Chris Stanley's Bazaar

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...

So, welcome back to my world. It’s debatable whether or not it’s better than the real world, but trust me, I wouldn’t have voted for him, so there’s that. People use the phrase “in a perfect world”, but it seems like 2016 was fuckin’ Nirvana compared to the shitshow this year is looking to be. Naturally, I’m back online to spread a little sunshine on proceedings, because my Smiths blog went really well (sample review: ‘you’re talking shit’). There are people better qualified and give a toss more than me about international politics. The Falklands Conflict was memorably described by Jorge Luis Borges as being “like two bald men fighting over a comb”, and the world has become a more spiteful and petulant place since the chilliest days of the Cold War. All I can say is that historically you don’t know you’ve lived through a crisis until you see it on a documentary. I watched some Channel 5 thing about 1990 the other day; turns out it was full of barricades, resignations and civil d...