It was better when things were on tv just once. You'd make the effort (as if there was much effort aged 12!) to watch the one episode of the New Simpsons on Sunday evening on sky followed by Malcolm in the Middle, you'd look forward to it and enjoy it all the more. Now there must be about six episodes of the Simpsons on daily. Same with football - you'd stay up on a Saturday night to watch it and enjoy it all the more. Now if you miss it, well, screw it cause MOTD2 will have all the goals or Goals on Sunday will be on in the morning, miss that there is always YouTube and sure there's two games on tomorrow anyway for your fix.
I remember there being a Gerard Depardieu season on Channel 4 way back 99. Gerard Depardieu's French films were always good for some tits and fanny. I remember telling my mates in school that they'd be guaranteed to see some, if they watched them.
Anyway, I remember them all tuning in to watch Tenue De Soiree. True to my word, it had lots of sex and nudity. Unfortunately, most of it was male on male shit. As Ged played a massive gayer in the film.. .I still get abuse over it to this day.
Summers were spent outside, all the bloody time. If you were called in by your parents you made a fuss. You'd wake up at 7am on Saturday mornings and watch cartoons. When I talk to my younger cousins they are generally forced to go outside, only to go back in 30 minutes later because everyone is bored out of their minds. They are pale and monosyllabic. I was bouncing off walls (literally) when I was their age and I have a body of scars to prove it from my adventures. I used to love playing a game called Manhunt which involved one kid being chased by about 20 other kids, we were lucky enough to have a big park with a woods right across the road from us. They were pretty small but at a young age they seem as vast as the Amazon Rainforest. Sometimes you couldn't access it because sometimes there was a small river blocking your route in. You had to find rocks big enough that you could stick into the river and then use them as a platform to jump across. There was a shed in the middle of these woods which inevitably led to stories of it being an axe murderer's workshop. Just the typical stuff that gets made up when you're a kid. But nobody would go near it just in case.
My 5 year old niece has an MP3 player, Nintendo DS etc, she probably won't experience anything like growing up in the 90s and early 00's. Damn entertainment on demand culture ruining everything!
This is my childhood in a nutshell.