All 8 series are on iPlayer for a few more months. I noticed some prescient scenes...

I posted about OnChat earlier this year. It was a graphical chatroom. There were multiple themed rooms, and you could create custom avatars (see link).

Anyway, it seems I just didn't look hard enough. Here is the link to the wayback machine, a reddit thread, and here's a screenshot of an example of the rooms.

I can’t remember exactly how we got these. I think it was the consolation prize for an art competition?

Note for morons: this is not a picture of a Muslim woman.

I found the stickers! They were in my old diary. They’re cute, huh? These were the pictures I tried to replicate, and then I made one of my own design in that style.

Read on to find out what I wrote in my diary at age 7…

I came across this on a Nostalgia Nerd video, and oh my Lucy, the memories! I wanted the watch on the right so much when I was 11. It was very Clarissa Darling-esque. My mum refused to let me buy it. She thought it was too trashy or flashy or something. She kept trying to persuade me to get a Sekonda granny watch like my older sister. I tried to compromise by offering to buy the one on the left instead, but it was no go.

I still want this watch. It's so 90s and cool.

Edit: here ya go!

My niece is five now, and I've been trying to teach her the clapping games. I tried to remember some of the songs we used to sing as kids.

Before we start, please remember that these songs are products of their time and therefore might be considered a little offensive at times. When teaching my niece, I will alter these to make them acceptable, but I'm documenting them here just for a record of my school days.

Ai Shu Shweila

I don't know how this name is meant to be spelt. It's pronounced like "eye", "shoe" and "shweila" to rhyme with the name "Layla/Leila". I can't find a record of this particular variant. I've also forgotten how the first line goes, so I've taken it from others that I've seen online.

Tomy's Tinkle Tots, also called Pipi Baby, and Bikinis.

I have two islands and three shells. The shells we got from one of those discount shops in Wood Green, mid 90s. I believe I was already in secondary school, or near to it, at the time we got these. I remember fixating on them and dreaming about having the full set 🙁 As in actually dreaming. I really wanted the Rainbow Shower Island, and a Lullaby Moon. I remember the adverts, even though I believe they stopped airing long before we got these. "In their lullaby moooooon!"

My sister has the boat island, with one of the brown haired boys.

The islands we found some months later in Woolworths, reduced to clear. They were the proper retail quality UK versions (no gender-bending!).

Enough talking! Time for pictures!

I tell you something, if I really want to win an auction on eBay, no one will ever be able to outbid me 😉

It started with a painful childhood memory. You see, the first ever Sindy I got, as a present at the tender age of three, was the Superstar Sindy. Sindyyy, Superstar Sindy, you're everything I want to be! Superstar Sindy, dance with me! You're everything I want to be! Superstar SINDY! And she had this cool silver microphone. And for some reason, my mum let me take the doll with me to school, complete with all accessories. In hindsight, she may well have tried to convince me to leave them at home, but that's not important.

What's important is that I did take them. And one day, the nursery teacher — we shall call her Mrs A — didn't like that I was playing with the microphone while she was talking to the class about something or other, and she said to give the microphone to her and she'd look after it. I didn't want to, because I knew, even at the age of three, that grown-ups rarely keep their word. But she pressured me and in the end she took it from me and put it in a box and I never saw it again.

So you see, I was right to never trust a grown-up at their word.

In any case, it had a lasting effect on me. I still feel the pang of loss. Even when my little sister, three years later started nursery, I asked her to keep an eye out for it, being so upset I deluded myself into thinking it must still be there. More years later, when other girls I knew started nursery, I plaintively made the same request of them.