Everlasting baby

We have a new apprentice in the office starting soon, who was born in... 1999 (!).

With that terrifying news ringing in my ears, I thought it opportune that we should have a little timeslip moment, back to that very year - when Boris Yeltsin handed over to Vladimir Putin, and Bill Clinton was acquitted in his impeachment trial; the year of the Kosovo War, Harold Shipman, The Matrix, Tracey Emin, Bill Gates, the Jonathan Aitken trial, Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, Prince Edward and Sophie Rhys-Jones' wedding, Jill Dando's murder, Family Guy, the Columbine massacre and the Admiral Duncan gay pub bombing, the deaths of Dusty Springfield, Victor Mature, Stanley Kubrick, Madeline Kahn, Ernie Wise, Oliver Reed and Dirk Bogarde, and the births of East Timor, the Euro, MSN Messenger, the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and - ahem - SpongeBob SquarePants.

In the news in November 1999: Gary Glitter was jailed for possession of child pornography, Australia voted in favour of retaining HM The Queen as Head of State in a referendum, an inquest began into the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 off the Massachusetts coast (in which 231 people were killed), International Men's Day (November 19th) was launched in the UN, and the (then) largest corporation in the world ExxonMobil was formed; in the ascendant (literally) were the Millennium Wheel (now the London Eye) and China's first Shenzhou space craft; but we bade a fond farewell to Quentin Crisp, who died (while on a tour of his one-man show across the UK) in the inauspicious town of Chorlton-cum-Hardy. In our cinemas: East Is East, The Sixth Sense and Milk. On telly: Walking with Dinosaurs, DIY SOS and MacIntyre Uncovered, and Julie Goodyear returned as Bet Lynch in a Corrie spin-off After Hours.

And in our charts this week eighteen years ago? There was evidently a flurry of new releases, as Savage Garden, Jennifer Lopez and Another Level crashed into the Top Ten to join the likes of Christina Aguilera, Macy Gray, Westlife, R Kelly and Five. Also leaping into the upper echelons were Tin Tin Out featuring Emma Bunton with What I Am at #2, and this slice of loveliness from Our Geri, straight in at the top slot. Where she belonged:

Geri Halliwell - Lift Me Up

Like the seasons ever changing
Everlasting baby, like you and I
It's going to be alright
But when my sky clouds over

(Lift Me Up) When the day is over
(Take me up) When the sun is going down
(Show me love) I will be your angel now
(Lift Me Up) When the lights are fading
(Talk me down) When I'm flying way up high
(Show me love) And I'll be your angel for life
Your angel for life

Flap, flap.*

[*Additional lyrics added by moi.]