1990s

Previously on isoul.uk: It Only Took Me Twenty-Odd Years to Listen to Harry Potter — a Year 6 recommendation I ignored finally found me through audiobooks more than twenty years later. There was a time when watching a particular film began with somebody leaving the house. My brothers would go to Blockbuster or one of the local video shops and return carrying whatever the household would be watching. I was younger and not always part of the choice, but that only made their return more interesting. A film did not simply appear in a menu. It arrived through the front door.

I grew up in a house where the television always seemed to be on. There were a lot of us at home: older siblings, a younger brother, my parents, and me somewhere in the middle of all of it. Looking back, that probably explains why so many of my memories are tied to screens. There was nearly always somebody watching something, playing something, recording something or arguing over what was going on next.