Ten days ago, Douglas Coupland wrote a briskly miserable assessment of our coming decline. You can argue the detail, but the gist is, unfortunately, pretty much inescapable. Nestled in at the all-important 34 spot in his 45 maxims for 2020 is, "You're going to miss the 1990s more than you ever thought."
In 1998, the Russian financial crisis had us worried for a month or two — what we'd give to have problems on that scale again. In 1998, my business had been doubling or trebling in turnover for three years straight, and it started to feel like it had real momentum. The National Centre for Popular Music was still months away from opening, and failure felt avoidable. The tide of optimistic investment was coming in so strongly, we weren't even sure (ha, ha) that it was a tide.
In 1998, the restaging of art as sport, or, in this case, as lame parlour game had yet to become so widespread as to make cynicism a necessity. Even at this distance, let alone 2020, a world where I could be persuade to part with £3 for this souvenir seems very foreign indeed. I'm ambivalent, but I do kind of miss it.
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