Alex B Cann column: Lost in (Twitter) time

The drinks that he could never touch again, the feeling of being stuck in the smartphone world and the opening of the Tour of Tameside all feature in the Tameside Radio presenter's unique take on life...

It seems a bad time at the beginning of the four day Tour of Tameside to mention this, but I was given a really stomach curdling list of drinks on the Tameside Radio Facebook page in answer to the question: “Which drink can you never touch again?”

Pernod and Southern Comfort seemed to be mentioned most, along with Sambuca shots and various alcopops which were all the rage in my university years in Liverpool in the mid-90s.

For clarity, none of these is recommended before embarking on a challenging run around Tameside and Glossop. Or at all, if we’re being honest.

How time races by! The carefree days of 1995 when I started my Politics and Communications Studies degree honestly don’t seem two minutes ago, yet we’ve had two sets of work experience students lately at Quest Media Network, all of whom were born after I graduated (this was the night I overdid the Southern Comfort, incidentally, and I have eschewed it ever since!).

The charts were dominated by Take That, Coolio and the duo who denied Oasis Wonderwall its rightful number one position... Robson and Jerome. Our local chippy charged a mere £1.50 for fish n’ chips, although the muffin did cost 50p extra on top. CK One was the scent of sophistication back then, and its revolutionary concept was that it could be worn by either men or women... ground breaking stuff in those days. The biggest films at the UK cinema box office were Die Hard With A Vengeance, Toy Story and Apollo 13, along with the latest 007 adventure Goldeneye.

Other random things I remember are the Guinness TV ad, eating lots of pot noodles, taking my washing home for my Mum to do and living a five minute walk from at least eight takeaway outlets in Wavertree. Happy days.

Over a quarter of a century on, Spice Girls are apparently contemplating yet another reunion, you can still buy CK One (and it’s usually discounted!), and we’re all glued to our smartphones.

I have just gone through the slightly laborious process of upgrading mine, and haven’t got round to silencing all the various notifications yet, as I migrate over all my apps. It’s reminded me how needy our phones are. Like a cat purring away, but jabbing you with its paw the minute you stop.

It’s got me thinking how much time I might have on my hands to read all the books on my shelf, if only I’d upgraded to a basic Nokia brick phone. Even the “banana phone” as seen in the Matrix, which has Whatsapp on it but none of the other fancy apps.

We are all guilty of spending too many hours responding to messages, doom scrolling Twitter, and dreading that one group we ended up in unwillingly realising we’ve muted all the notifications from it.

If you’re reading all this and feeling a little lofty as you didn’t succumb to a smartphone, I’m kind of envious! They are a rabbit hole from which it’s very difficult to emerge unscathed, blinking into a land of all that time available to do useful things in your life. My friend Tom has a policy when his phone ‘pings’ to leave it at least half an hour before looking at the message. He wouldn’t be my go to in a dire emergency, on that basis.

I do miss the days of nights out that weren’t documented on social media. We lived in the moment a bit more. When my mates and I had a 2018 reunion in the fine city of Liverpool, we realised we’d got old as town began to fill up during our last pint of the night. We were ordering questionable kebabs and cheesy chips as the young Insta-ready things got their first shots of the night, no doubt posting them to Instagram before necking them.

To balance things out a little, I guess technology has been a lifesaver for many who have been isolated during this pandemic. Imagine having no Zoom or Whatsapp to keep in touch with friends and family, had lockdown been imposed in 1995. It would have certainly made things a lot more lonely, and you might have even needed to resort to listening to the year’s best selling song - Unchained Melody and the White Cifffs of Dover by, yes, Robson and Jerome! Perhaps on balance, a little too much time on Twitter is not all that bad after all.

Good luck if you’re taking part in the Tour of Tameside, and well done to all in Stalybridge involved in organising Foodie Friday. It’s really great to see events back in the diary again.

You can listen to Alex every weekday from 7am to 11am and on the 'Super Scoreboard' show on Saturdays from 3pm to 7pm, on Tameside Radio 103.6FM. 

Read more from the Tameside Reporter

Click here for more of the latest news

Click here to read the latest edition of the paper online

Click here to find out where you can pick up a copy of the paper