At what point in life do you find yourself spending equal time gazing back as you do looking forward? This isn’t, as it might appear at first glance, an escapee riddle from the Christmas cracker factory, but rather a genuine query.

It is something I’ve been pondering a lot in recent days. The announcement and subsequent scramble for tickets that has surrounded the much-lauded Oasis reunion has left many of us who consider the 1990s to be “our era” feeling both misty-eyed and oddly discombobulated.

This is partly down to all the fond reminiscing but also because it serves as stark evidence of how much the world has changed.

There is a photograph doing the rounds on social media that shows hundreds of Oasis fans queuing outside the erstwhile Virgin Megastore in Edinburgh, waiting to buy tickets for the band’s 1996 gig at Loch Lomond.

Seeing it felt strangely jarring. Because in my head, I sometimes think the world still looks like that. The reassuringly familiar clothes, shoes and hairstyles. The onus on the tangible instead of an abstract, virtual reality.

A time when high streets were the beating hearts of towns and cities as opposed to them being a soulless loop of vape shops, American candy stores, cash-only barbers and bookies.

I remember with pinpoint clarity the thrill of perusing the packed rails at Tammy Girl, The Sweater Shop, Miss Selfridge, Kookai, Benetton and State of Independence (known in other incarnations as Razzle Dazzle and Internacionale).

A quick spritz of CK One, Anais Anais or Tresor from the perfume hall in a big department store. Dining out at Pizza Hut, The Pancake Place or Spudulike. Stopping by Blockbuster on the way home to choose a movie to enjoy with Woolworths pick ‘n’ mix.

Later the 1990s would become about swigging £1 bottles of lemon-flavoured Hooch or Smirnoff Moscow Mule in student dive bars with sticky floors, shuffling around to music by Oasis, Blur, The Verve, Saint Etienne, Elastica, The Charlatans, Sleeper and Pulp.

Then, at some stage, we hit fast forward. And I woke up in 2024. Modern life is rubbish, as Oasis rivals Blur would say (an equivalent Oasis witticism being Noel Gallagher witheringly describing younger brother Liam as “a man with a fork in a world of soup” in one famed exchange of barbs).

In truth, I’m a teeny tiny tad homesick for the past. Watching friends grapple with the disappointment of trying, and failing, to get Oasis tickets through overloaded websites has had me hankering for simpler days.

Now, I’m not suggesting that camping outside a record shop in freezing conditions to secure concert tickets was a halcyon Famous Five-style odyssey, but it was a time-honoured rite of passage. Like getting an ill-advised piercing. Or scoffing a questionable, post-clubbing kebab at 3am.

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No one ejected you for being a “bot” when you finally reached the front of the queue. The worst that generally happened was a few panicked scuffles breaking out when word filtered back that there were only a handful of tickets left.

And perhaps, depending on your luck and queue placement, the misfortune of spending six hours staring at the same patch of pavement pizza, until heroic seagulls arrived to guzzle it for breakfast. 

You knew in advance how much hard-earned cash you’d be shelling out. There wasn’t “dynamic pricing” and having to hastily remortgage the house, relinquish a kidney or sell your granny on Vinted to afford even the cheap seats up in the gods.

If you have money to burn, we could be putting it to far better use by pitching in for a Crowdfunder to build a time machine and set the dial for the mid-1990s. Then go to see Oasis for £22.50 - cash or cheque only. Now that sounds like a plan.

Susan Swarbrick is a columnist and freelance writer who specialises in celebrity interviews, TV content and musings on popular culture. She also loves the outdoors and regularly covers sport. Follow her on X @SusanSwarbrick