Chris Stanley's Bazaar

Euro 2020 begins today, and with the final at Wembley it seems somehow right that the tournament had to wait a year to create a 25 year gap with the last one. During last year's lockdown Euro '96 was repeated on ITV's streaming services to deflect us from the enforced emptiness, and although I made a start on watching it, it was nowhere near as good as I remember it being. But with excitement building, I thought it might be a nice idea to share a few memories of the summer of '96, partly before I go ga-ga and partly because the highlights of these events are so much different from the reality. Mine, I'd argue, was a perfectly normal Euro '96 experience, and if you take a read of these eleven nuggets of memory, you might find yourself nodding along. And, y'know, it's something to do at half-time. An Opening Day Win – In 1996 I lived in a very small world, one which encompassed about half a dozen streets between home, school, friends and grandparents. The...

Where were you when history was made? Memory being what it is, it’s likely that in years to come the bare details of who you are and what you were doing when the defining moments of social history happened will be shaped and coloured into the image you would most like to claim was your own. However, I have what I suspect is a near-eidetic memory for my own life, and therefore I won’t have any choice but to admit that when England finally won a penalty shoot-out, I acted like a complete tit. I seem to have a knack for missing the moment by a hair’s breadth, but in some ways that makes my memories even more vivid, as if the mundanity of everyday life highlights the kaboom of history like the Trinity test in the Alamogordo morning. For example, when the Berlin Wall fell (or rather the Saturday evening, since it opened late on a Thursday night), we were having a family party. When the USSR collapsed in August ‘91, my elder sister and I were arguing over a game of Ludo. I thought Prince...