I'm just reading The Week (17 minutes past midnight, Saturday night. Oh yes.), and in their regular "good week, bad week" section, they say it's a bad week for the Naughties. That is, the decade of the 1990s. Apparantly "[they] will be remembered as a time of gloom and mediocrity... [they] have produced no unique musical trend, no fashion innovation except the bare midriff, and only one defining image, the destruction of the World Trade Centre."

Well, the Naughties for me were ages 3-13, so I don't have the most vivid memories of them, although it could be said that these were my formative years. Anyway, reading that paragraph shocked me a bit, because I'd always thought they were a pretty good decade. Not just for me, but in the public consciousness. Is that not so? Perhaps I'm mostly thinking of the last few years, because obviously that's what I remember most, but weren't the years after Labour's 1997 victory a time of optimism, innovation and general happiness? Dotcom, cool Britannia, and all that.

As for music trends - what about Brit Pop, the great Blur/Oasis battle: wasn't that central to the Naughties cultural landscape? Oh, and don't forget the Spice Girls: didn't they basically start off this whole "manufactured girl/boy band" thing? And in fashion, well, I don't know why The Week is so quick to downplay the impact of the "bare midriff" thing: seems like a pretty major change to me. Not all to the good, of course, I mean it would be nice if fat pikeys felt a bit more obliged to cover themselves up. And actually I prefer a more dignified look for girls I'm really interested in, but as a general rule, bare midriff certainly shouldn't be overlooked on the right kind of person.

Now, defining image? I've already mentioned the Labour win. "Things Can Only Get Better"; Tony, Cherie, Mandy and the gang dancing away. Remember? And then for the older folks, I'm led to believe the historic Kinnock defeat was pretty defining, or rather, as an image, the historic "falling-over-on-the-beach" moment. And then, how about the Gulf War? Okay, there's no defining (read: cliched, choreographed) image to rival the pulling down of the Saddam statue in the more recent episode, but still, green-tinged night-vision images of tanks in the desert and missiles being launched at invisible targets certainly come to my mind when I think of the Naughties.

I'm even ignoring major historical events like the fall of the USSR, because there isn't really an attendant "image" (unless you count Yeltsin stumbling drunkenly on the red carpet). Nelson Mandela was freed in 1990, don't forget. And England hosted the European Championships, Euro '96 - and would have had a good chance of winning if it hadn't been for Gareth Southgate's fateful penalty (another defining image). Also Italia '90, the spectacular penalty misses of Chris Waddle and Stewart Pierce, if I remember correctly. Okay, so maybe it wasn't such a great decade for sport. But overall, not so bad, I reckon.