maths and science. It took me a couple of years to really settle down – people were quite different and a year younger than me on top of that. I don’t have a lot of fond memories of that time. However, I believe this is the first time I ever really came across Oasis – they released Go Let It Out that year and when I heard it again several years later I somehow knew all the words without actually remembering the song.
2001 – On September 11th I broke a finger playing basketball at school, and my friend (who, coincidentally, had broken HIS finger playing basketball at school not too long before that) accompanied me to the doctor’s office, where news about NY had just started trickling in. Apart from that, all I remember is doing a presentation on earthquakes (or was it floods?), and, I believe, starting French at school. Some people took other languages instead and they all learned (harmless) swearwords in their first lesson... all we could defend ourselves with was “la tour Eiffel” and “tu es mon voisin”. Yeah.
2002 – The year I went to Spain on a holiday. I don’t really remember anything about Spain, but what I certainly do remember is that we went on a day trip to Morocco to see Tangier. Never in my life, before or after, have I been this fascinated by a city. We didn’t even see that much of the place, there’s only so much you can see in a day, but it was utterly fascinating and so very different. I’ll have to go back there someday.
Oasis released Heathen Chemistry that year, and seeing Little By Little on MTV once made me ask for the album for Christmas... and the rest, of course, is history.
2003 - I just can’t think of anything that happened that year. I turned 16. I went to school. I met friends. I worked a few hours a week and regularly got stuck in the freight elevator. What else? Ah yes - one major thing happened. On the 1st of April, some of my parents’ friends were staying over and decided to watch the Woodstock movie. For lack of anything better to do, I sat down to watch it with them – and saw the Who. See Me Feel Me was the most hypnotic and fascinating piece of music I had ever come across. But this was two years before youtube and getting into a band still involved lots of work – if it hadn’t been for a chain of lucky coincidences (MOJO magazine releasing a special edition on the band, a documentary on them being re-released on DVD and so on) I don’t think I would’ve got this far.
2004 – A friend, well, random acquaintance from school had a cat who had kittens that summer. They didn’t know what to do with them and I spontaneously suggested I’d take one. My father doesn’t like animals and my mother was a little surprised too, but hey, there’s no going back on promises, right? He was so tiny he could sit on the palm of your hand. Now he’s a huge thing that really does the panther he is named after justice.
In July, I went to Paris with my French class from school. Those three days were incredibly stressful. We arrived on a Friday quite early in the morning, and spent the whole day walking, until 9pm. That’s when we climbed the approximately 50000000 stairs up the Eiffel Tower... and the next few days were even worse. But we did see all the sights and I can now tell everyone regardless of whether they want to hear it or not that Paris is incredibly dirty.
2005 – My family and me went to Canada for three weeks. A cousin of my father’s relocated to Nova Scotia a couple of years ago and started a kayaking business on the Bras d’Or lake on Cape Breton Island. It’s a huge and very nice lake and because we’re family we got a nice little cheap hut and a few boats. And because I’m particularly awesome I got one of his best kayaks. I’ve never had so much fun in my life on a holiday. The weather was great, I fell in love with that place and you haven’t got the faintest clue of how much fun kayaking is. I also went surfing for the first and so far only time in my life, because the Atlantic Ocean was just an hour’s drive away and that cousin is involved with just about everything to do with water.
Later that summer, a few friends and me went to Prague for a few days. I wasn’t so enthusiastic at first, but it was lots of fun. Clubs spread out over several storeys, cheap post-war 30-storey hotels, even cheaper food for the most part and the seediest places I’ve ever seen. I don’t remember all that much though because the alcohol was equally cheap.
Nice architecture, too.
2006 – This one was quite an eventful year, or maybe I just remember more because it’s so recent. I finished school that summer with ABD a-levels (German, French and Biology... the latter was more of an emergency choice since taking three languages – the first two and English – seemed a little too extreme), and even though I’m quite sure I could’ve got three As if I’d put some effort into it, I can say that my time in school was really nice. I especially enjoyed the ‘modesty and humbleness’ courses.
Right afterwards, we moved to Manchester. I quite looked forward to it since Cheltenham wasn’t exactly the most exciting place to be and I already had a friend there. He had great taste in friends (obviously) and I hit it off right away with pretty much everyone I met.
That summer, I also went to see The Who – my grandfather attempted to bribe me into staying home because it was so hot (?!), but of course he did not stand a chance. Good thing. Although I’ve got to admit I was so overwhelmed it didn’t hit home at all who those people on stage were.
And of course the football world cup took place that year – all my teams failed spectacularly, and while I’m sure the Italian side of my family was very thrilled, my sympathies were with Germany.
2007 – summer 2006 - summer 2007 really. Without a doubt, the best year of my life so far. That summer was just absolutely perfect. Nights spent roaming around the city with my friends, nothing much to do since my year at work was just winding up and eventually finished completely, and lots of other things to keep me occupied. The only down points were going to Limerick for a weekend and seeing the house I grew up in again and how it just didn’t look the way it used to at all, and things with my girlfriend of a few years coming to a rather sudden end, but I will admit unashamedly that there were plenty of pleasant things to more than make up for all of that. I used to say that if I could go back to any given point in my life, it’d be to when I was six or seven, but now I’d definitely choose summer ’06 – summer ’07.
2008 – Yeah, not so great. 2008 was bound to be disappointing, and in that respect, it really didn’t let me down. I spent one month working at a car plant of sorts – I never knew how persistent the smell of oil could be. Same with oil stains – I had black fingers for days. Uni happened too... I switched majors from English and Language & Linguistics to Psychology for a couple of reasons, and learned just how stressful flat hunting really is.
2009 – Very boring so far. Nothing has happened – I did not move, I did not get a job, I did not really meet any new people. Things WILL happen very soon though so all’s not lost yet. And from September onwards I’ll have to seriously battle my laziness because that’ll be the first honours year.
