The one where FRIENDS came to stay

Being born mid-way through the 80’s, I guess my influences on who I am today mainly come from the following decade, making me very much a “Child of the 90’s”.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not restricted in my influences. I never like to be pigeon holed or labelled so it is with trepidation that my own opening sentence of this blog brands me a “child of the 90’s” but sometimes there is no getting away from the things and the people that influence you the most.

I would always argue that perhaps the biggest influences anyone can have in life are your Mother, Father and family. Mine raised me to experience and welcome the plethora of cultures life has to offer but always remember where you came from, a lesson that transposes itself to the music they were influenced by that has then passed down to influence me.

If you were to browse through my iPod (other mp3 devices are available!) then you would understand the eclectic nature of my musical tastes. Scrolling A-Z would lead you on a journey from Alanis Morrisette and the Beatles, through Fatboy Slim, Jay-Z, Kanye West and Matchbox Twenty, all the way down to Oasis, Panic! At the Disco, Queen, Rihanna, Stevie Wonder and the Travelling Wilburys! Naturally that is a small list in the grand scheme of things but you will find all manner of other genre’s, artists and musical collections that complete the alphabet that have and continue to influence me to this day and will no doubt do so my entire life.

Alas though, this blog post is not about my musical tastes (I know it may seem that way so far) and even in writing these short sentences I am inspired to write more about musical influences and the part it plays in our lives so watch out for that soon.

Instead, this post is all about a cultural hit from the 90’s that stays with me (and I’m sure millions of others) on a daily basis nearly 20 years on!

As a decade, it is far too easy to define 90’s culture as “The era of BritPop”, a time when “Girl Power” was rife, political power switched from Tory to Labour and a time filled with people worrying that computers wouldn’t cope when it ended and we reached the year 2000!

Looking at it from a different angle, the 90’s represented a time of technological accessibility on a larger scale than previously known. Much like the way laptops, smartphones and tablets have firmly integrated the world wide web in to modern culture, in the 90’s TV’s were now commonplace, with families often having TV’s in bedrooms as well as the traditional single TV in the main family room. Not just that but video recorders became the norm from the early 90’s too, once again with more than one often being found in households from the mid-90’s onwards.

It was these two pieces of equipment that have really helped cement many aspects of 90’s popular culture in to my life.

However, the biggest influence (or six biggest influences if you count their individual impact on me separately) on me from my “child of the 90’s” label would have to be the American sitcom “FRIENDS”.

Like it or not, FRIENDS crossed over from being “just another TV show” and firmly placed itself into popular culture very quickly and many aspects have stayed there ever since.

A new haircut dubbed “The Rachel” was being requested on both sides of the Atlantic. The on/off, will they, won’t they relationship of Ross and Rachel gripped audiences all the way up to the final 2 episodes! People began wanting to live the lives of these characters, finding their way through life with each other for support, quite often found whilst sitting drinking a large cup of coffee! This led to a surge in demand for coffee shops, with chain after chain springing up to try to catch a piece of the market. Even the “Central Perk” brand was developed and coffee shops throughout the world adorn this name still today.

Joey’s numerous catchphrases made their way into modern vernacular, none more so than his guaranteed pick up line “How You Doin’?!” which took off quicker than I’m sure the writers would ever have hoped and can probably still be heard uttered in deep nightclub corner recesses on Friday and Saturday nights!

If you were a fan of the show, and have ventured to our capital city of London in the past 15 years, then I guarantee you will have uttered the phrase “London Baby!” but more than that, I have an inkling that you will have also wished that you could find your way around the city (or any city for that matter) by placing the map down on the floor and stepping in!

FRIENDS also provides me with some of the happiest memories of my childhood.

I remember being 8 years old, every Friday night my sister (11 years old at the time) & I would be allowed to venture up the garden, over the little fence and join our neighbours children (2 sisters, each one year older than my sister and I respectively) to sit in their kitchen and all watch a new TV show on Channel 4 that didn’t start until 9pm. After the show was over we would politely thank our hosts for their hospitality and return back over the fence and down the garden to get some rest before my hectic weekend of playing football in the garden!

Don’t get me wrong, at 8 years old I wasn’t particularly aware of some of the content or the humour at the time, but it sparked an affinity with a show that came from being allowed to join my sister and her friends to stay up past 9pm on a Friday night.

The Friday night tradition carried on well in to series 2 before our neighbours moved (I don’t believe our weekly visits to be the catalyst for their move but it is still unconfirmed to this day!) but by this point FRIENDS was firmly implanted in our minds and society as a whole. Just to clarify, we were never reliant on our neighbours TV to be able to watch FRIENDS, we had a few TV’s of our own in the house, however it was purely that we were enjoying watching a comedy show the way it was intended to be watched...with friends! (I am terribly sorry for that pun but consider that the lesser of two evils as I have firmly resisted the chance to link two TV shows with the use of one line that would surely make you feel rather ill from all the cheese. I couldn’t possibly tell you what that line is...no don’t make me...OK, if you insist... I could have used the line “that’s when good neighbours become good friends!”...There, I said it, I’m sorry, I did warn you! Anyway, re-read that last pun now, safe in the knowledge that it could have been much worse!)

Anyway, as the years and series went on my sister and her friends collected all available video tapes of each series that they could and I would even purchase some of my own with birthday and Christmas money, meaning we were never too far away from an episode...or four!

As I got older DVD’s replaced the videos but the continued improvements in home entertainment and the introduction of E4 to freeview coinciding with my college and university years ensured that I would get a daily dose of at least 2 episodes for years to come. Of course since it moved away from Channel 4 and was purchased by Comedy Central and I am now a member of the working world, the regularity in which I watch the episodes has reduced but the influence still remains and it’s easy to see the influence it has had on more recent shows such as “How I Met Your Mother”.

It is unclear exactly how many times I have watched each of the 236 episodes, with some being watched more than others and it depending day by day which were being shown on TV at times that I was about to catch them! My honest guess is I have seen each episode somewhere between the 50 and 100 times bracket, probably showing why I am more influenced by it than some others may be and can still recite entire scripts when watching along.

Even watching the final 2 part episode at the end of series 10 round at my friend Sarah’s house was a social event. It was planned for, food was bought, confirmations were checked and double checked to make sure we would all be there and there were of course tears. All of these things I could never have predicted when I first ventured up the garden to our neighbours some 10 years earlier!

A mixture of relatable characters is far from a new concept but with FRIENDS it was a sense that everyone of us could relate to elements of each of the 6 main characters.

We’ve all got aspects of OCD like Monica, inappropriate humour and a sense of “where am I going in life” that we could rely on from Chandler. We all love the chance to be care free and eat like Joey as well as quirky and unconventional like Phoebe. There is an inner geek like Ross in all of us and we have all been judged on our appearance like Rachel and have to prove to ourselves and to others our self-worth from time to time when we get lost in the world.

Most importantly though, we watched the characters growing up. It was the life events that they went through on screen that are faced by many if not all of us at some point that allows us to continue to relate to each of them.

Only time will tell if it’s influence will wain once I surpass the ages at which we last saw the 6 of them walking slowly out of Monica & Ross’ Grandma’s empty apartment and down the corridor. Until then, I will enjoy every chance I can to associate my life with that of the characters in FRIENDS.

The recent surge in reminiscing about all things good about the 90’s due to shows such as The Big Reunion has already seen PJ & Duncan secure the number one hit they couldn’t manage 19 years ago with the equally decade defining “Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble” (Having grown up in the 90’s I could go off on a long tangent or indeed entire blog post about the potential impact Ant & Dec have had on my life having watched them since their days in Byker Grove and proudly still having a copy of their album “Psych” on cassette to this day, but for now dear reader you are safe!).

However, it hasn’t taken a resurgence in popularity to ensure that FRIENDS has stuck with me throughout my life.

I can’t see or hear the word “Turkey”, either the bird or the country, without hearing and saying the phrase uttered by the Bing family Philippino house boy one Thanksgiving...”More Turkey Mr Chandler?”

Everytime I hear about the department store Bloomingdales, I hear the phrase “My mum calls it Bloomies!”

Whenever anyone tells me that they fell asleep in whatever situation they may have been in, I hear the voice of Rachel Green reverberate through my head, “You fell aschleeep?!”

And these are just a few examples of events that probably happen more often than I even realise when FRIENDS is applied without even batting an eyelid!

I know I’m not alone in this. Many of you may not even realise you’re doing it but moments like that suddenly mean all the hours watching FRIENDS are put to good use. There are also many aspects of the show that won’t be put to good use in life but will stay with you nonetheless, for example I bet you can remember the occupation of Joey’s childhood imaginary friend?*1 or how many pages Ross had to get through in order to get back together with Rachel at the beach house?*2 (If you don’t know the answers then see bottom of the page).

Or perhaps you have found yourself influenced by another decade defining show? Either way I would always love to hear your views and comments, either on here or Twitter (@justdrewonit).

I’m not sure what scenario’s life will throw at me as it continues on but one thing I am sure about...there will always be a phrase or scene from FRIENDS that I am reminded of that will not only make me laugh but remind me that it’s not such a bad thing to be labelled as a “child of the 90’s”.

*1 Answer: Joey’s childhood imaginary friend Mauricé, was a Space Cowboy.

*2 Answer: Eighteen pages (“front and back”).

All Growed Up

Despite only being 26, I start to feel older and older beyond my years as each day passes. 

Physically I am in the worst shape of my life, with fitness taking a priority level even below writing, and we all know how slack that’s been recently. I only have to think about starting a new form of fitness or getting healthy and my body provides me with a new set of aches, pains and strains to worry myself with (check out my last blog post if you don’t believe me!...), all the time whilst seeing, what feels like daily, news bulletins of 70 or 80 something year old men and women still cycling or running to work every day or other such feats (such as today's London Marathon!) that put me and my 26 year old body to shame!

Telling myself that my body is no longer 16 to 19 years old and in my youthful prime and me actually realising it are too very different activities. 

With my body providing continuous challenges to my intention to get fit and healthy, I started to wonder at what point I should accept that I am getting older? I guess this is easy to do with the body, if it doesn’t like the way you do something, it will soon tell you. The mind however is a much more complicated matter. This part of the body can add to the physical issues or alternatively can help you break through them. So if I accept that my body is getting older (don’t get me wrong, only being 26 I know I can break through these barriers and regain at least some of the fitness I once knew), but do I also have to accept the same fate with the mind?

We all have to mentally grow up sometime...don’t we?

Growing up means something different for everyone but because there is no one definitive milestone to go through for this, it is hard to judge what defines being “grown up”?

My best example of this is having children. 

Over the past 12 months three of my sisters’ closest friends have all been expecting babies and thus are now in the process of having them and/or have had them. These are people that have been close to my sister since childhood, & as I am only 3 years younger I've somewhat “grown up” with them too. So surely them starting a family is a sign of growing up & getting older & therefore surely I should at least be starting to feel like I'm growing up?

So why is it that with all the talk of babies around at the moment, my first thoughts weren’t of “OK, so I need a life plan!” or “That will be me someday I guess I better be prepared” but instead were of a potential naming convention & the social implications that would bring?

Certain cultures already ensure that new borns are pre-fixed with certain meaningful names dependent upon their sex.
However my naming convention steers itself more down the route of modern day “celebrity”,with naming your child after the place they were conceived (think Brooklyn Beckham, Paris Hilton (whose birth certificate I’m sure also displays the room number of said hotel, but that’s merely speculation!) or Jordan...oh wait that's not right, anyway you get my drift).

Well imagine that convention was mandatory?!
You would still have family surnames, the origins of which have long defined our standing in society but an additional naming convention would surely develop a class system all of its own?!

Let me set the scene…

It is the second week of September and Primary schools all around the country sit down for the first time that school year with a new year group of fresh faced 4 year old children. The remnants of a long 6 week sunshine filled summer still flicker through the window and teachers address their pupils for the first time (I imagine writing your name on the board in chalk is no longer allowed so there will be some elaborate graffiti spelling out the teachers name somewhere on the wall behind them). The teacher reaches in to their drawer, pulls out a shiny new register, prefilled with the names of these new pupils ready to embark on the next stage of their educational adventure (having been one of these once myself I am also sure that half of the boys in the room are also ready to go home and play with their new train set or fire engine but that’s neither here nor there). After carefully opening the register to the correct page, not wanting to add too much of a crease to this new book on day one, the teacher then precedes to read through the list in alphabetical order by surname…

Teacher:“Somerset Adams”          ("Here")

Teacher:“Chorley Brown”            ("Here")

Teacher:“Roma Carroll”               ("Here")

Teacher:“Dudley Evans”              ("Here")

Teacher:“Llandudno Jones”         ("Here")

Teacher:“Dubai McAllister”        ("Here")

Teacher:“Skegness Taylor”         ("Here")

And so on and so on…

Now, I am certainly not going to offend anyone by making light of who would sit in which class system with the names mentioned above (despite being quite proud that I may have inadvertently created a cult vigilante superhero in the form of“Llandudno Jones”!), I will let you do that for yourselves (do feel free to comment or let me know what yours would be) but it does give you an insight in to how much of a tangent my brain can steer off in to.

This is why I know that I am yet to grow up! And I am probably a long way off doing so.

Who knows when that day, if ever, will come but for now I am going to enjoy being the one who sees something most would consider normal & then running off with it screaming “nerrrr nerrrr ne nerrrr nerrrr”...that world is much more entertaining!

It is this same brain that sat at work last week looking over multiple spreadsheets and came across a cell that read “YTD”. I’m sure most of you are familiar with this acronym but for those that aren’t it simply refers to “Year to date”. To most, this would be where this story ended...not me!

Suddenly my brain saw the word “year” and realised that it rhymed with “rear”, which then segwayed my mind nicely to the “Rear of the year” awards.

Not in a crude way, before your minds wonder off on a tangent of their own but to the thought of how much better it would be if the organisers had named them the "Bottom of the year" awards. This may not hold the rhyming potential that the words “Rear” and “Year” do but as my version could then be shortened to “BOTY awards” or "The BOTY's”, it’s a Marketer’s dream, surely? 

Now as they have preferred to call it the "Rear of the year" awards instead, I can't help but feel they've missed a trick, especially as the acronym of their choice would be the “ROTY’s”! Nowhere near as marketable, I think you’ll agree?!

So I guess my point is (yes that’s right, I do have one!), do I really have to grow up at some point? Will I know when it happens? Are these people that are supposedly “growing up” around me actually growing up or are they still the same people and actually you never have to, you merely just switch your priorities around slightly and appear like you know what you are doing?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not childish in my day-to-day actions, the days of knee slides at weddings and whoopi cushions at family parties are gone...well, it’s not long gone but it’s gone nonetheless. All of these thoughts are solely centred on the way my mind works.

Mentally I guess I am in some kind of transition. Perhaps I’m over thinking it? Perhaps not?

Either way I guess I’ll only find out the answer when I reach my final years, as I sit back and reflect upon life, pinpointing the exact life event that triggered my transition to a real “grown up”. Or (and we all know this is more likely) sitting back laughing to myself as my great-grandchild is introduced to me for the first time, filling me with extreme pride and happiness, but also leading my mind off to consider “I wonder what he or she would be called if that naming convention had taken off”?

Yours sincerely,

Shrewsbury Brown

P.S. For those of you not only still with me, but also debating with yourself the pros and cons of the aforementioned naming convention, I think you’ll agree my name above is a proverbial curveball to the system, providing both the commonality of “Brown” as well as the class definition of its own depending upon how you pronounce “Shrewsbury”. The latter being a topic of a potential future blog post all by itself. But for now, I’ll let you decide!

It's been a while...

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside of you"

                                                                                                       ---  Maya Angelou

As I idly browsed through the latest news stories, blog posts and online articles the other day, I stumbled upon the quote above and it sparked something inside of me. Something that seems to have escaped me for what feels like an eternity but truth be told, something that once again I have let the world around me get in the way of and made excuse after excuse about finding the time to do. That thing is to write.

If I have something that can be said in less than 140 characters then I seem to reach for my Twitter app and suddenly that thought is out there for people to read, favourite, retweet, reply to or most likely, ignore. Similarly, if I want instant reaction to something slightly longer than 140 characters then Facebook is my next medium of choice. People can like or comment and this can last for hours, days or again disappear as quick as it is written. Either way I seem to have developed a worrying habit. It would appear that in the interest of time saving, my emphasis on sitting down and writing anything longer over the past 3 months has been side-lined.

This is predominantly down to the fact that I was never sure of the identity of my blog. Whether it should be purely long tales of whimsical anecdotes & small blogs would clutter it up or if these smaller ones would help to keep it alive and the longer tales would still be the focal points.

As Easter approached I thought, “ok maybe this is the perfect time to spring clean my mind of all of the mini blogs that have been stopping me from committing to writing anything new on here for nearly 3 months!”. But then Easter came and went and I only really got as far as jotting a few notes down to remind myself in multiple ways that I was failing to not only blog but also keep up with my new year’s “goals” (http://bit.ly/ZwkYmv).

Whilst I’m touching upon that, it’s probably wise to fill you in on why I have been AWOL for nearly 3 months and maybe give you an insight in to how I’m getting on with the 5 “goals” that I set myself for 2013 (if you think along the lines of how the “I must blog more often” goal has gone then you would be somewhere close to predicting how the others are doing!).

1) Learn one new healthy recipe per month... Since my home made beef burgers in January I have failed to really try anything new and with finding little time and inspiration to blog I’ve also found the same things lacking when it comes to new culinary creations. I do live in hope that I will turn this around and catch up by the end of the year!

2) Increase my cardio/fitness... This goal is being spectacularly failed on many levels.

During February I attempted to complete a challenge that seemed to fit perfectly with my recent purchase of a jumprope and one that I presumed would be simple enough and was also public enough to shame me into doing it. A 30 day Jumprope challenge to see how many rotations you could achieve in 5 minutes every day. After day one I aggravated a muscle in my back and took 3 more days off before completing another day, which injured me further and I put it off for the remainder of the challenge!

I have also been thinking about buying a bicycle for a while now as it is something I used to use every day up until I reached about 16 and enjoyed it without realising that it was a form of exercise. So after much research and deliberation I have decided to opt for an entry level road bike. The wheels are much thinner than I’m used to but I’m sure once I’ve got out there a few times I won’t look back...except to check for traffic of course! However, in testing out a bike in a shop before I made a purchase I seem to have pulled muscles in my ribs and have now been prescribed cocodamol by the doctor and told to not ride for a couple of weeks...so ironically I can’t get my fitness up just yet because, well,  I’m unfit!

As you can see, fitness seems to turn me in to something of a liability so fingers crossed once I am fully healed, this new approach will signal a change in fortune and I will be able to add tales of cycling adventures to this blog rather than more pathetic “I’ve been injured before I started” stories...once again my money is on the latter!

3) Read more!... I am slowly making my way through 3 or four books at the same time but I have been reading more and more news stories and online articles so I can count this as a partial success.

4) Blog more!... Well we all know what’s happened here so the less said about that the better!

5) Show my girlfriend how much I love her!... As ever you’ll have to ask her that. As her birthday fell earlier this month I do hope I am at least completing this goal but my view would be bias on this!

All of this shows that not only am I useless at keeping New Year’s Resolutions but I am also pretty poor at keeping the goals I set myself instead of these resolutions.

On a slight side note, in my time away from blogging I have still been keeping an eye on other blogs, mainly for inspiration to find the time to write again but also because there really are some great writers out there with a plethora of interesting things to say. I don’t often plug other sites or blogs but my lack of ability to blog since January and keep up with my “goal” is in stark contrast to an ex-colleague of mine who created a challenge for herself to blog every day of 2013 and not only is she managing to keep up with this challenge but her daily tales provide both anecdotal and interesting stories from her travels. Feel free to check out her blog here (but do make sure you venture back here once you’re finished perusing over there). . .So congratulations Nikki, keep the good work going!

Anyway, back to my absence and during the process of writing my last blog post I was also evaluating my current career path (those of you familiar with my previous posts will remember a fateful night trying not to kill off a comedy night for a room filled with paying spectators whilst I try to gain some humour from my role as a Project Analyst whilst being asked by the comedian of the evening, Chris Ramsey (http://bit.ly/116e6Qx)). I had applied for a new job which would take me back to the world of Marketing, been for the interview and felt inspired by the potential of not only being back in a more creative environment but also having a much easier job to explain if ever I came face to face with Chris Ramsey or any other comedian again! So I wrote my last blog and luckily enough 2 days later I was offered the new role (I don’t believe these 2 acts are connected but you never know!) and so came the far more nerve racking experience of handing in my notice at my current employers. You never like to feel like you are letting them down but this was made all the worse as the day before I had my interview my boss came over and sat on my desk before I left and said “So, go on then, you’ve got an interview tomorrow haven’t you?!” to which I swallowed a deep breathe, chuckled (what other noise do you make in this kind of situation?) and said “No. Of course not!”

What followed then was 4 weeks of even longer hours, increased stress, taking work home, all in the name of handing over my ever increasing workload as seamlessly as possible in what turned out to be the quickest timeframe I’ve ever experienced. After a fantastic last Thursday night and Friday send off from a great array of the people I had worked with for the 3 years of my time there I had a mere 48 hour weekend to unwind from a frantic 4 weeks and prepare myself to start the new role on the Monday. And being only 6 full weeks in to this new role, some would say I’m still settling in but despite being in a far more inspiring and creative environment it has come at a time of year that carries a large array of emotions. These emotions range from joy, to stress to tiredness and most importantly an empty wallet…that’s right, it’s birthday season for me.

In the space of 12 days I have my sisters’, my girlfriends’ and my mothers’ birthdays so there is lots of celebrating, meals out, cake, presents to find and buy and sleep to miss out on. Oh and just for good measure there are friend's birthdays and a wedding or two thrown in just for good measure! But please don’t think I’m complaining about this, I am merely making you aware that it has been incredibly easy to fill any spare time with anything other than sitting down to compose words on paper...especially when the author isn’t even sure where they would sit best at the end of it!

So I guess whilst the seasons make their mind up on how long Winter will go on for, I figured April is still a great opportunity for a spring clean. And once I had this birthday season out of the way and found more time to get my thoughts clear I started getting certain thoughts down and out, and low and behold the dots started connecting and suddenly small anecdotes turned in to longer tales.

So from now on I’ve decided that not only will I post the longer stories but will occasionally be adding smaller anecdotes, hopefully for your amusement but more selfishly to help clear my mind from time to time to allow creativity to flow a bit freer. After all, there are only so many random thoughts you can get away with without talking to yourself and looking crazy! I will of course still be using Twitter (@justdrewonit) and Facebook for these too but I think I have finally realised that you can’t really define a blog before you write anything, you have to let the blog be defined by the things you write on there.

So, as this blog nears 1000 page views, I am more humble and more determined than ever to keep this blog going and relieve my agony by telling the stories inside of me, whether they big or small, they will no longer go untold.