End of an Era

Do you ever get the feeling when you’re suddenly taken back to your childhood? That happened to me today. As you know, I’m a bit of a Neighbours fan – and people, it looks like it’s survived the move to five – but instead of turning off the TV at the end and getting on with some work, I left it running and on came Home and Away. I used to love that show... Coming in from school, I’d sit and watch Citv, before Home and Away started at 5.10pm on ITV, directly followed by Neighbours at 5.35pm on BBC1 (back then it didn’t go up to BBC15 or whatever we’re on now...). They were the biggest shows at school, and everyone used to talk about them – does anyone else remember that?

Anyway, just before the show started, the announcer... well, announced that this would be Sally’s final episode. Yep, after 20 years as Sally Fletcher, Kate Ritchie was moving on to bigger and better things. Finding it pretty cool that I’d managed to come across this particular episode, I sat and watched it – and wow. It was like I was a kid again. Not only was it a long time since I’d seen the show properly, they’d also brought back half the family that arrived with Sally in the very first episode – which I remember (I’ve always had a weird skill for remembering little things like that in perfect detail. Ask me what I had for tea yesterday – go on, ask – and I’ll have to think about it for a good long while. And actually I didn’t manage to have any tea yesterday, so that probably plays a part. But ask me what I had for tea on Friday and I’ll be like... well, it was fish and chips, because Friday is generally fish and chips evening... but ask me about Thursday and I’ll be like, no idea).

I digress. It was early 1989 I believe, so I would have been 5, and I remember coming home from school and Mum telling me that there was a new show from Australia which had been recommended by one of her sisters (a lot of our family live in Australia). We sat down together to watch it, and I remember seeing Sally, Pippa and Tom (and Carly, Lynne, Frank, Stephen and Bobby – I told you, this is the kind of thing I remember – I didn’t even have to check that on Wikipedia) arriving in Summer Bay. I don’t know why I felt the need to write this down, but it was kinda weird sitting (again, next to my Mum) twenty years later, watching Sally, along with Pippa, Stephen and Carly who had come back for the episode, leaving the Bay. Weird, but kinda cool.

And recognise the location of these pictures from 2005? (the top one is with my cousin, Ellie).