The early 1990s were carefree days.
Looking back, our life during this decade seemed to be characterised by being old enough to know better and young enough not to care.
It was an historic time in South Africa – Nelson Mandela had just been released – signalling a period of enormous hope, uncertainty, excitement and change. The country was gearing up for the first democratic elections, but our crowd were more concerned with whether we should return to the office after a boozy lunch (the answer was “No”); and praying that our (company) car would remember the way home after a rowdy evening at the Rattlesnake Diner. (Incidentally, that’s where the header picture is taken – just before the upside down margaritas and table dancing began 🫣)
There was no GPS, Google Maps or Waze. We navigated around town with a dog-eared, spiral-bound map book, made plans that people actually kept, and disappeared for entire weekends without generating a single ‘post’ or ‘notification’.
And yet, the 1990s didn’t feel quaint while we were living them. We felt modern, sophisticated, and thoroughly up to date. It’s only in hindsight that I realise we were navigating one of the last decades in human history where a person could leave home in the morning and become gloriously, completely unreachable.
Obviously we had no idea that we were living in the transient golden age between inconvenience and intrusion. Technology was advanced enough to make life comfortable, but not yet sophisticated enough to follow us everywhere. If somebody said, “I’ll fax it to you,” it sounded impressively modern.
Social gatherings worked because people honoured arrangements and made actual plans. Once it had been agreed: “See you at the Radium at 7,” everyone simply arrived. There was no running commentary of “Leaving now”, “Five minutes away”, “Parking!”, or “At the table near the bar”. We somehow located one another using intuition and basic logic.
If someone was running late, there was no reassuring message saying, “Sorry, traffic 😬”. You simply stood there wondering whether they had been delayed, forgotten, abducted, or had quietly reconsidered the friendship altogether. If plans changed last minute and you were left high and dry, it was considered unfortunate rather than outrageous. My very first invitation to dinner at Geoff’s house was almost a non starter. I found 4th Avenue (Parktown) and rode up and down without being able to find no 17. I was about to give up when desperately studying my map book by interior light, I realised that the adjacent suburb (Parkhurst) also had a 4th Avenue! Crisis averted and I was only a little bit late.
Geoff and I often muse over how on earth we conducted and moved our relationship forward with little more than casual conversations at the office, the odd phone call – but definitely no WhatsApp, sms or email. When I moved to Cape Town in 1992, Geoff would visit me there. With no more than a single call, I would be at the airport to meet him. He would disembark from the plane. Life was very uncomplicated.
I’m not surprised that younger people genuinely struggle to understand how anything social functioned before mobile phones and messaging apps. My friend Jenny’s teenage daughter was floored by the idea that our landlines were literally tied down in a specific room of the house, or worse, in a central location where you were easily overheard.😆
Today we use technology to avoid uncertainty. In the early 1990s we simply lived with it. The idea of uncertainty is perhaps the most profound difference between then and now. We didn’t know exactly where everyone was, what they were doing, whether they had received our message, or when they would arrive. And somehow society continued to function remarkably well.
Looking back, it’s astonishing that any of us managed to date, meet our friends, catch flights, book holidays, attend meetings, or get married. Yet somehow we did it all armed with a diary, a street map, a wall-mounted telephone, and an optimism that now seems almost reckless. 🤯 There was no googling, or checking one more review.
Possibly the most significant aspect was the non existence of social media. We never had to worry about opening Facebook only to find ourselves tagged in last night’s compromising (and certainly career-terminating) series of photos. What happened in Vegas, remained firmly in Vegas.
Which is why it’s only right that more than 30 years on, I capture some of the moments that might have been lost forever. It was unusual to take photos, but thank goodness sometimes we did! Also, if you took a photograph, that was the actual photograph. There was no editing, recalling, deleting or unsending. And definitely no AI.
Dress up parties were common. (Above right is from a “Pirate” party we held for my birthday in 1995 🏴☠️)
One of our most memorable was a Mexican-themed party, where John and Angie arrived wearing their dogs’ blankets (the dogs were understandably nonplussed) and where we paid more attention to the Tequila Sunrise recipe than the taco fillings. Janet and Jan needed no excuses to behave badly. Before long, a dinner party turned into a festival.
People who didn’t drink were knocking back shots, people who didn’t smoke were tackling cigars and people who never swore, had rude messages stuck to their foreheads. As the hostess, I was mortified to be put to bed prematurely, unable to stand or string a sentence together, never mind serve the main course. In fact, the following morning, we were startled to find a full casserole of pulled pork in the microwave that we’d ‘neglected’ to serve.😂
But probably the most outrageous of all was our Rocky Horror bash. Our guests outdid themselves when it came to dressing accordingly. We fell about laughing when Paul and Gerry explained that they had had to stop at a shop on their way (to buy film for their camera) dressed in corsetry, hose and heels. (And that was just Paul!)
Derek and Chris arrived in inventive costumes that evolved at strategic points in the evening from slinky, silver, extra-terrestrial, Transylvanians – to a tanned and oiled Rocky in a G-string.
Sue and Muller could be counted on to go all in, and embraced their roles from the get go. Carol and Roy arrived dressed as Brad and Janet and we struggled to tell if it they were masters at remaining in character, or just downright horrified as the evening progressed while they smiled bemusedly from the sidelines as the antics degenerated on the ‘dance floor’. Stefan and Joe, usually quite conservative, went all out. 🎷
Geoff led the demise, emboldened by his fishnet tights, cerise bustier, wig and little else. Paul and Gerry needed no encouragement and Chris and Derek turned out to be more than just cheerleaders.
Below we have Geoff, Paul and Chris doing the Time Warp (again). “It’s just a jump to the left…” 🎵
The rest of the photographs I have, indicate that things deteriorated even further, and because this platform is social media, I thought I’d quit while barely ahead. I hope you saw what I did there?
The dressing up lark was also encouraged at the TCC Sailing club. For their annual function with the theme of “Arabian Nights” (inspired by the recent Hobie World Champs in Dubai), I helped choreograph a dance performance to the theme of “Caravans”. The sultry dancers that came to rehearsals each week were Jan, Alan, Ian and Geoff, and they embraced their roles with enthusiasm.
I was amazed by how good they were at remembering their steps and gliding about, smoothly executing their moves (in fact the most difficult part was getting glossy fruit gums to stick in their belly buttons). The boys did get a bit carried away, and high on the applause, there was some improvisation that involved sitting on male audience laps mid routine…
The Johannesburg of the early 1990s wasn’t necessarily better than today. It was simply less perpetually connected, less documented, and considerably less interruptible. Browsing through these old albums makes me think that we spent less time updating people about our lives and more time actually living them 😁
