Originality

I've come up with an idea that no-one has thought of before. It's a list of years, with associated memories.

1962 - "he not busy being born is busy dying." You won't believe this, but I do remember being born. Not much else. I was born at home, as opposed to hospital, so I remember my sisters coming in to look at me. Midwife said I had my eyes open and was looking round the room as I emerged. I was 3 weeks late.
1963 - blank
1964 - blank
1965 - Winston Churchill's funeral on the black and white telly
1966 - My dad leaping into the air and breaking the light-shade when Geoff Hurst scored his 3rd goal.
1967 - Crying all day on my first day at school; Breaking my sister's cuckoo clock by twirling the hands round, going outside to kick a ball against a wall afterwards; being spanked for around 45 minutes until I confessed.
1968 - Olympic games - Black Power salutes in Mexico City
1969 - moon landing on telly, having whooping cough and puking my guts up
1970 - walking home from school singing "I Feel Fine"; my mum going into hospital on my birthday! to have my brother; Apollo 13; David Coleman's voice, as if from very far away, commentating on the Mexico '70 World Cup
1971 - blank
1972 - Olympic games - the siege in the village; Mark Spitz - 7 gold medals in the pool; Valery Borzov on the track; Lasse Viren in the 5000m; David Hemery bronze medal in the 400m Hurdles; Mary Peters, national heroine in the Pentathlon - remember seeing it all on TV
1973 - blank
1974 - Alistair Cooke on the radio, talking about Nixon
1975 - Hot summer, holiday in Scarborough
1976 - Hotter summer, spent most of it barefoot in the park with Jane Ball and Jackie Moyse
1977 - School camping trip to the Wye Valley; all my schoolfriends into punk; listening to an endless conversation between two stuck-up boys about the explosions in the 1812 Overture
1978 - blank
1979 - Cycling into school on a hot day to take an 'O' Level exam
1980 - Meeting my best friend in the doctor's surgery on the day we were both diagnosed with glandular fever; waking from a fever to learn that John Lennon had been shot; meeting Joanne Nye and going round her house on the day my glandular fever was officially over; leaving home two days after Christmas
1981 - Unemployed and idyllic days in the Kent countryside; walking back from Canterbury with Linda Riley; my first cigarette; typing late one night and hearing voices from next door - before I realised there was no next door and that I was alone in the house; a cow sticking its head through my bedroom window and mooing in my sleeping best friend's ear
1982 - Snowy winter; hiding from my big brother in the Luton dole office; first day of work; last time I see Linda Riley: the Stones at Wembley
1983 - blank
1984 - driving to Yarmouth in my first car listening to Springsteen bootlegs
1985 - blank
1986 - Going to the Point multi-screen cinema in Milton Keynes for the first time with Angela
1987 - In the pub at lunchtime with Nicola
1988 - blank
1989 - Arriving breathless, 45 minutes late, at the top of the Green Park tube station steps, seeing Nicola getting on a bus across the street
1990 - blank
1991 - first week of university; being scared by the strange long-haired gentleman with the white streak in his hair
1992 - wandering down town Champagne, Illinois, taking pictures of derelict stuff; seeing my future wife walk past my university flat with her boyfriend
1993 - Pedro the Wolf Boy is in all my nightmares
1994 - getting sunstroke, sitting outside a pub, on the last day of the exams; nearly fainting in the Broadway Cinema toilets with my cock out because I was taking a pee at the time
1995 - sleeping on the couch after my morning delivery round as a postie
1996 - blank
1997 - CJ being born
1998 - blank
1999 - starting work on the day of the Paddington rail crash
2000 - Didi born, got married (I think), not in that order
2001 - No monolith found
2002 - blank
2003 - blank
2004 - Seeing the house we now live in for the first time on a bright sunny September day
2005 - blank?
2006 - blank

What strikes me is that the blankest years are the digital years. We don't make memories any more, we just take zillions of digital photos and then forget them. One of those blank years is the year my oldest daughter first rode her bike without stabilisers - but which one? I had my face buried in a video camera at the time. It's fucking depressing. I want to get an all-valve camera again and wait for photos to come back from the lab.