Robert the Westie. My life. By me.

16. A year of boybands, births, deaths and no marriages at all.

That knack of jumping back and forth in time, as brilliantly exemplified in the last chapter, is one that I’ve learnt from television dramas. Flashbacks are old hat, but flashforwards are a relatively new arrival in my arsenal of creativity. Just in case I’ve been overdoing it, always a risk with a novel technique, I’ll walk us through 1999 in a relatively straightforward, chronological fashion. Do I sense sighs of relief all round?

I’m also aware that I’ve been more than a little absorbed in my role as global historian, even if my perspectives come heavily filtered through Steve’s. So here’s a brief overview of where our lives were in these closing days of the century.

My life was, frankly, quite idyllic. Although Steve went to his office most days, his ability to work from home too meant that his daily absences were short. If he had to travel away on business, Jason usually managed to work a half-day and be home to keep me company early in the afternoon. Weekends usually saw us installed from Friday night to Monday morning in the Surrey cottage that I mentioned before. Steve took responsibility for its upkeep and treated it as just another home. I treated it as paradise.

Perched on a steep incline surrounded by tall and ancient hedges, it commanded a view across rolling fields, dotted with clumps of darker greenery and stretching to the skyline created by the undulating ridges of the Surrey Hills. Yes, we were in the country, just yards from the first of a latticework of bridal paths that gave me some of the loveliest outings of my life. My master and I would disappear from the house for hours, navigating meadows of whispering grass, shooing away inquisitive horses, picking our way across the steppingstones of a sweetly babbling brook, stopping only to chat to fellow ramblers. Correction: Steve used the stepping-stones. I ploughed joyously through the rushing torrent. Or, at least, that was how I saw it. We were both in our elements and I felt the strength of that bond between us like never before.

Jason never joined us. I regretted that not at all. He had his own outings, to local events called “car boot sales” Steve flinched every time he heard the phrase. His antipathy to most forms of shopping was unlikely to recede in the face of ranks of vehicles parked in muddy fields and exhibiting the domestic cast-offs that some family had deemed irrelevant to their needs. Jason had no such reservations. I can’t comment. I never made it to one. I have no regrets about that either. 

Some evenings, friends or neighbours joined us for dinner gatherings, enlivened by divergent opinions and, may I say, too much alcohol? The first such topic of 1999 was a birth, one heavily presold but one to which Steve gave the sourest welcome. The birth had granted Steve an opportunity to unleash his powers of invective on Hugh and Tom, the two man team who occupied the cottage on the lane in the lee of the hill. On first meeting them, Steve had christened them memorably “the couple we look down on.” They had soon forgiven him, I think.

“They’ve all just got carried away with an emotional dream; monetary borders swept away to create a Europe of eternal peace and harmony” Steve observed, in full flow. “So they take eleven countries with wildly divergent economies and locked them together in a single currency. Immediately it reduces the often-used flexibility that enables nations to weather local economic storms by fiddling with their interest rates and devaluing their currencies. Dumb beyond belief!” He took a generous swig of the red wine that accompanied the rich-smelling lasagne that he had prepared the night before.

            “But why would they want to weaken their own currency?” asked Hugh, suave and charming, but no more an economist than I.

            “A lower pound, or mark or franc makes exports cheaper for foreign buyers. It’s one of the abiding truths of international markets. I know that Europe is in a panic about being squeezed between the booming economic power of Asia and the normal entrepreneurial dynamism of America, but this single currency, this Euro, is just taking the piss. Should have been called the Eurine!”