The Interest in 1990s Nostalgia Should Shock Not Delight

When did you realise it was all over? For me, it was a couple of days ago when my son found me sobbing on the kitchen table. I had in my hands HMRC’s letter ordering me to buy some software and do my tax return five times a year. He (17) was insouciant: “What’s the problem, it’s just another laptop thing, why are you so het up about it?”

I replied with gut wrenching sadness that the world I grew up in is over. He and his brothers will never know it. It’s gone. And he can’t even appreciate what he is missing.

A long conversation followed where he told me how much he and his friends are interested in 1990s nostalgia: enjoying Stranger Things, reading books(!), trying to live a more analogue life, printing pictures, hoovering up Friends. Celebrities from the 1990s are getting in on the act, sharing reels of their 1990s sitcom appearances. The #1990s on Instagram has 2.2 million views: such exciting things as Richard E. Grant posting pictures of himself from the 1990s, inflatable chairs, landlines, Blockbuster, dial-up internet, Sega.

This is all surface fluff of course. It is impossible to convey the actual structural shift in the country that has happened, how the visual landscape has changed almost beyond repair and how things that young people think are as natural as grass were actually introduced in their parent’s living memory. Real 1990s nostalgia is impossible because there is now no conception, beyond surface level Central Perk aesthetics, of what life was like a mere 30 years ago.

• Few speed bumps, impossible to imagine now: smooth roads until 1996 legislation encouraged flexible road hump design that then colonised town centres, retail parks and housing estates. Introduced by Ken Clarke, he later lamented his decision saying: “The one regret I will admit to is taking through the legislation to introduce speed humps on roads. It was never my intention we should have thousands of the damn things.”
• Nine-to-five office jobs. With no internet or emails everyone left the office at the end of the day and stopped working. There cannot be one person in the entire country who operates like this today.
• No nagging signage. It was possible to visit shops, churches, railway stations without being shouted out by stickers and posters. There were no: No Smoking signs, no 20’s Plenty, no CCTV in operation warnings, no Zero Tolerance Policy: We will not tolerate physical or verbal abuse towards our staff.
• No classroom mental health illnesses. Each large secondary school would be stuffed with children with no known health conditions. There was occasionally an unlucky girl who had to wear a patch behind her glasses, the odd broken bone or burst appendix, and every eight years or so a terrifying childhood cancer or road traffic accident death would shock the entire school. Everyone else was fine. Children fell into a few very limited categories: dweeb, thick, sporty, funny, fit, smelly or weird.
• A countryside with no solar panels in fields, wind farms or EV charging hubs. It’s difficult to picture the scene, just hills, mountains, lakes, farmland and wildlife.
• No recycling. Families had one round metal bin that was emptied once a week. Trips to the bottle bank gave immediate pleasure when the bottles were hurled joyfully through little portholes. There was also less packaging, cucumbers for instance were not shrink wrapped.
• A countryside with between 3.5-4.5 million fewer homes. Figures are difficult to verify, but it wasn’t always the case that pretty market towns and Cathedral cities had sprawling yet domestically compact identikit Lego-like housing estates attached.
• London vernacular. Known apparently as an architectural ‘style’, London vernacular explains those Kremlinesque rectangular buildings with large empty windows, no decorative features nor visible roofs.
• No CCTV. We were not always being filmed by the state or private companies.
• Open shelves in shops. Meat was not padlocked, alcohol shelves were not kept under lock and key, supermarket staff did not wear body-cameras, and security guards were not needed alongside the Greggs sandwich counter.
• The country was free from ideology. Communism had been shown to be a catastrophe for those poor countries forced to live under it, but beyond that, people lived without any concept or fear of Islamism, Neo-Liberalism, Intersectionality, Critical Race Theory or the World Economic Forum. Everyone was too busy working out what waistcoats to wear for the next sleepover.

Sure, there have been a few advances in the standard of living since the 1990s: I’m very fond of my cordless vacuum and hybrid car. I love using the internet for research, I believe AI will become a great accelerant (not replacement) to learning, and I love WhatsApp. Beyond that, I am a fully paid up, if heart-broken, member of the 1990s nostalgia fan club.

My son did share a glimmer of hope about the interest in the 1990s. He said: “There are a number of people my age who think looking back to history is a waste of time. It’s dead and gone. Don’t bother with it. Let’s look forward instead.”

To what though? More padlocked meat? More identikit housing estates? More CCTV and digital ID? No thanks, I’m putting my hair in a scrunchie and watching Four Weddings and a Funeral.

Joanna Gray is a writer and confidence coach.