15 memories of being 15

Ah, 15. Almost half my life ago. A time when GCSE's were looming, coloured hair mascara was still cool and Believe by Cher was topping the charts (well, it was 1999). 15 for me was another millennium and a time of much anticipation and apprehension. Let's take a little trip down memory lane...

1.  I couldn't wait to finish school (class of 2000) and start college at a town far far away (well, a 40min bus ride away). It meant I'd finally be getting away from a lot of people I'd known since the age of seven who didn't really like me then and didn't really like me now.

2. I fell out with my best friend for all of two days after she went out with someone I told her she shouldn't. He was an ex and he'd messed her about but she fell for him. I totally blanked her in the corridor I was that mad. Oh the drama!

3. Every Saturday, me, Jenny and Rachael would head to the library and fight over the latest Point Horror and Point Romance books. We really lived it up in those days.

4. Simon Davis had a house party where we watched Alien and everyone who was anyone was there. Including me, woo!

5. Art was my favourite subject and my final examination piece was on the subject of change. I'd focused on how we change ourselves with make up, tattoos etc and painted the body of a mannequin with pictures of flowers. Trippy hippy!

6. I took part in our local carnival with my mum and the taxi firm she worked for. The theme was the Millennium Bug and we turned one of the taxis into a giant metallic bug thing.

7. I had my first mobile phone - a big, green Motorola brick. It took me 10 minutes to write my first text message. I think it said 'Hello, I have a mobile phone now!'.

8. End of year 11, we had an egg and flour fight at one of the local parks. 

9. I loved to wear baggy black trousers, my Adidas jacket tied around my waist (I never actually wore it properly) and had John Lennon style glasses. I thought I looked, ahem, cool.

10. Austin Powers The Spy Who Shagged Me was the height of hilarity and I loved quoting Dr Evil at every given opportunity. Life and soul, me.

11. I've always been quite eclectic in my music tastes. When I was 15, Savage Garden, Eminem and Placebo were constantly being played on my yellow CD Walkman. Like, Truly Madly Deeply is so deep, you know?

12. I literally rode my bike everywhere. It was an easy way to get around our town which wasn't huge but it just made it easier to see each other. Once I cycled 12 miles along the canal, to see a boy. Oh dear, what was I thinking?!

13. Oakley Park was our main meeting point, particularly in the summer. The boys would play football whilst we gossiped and talked about the latest Dawson's Creek episode. Everything was so significant in that programme! (I've just started re-watching it on Netflix - I never saw the last series so I'm determined to find out how it ends after all this time! What better way to spend my maternity leave?!).

14. I used to move around my bedroom furniture once every three months or so, just for a change. This also involved moving the hundreds of posters and displays I had created on my walls. I just loved organising things and personalising my space plus I really did fancy myself as a bit of a hippy - scarves hanging on the ceiling, posters of dragons, you get the idea! My mum and dad let me decorate my bedroom as I wanted to and I chose a deep blue/purple shade for the walls and painted my wardrobe and chest of drawers silver. You could say I've always had a natural flair for interior design. 

15. I went on a literary tour with some of my year at school to Derbyshire. We stayed in a youth hostel which was a big converted barn and went to visit places to inspire us in the day so we could then write another chapter of our stories in the evenings. I was still a little obsessed with Point Horror (I had 74 books at this stage but had read at least 100 as it only took me one night to get through one book) so I'm pretty sure my story was a ghost story. 

I will forever remember lying on the grass near some historical landmark or another, staring at the clouds, listening to Tender by Blur and wondering what life would have in store when the next chapter of my life began.

The lovely Charlotte at Write Like No-One's Watching inspired the idea for this blog and I've linked up with her - take a look at the other fab posts here.