Fun Size Magrs

Summer 1996. I think I fell in love.  And that's supposed to be a good thing, right? I was in a daze. I couldn't sleep. I was distracted and couldn't concentrate at work... I was happy, scared and confused all at the same time. Is that what life's supposed to be like when you're in love? I'm still not sure. It's not like anybody gives you a badge or a certificate. At the time I was a copywriter at a radio station on Teesside. Most of our adverts were made by an office in Gateshead and I'd spend a lot of my working day talking to their production department.  I started having long phone calls with Becky*. She was one of the few people I worked with who was the same age as me. We'd share horror stories about sales-people and advertisers as well as talking about football, the X Files and music. I dared to think our chats might be described as 'flirty'. But it was all new to me. We laughed a lot. Some of our colleagues started to notice how much...

1998 was an incredibly horrible, nasty twat of a year.  And most of it was my own fault. I'm still not sure what I was playing at. I hated my job, I hated my life and it felt like I was in the middle of a slow motion motorway pile-up. I could see the shit flying towards me but I couldn't get out of the way. I don't know if I wanted to.  I managed to piss off my closest friends and my family - I even got a stern telling off from the Police. And in the World Cup, England only made it to the second round before losing on penalties (again). Happy fucking days.     I used to get a lift with a bloke from  work - and that was OK. Andy (not his real name) was funny and we'd gossip about everybody else we worked with. It was a good way to let off steam at the end of each day, and it made me think it wasn't just me who hated my job.  Andy was a few years older than me, and he was married with a couple of kids. We didn't socialise outside of work, and that was fi...