FULL DISCLOSURE! #MiniBlog #1998 #Throwback4Valentines. #EasilyPleased #UNI #CollegeDays
Tag: diary
Just a Saturday Girl #TeenInThe90s
We all had Saturday jobs in the 90s. My first foray into work was Saturday girl in an old lady shop that sold tea-towels and big bras. I think I earned £15 a day which was given to me in a brown envelope at the end of every shift. It was the most money in the world. That with a mix of baby-sitting and waitressing, were my first footsteps into the world of work.
Then when I was 16, in between my obsessions and homework, I managed to hold down a regular evening and weekend job at a popular men’s fashion store in Ilford.
My job came an extension of my social life. I got paid somewhere around £4.50 an hour to talk to ‘fit’ customers, visiting school friends and colleagues, and on occasion, I even folded Tshirts. 
Ilford was hardly a style mecca and the men’s shop I worked in was basically the best of a very limited offer. Popular for the choice of Ben Sherman shirts, 501s and Kickers shoes, it tried desperately to be hip and trendy. Management sent us tape cassettes full of eclectic mixes of LL Cool J, St Etienne and the Cardigans – horrible mixes that everyone in the store hated, staff and customers alike.
There was a lot a lot or romance going on in the stock room. I remember taking the rubbish out with a colleague and having an illicit snog in the lift on our way to the big rubbish bins. It was the first time ever I got paid to do something I shouldn’t and it felt great.
Even better was that a lot of mates worked in the neighbouring stores. We’d go and stand over the other’s till and gossip right through lunch-break and then later get dressed for a night out in the mall toilets.
I made so many friends through my Saturday job, that when I look back now, some of those Saturdays and Wednesday evenings, even the Boxing Days and Christmas Eves, these days are as important to me as those spent at school or on nights out. Somewhere subconsciously I was picking up life-skills as well as having a great time with great people. And true story – my husband always asks me to fold his jeans and T-Shirts for him as he likes my ‘professional’ style. All that training finally paid off.
*The 96 diary entry above makes me sound like the ‘bitter bitch’ – not the girl I was referring to. The poor girl had done nothing wrong but be my ex-boyfriend’s next girlfriend. She was actually lovely but I had to maintain an irrational hatred for her. Sorry!
If you’re wondering how much the 90’s high-street has changed from the high-street we love today, the answer’s not much. Sure we lost Our Price and Woolworths, but the River Island, Debenhams, Burger King – the big hitters – they still all reign supreme.
He’s On The Phone #TeenInThe90s
Before mobiles, we had landlines.
Phone numbers used to be ingrained into our psyche. Even now, I might not be able to tell you my husband’s mobile number, but I can recite my house, my three best friends, my nan and grandads and my auntie Hannah’s 90’s phone numbers. Some of those people aren’t with me any longer but their numbers remain scratched into my heart.
So when you met a boy in a club and gave him your number that meant you’d given him an cabled invite into your home. It meant when the phone rang, you had to run to it and hope you’d get it before your mum or dad answered. on those horrible occasions that your mum beat you to it, you had to cringe at her over the top posh phone voice.
It meant you had to wait in for the phone to ring and sometimes it didn’t! It meant phone messages written on scraps of paper.
He called. He really called.
Phoning someone meant huge risk of having to speak to their family members, so you only phoned people you really really liked. So when the guy you liked picked up the phone – that was a big deal.
The worse is that in the early internet days when phone and online time shared the same temperamental pathway into your home – you could either speak on the phone or chat online, but you could never do both at once. So if your mum was having a three hour conversation with your aunt, that meant you’re chat would get cut off. It also meant if your dad wanted to get online, he’d be hammering at your door impatiently until you hung up from your beau.
*In 96 some really flashy kids had mobile phones – I wasn’t one of them! Some other kids even had pagers. Below is a ‘business card’ from an old boyfriend and his friend. See the comment about the cost – this is because in the 90s we were all terrified of phone bills, especially calls to mobiles. These dicks actually used to hand these cards out to girls in clubs.
If you are enjoying these short excerpts from my 1996 diary, then why not consider beta-reading my YA novel, A Future Somewhere for me?
Some more phonecall excerpts from 1996 below:
Cece Beyer 