Growing up for me  was, I imagine like growing up for anyone who was a teen in the 90’s, I spent my evenings ‘down the leisure’ I ate bags of beef Space Raiders and chips in cones made to look like newspaper, played Street Fighter on the arcade machine and drank Lilt. Elbowed my mates when one or other of our crushes walked past and talked about what a slag Kerry was ‘cos she let Barry do something naughty to her outside the fire exit.

I used Salon Selectives but I definitely didn’t look like I’d ‘just stepped out of the salon’ it did smell nice however, once it was clean it was time to spray it within an inch of it’s life with Silvikrin whilst scrunching. Surprised we didn’t all end up with clawed hands because of it. Fire hazard be buggered, took your life in your hands every time you lit up a sneaky fag, some dippy git told me to wrap chewing gum round my fingers so my Mum couldn’t smell the smoke – did it work? Did it hell!

 

I wore Cover Girl foundation that I won from a competition in a magazine. My Mum would never have let me have it otherwise – wouldn’t want me ruining my lovely young skin see. I can still remember the smell of that stuff to this day. It’s highly likely I looked like Casper the friendly ghost – not that I cared I was grown up obviously! I wore Heather Shimmer lipstick. Think everyone in my school/town/country did. Good job there’s not an awful lot of photo evidence around it’s really cringeworthy stuff.

I had a luminous pink Hi-Tec bag that I could have fitted my whole family in and more. I had those horrible white daps (plimsoles for those not from Wales) with a heel and those really shiny flesh coloured tights that made your legs look like sparkly sausages.  I wore ankle length wrap skirts (not good in a gust of wind) with a body underneath. Those poppers were a bit of a twat when you were busting. I read somewhere recently they were making a comeback. Well sod that!

I bought all my single cassette tapes from Woolworths. This is back in the day when Woolworths was the best shop in town (well our town anyway which didn’t have that much other than the ‘Big Tesco’).

I called him Mr. Raider, called him Mr. Wrong, called him Mr. Vain and couldn’t say no to anyone without saying the full No no, no no no no, no no no no, no no there’s no limit! I watched Bad Girls, Band of Gold, Bottom and Byker Grove.

 

As much as loved being a teenager in the 90’s and so many things were better then I really wouldn’t want to go back and do it all again. Especially all the boy trouble, let’s be honest many teenage lads are complete arseholes! The fashion wasn’t exactly anything to write home about either – black velvet choker anyone?!