1992 in the UK

 1992 was a real interesting year when I visited the UK. IT was an enchanting place, but it was a tour bus tour, and I never got to really walk around. Still there was the charm of the music stores, the old pubs, I remember an old parchment factory that manufactured quality paper from discarded rags. Magnificent cathedrals, ruins, Oxford Street, Oxford, Cambridge, some visit to some boarding school. It was a pretty magical tour. And I left the place with a sense of awe.

But there were things bubbling under the surface. I didn't know what 1992 was like for the UK. First, it was the year of Queen Elizabeth's annus horribilis. There were the princess Diana revelations of affairs. Later that year, there would be the burning of a palace. 1992 was also the inauguration of the premier league. In fact we were there during the summer between the last old football league, where Leeds had been champions, and the English premier league. It was also the devaluation of the British Pound, of George Soros becoming famous because he made a lot of money betting against the pound.

There was a revolution going on in music. Madchester was just hollowing out, and there were a few musical movements under way: industrial, trip hop, britpop, rave, shoegaze. The amount of musical activity going on in the UK during the 90s was pretty insane. Suede was just releasing their first few singles. Grunge wasn't invented in the UK but it was gaining popularity there. The best selling albums of the year was pretty left field : it was “Stars” by Simply Red. (It was also their last great album).

1992 was the first post-Soviet Union year. IT was the beginning of a long peace in Europe that just recently got ended. It was also the beginning of the Balkans conflict, and it should have been a reminder that war never truly goes away.

The big picture is that the UK is in decline. It's always been in decline, since the end of the 2^nd world war. IT was given a seat at the table of the security council of the UN because of its past greatness, and its being an ally during WW2. But it was basically finished as a world empire. It took the British people a long time to accept this, and I probably didn't suss it at that time, but all the grandeur and splendour of the time I spent there was indicative of an empire basking in its past glory. Eventually, it became just another nation.

And maybe that's why people were attached to the Queen. The Queen was this empress of a glorious empire, and you could walk up to her and shake hands with her! But she's dead, and something special died with her. She was crowned at the dusk of empire: in the early 50s, when it seemed that things would carry on as they were, until they wouldn't. Britain had defeated Hitler, it had sent Edmund Hillary to the top of Mount Everest. But there were the desperate imperial wars in East Africa, where it was struggling to hold on to its empire. Since then, there were mixed results about their ability to transition from an empire to a nation.