There was a time when Saturdays meant something.

Not the modern version where you wake up, reach for your phone, scroll through 47 notifications you don’t care about and then somehow end up watching a bloke in America restore a rusty lawnmower.

I mean an actual Saturday.

Back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, when I was a teenager, Saturday meant getting out of the house and meeting your mates.

I remember bombing around on my morning paper round as fast as my stumpy little legs could pedal me so I could finish early and meet the gang.

God, I loved that Raleigh Burner.

Looking back, I probably looked like a demented hamster on two wheels, but at the time I was convinced I was the coolest kid in Portsmouth.

And once the paper round was done, that was it. Weekend started.

There was just one slight problem, we didn’t have mobile phones.

I know. Ridiculous, isn’t it?

No all-singing, all-dancing, smarty-pants, super-mation-infa-highway, Star Trek communication box permanently attached to your hand.

And yes, before you ask, I’m not a fan of mobile phones.

If you wanted to meet your mates, you arranged it beforehand. Face to face or, if you were feeling particularly modern, you used the landline. Although you had to be careful with that because if you were on the phone for more than about two minutes, your dad would go absolutely apeshit.

So you’d arrange to meet at the normal place, at the normal time late on a Saturday morning.

And then you went. Simple. No “Where are you?” No “I’m five minutes away.” No “Sorry mate, something came up.” You just turned up.

Sometimes, alright, most of the time, with a little assistance from Ma’s Taxi.

And then we’d hit the high street and what a high street it was. You could spend hours wandering around without actually having much of a plan. We’d go into Our Price, HMV or one of the ridiculously abundant independent music shops that seemed to exist everywhere, just so we could lovingly stare up at all the cool guitars we could neither play or afford.

These weren’t just shops. They were places you went to find something. You’d been waiting months for a new album to be released and now you were finally going to buy it.

And yes, I know what you’re thinking. Actually owning my own music? How completely archaic.

You’d stand there looking through the racks, pick up the album, look at the cover, read the back, check the track listing and then hand over your Paper round money. And that was it, It was yours. No subscription. No monthly payment, no “This content isn’t available in your region.”

You actually owned the bloody thing.

Then there was the comic shop.

I swear that place had been there since the man from Nazareth was wandering around. Although, to be fair, he probably would’ve loved a good comic.

It was packed.

Kids, teenagers, grown adults who really should have known better, probably buying the same comics they have since they were knee high to a grasshopper.

And that’s what I remember most about the high street. People. Loads of them.

All going about their business.

You could walk into a shop and actually speak to someone. You could browse. You could ask questions. You could discover something you weren’t even looking for. You never quite knew what you’d find and that’s what made it exciting.

Even Blockbuster.

I actually miss Blockbuster. I know. I’ve officially become old.

But there was something about walking into that place on a Friday or Saturday night and wandering around looking for a film.

You’d pick up a video, read the back, put it back, pick up another one and repeat the process about seventeen times. Eventually you’d find something, usually when your dad had reached his point of running out of patience.

Then you’d get home, put it in the video player and discover that the previous person hadn’t rewound it.

So you’d spend five minutes listening to that wonderful mechanical whirring noise while the tape slowly made its way back to the beginning, sometimes the picture was terrible. Shaky, fuzzy, lines across the screen but you watched it anyway because that was what you had.

And you know what?

We were happy.

I remember getting lunch for about a quid and then getting the bus back to my mate’s for about 35p.

£1? Thirty-five pence? You could have an entire Saturday for what now barely covers a coffee and cake.

So what happened?

Where did that high street go?

Because it doesn’t exist in the same way anymore. The internet happened, that’s what and I completely understand why.

Why spend half a day walking around shops looking for something when you can sit at home in your pyjamas, type three words into Google and instantly find 400 places selling exactly what you want?

You can compare prices, read reviews. Order it. Pay for it. And have it delivered to your house. The whole thing can be over in ten minutes. Efficient, convenient but yet completely soulless.

Because that’s the bit we’ve lost.

The high street wasn’t just about buying something. It was an event; it was meeting your mates, It was the journey there. It was the bus ride, the walking around, the shops, the noise, the people, the conversations. It was not knowing whether you’d actually find what you wanted.

Sometimes you didn’t.

And that was alright. You’d try again next week. There was something about that uncertainty that made it exciting. Now we know exactly what we’re getting before we’ve even left the sofa. And while we’re getting more convenient, we’re become less connected.

Look at most high streets now. Ghost towns. Boarded-up shops. Decaying shop fronts.

Empty pedestrian areas that look like they’ve been abandoned halfway through filming a zombie film.

And where there used to be music shops, clothes shops, book shops and independent businesses, you’ve got pound and vape shops, increasingly empty spaces that seem to be occupied by people who have decided they’d rather float away from their lives than actually participate in them.

It’s depressing.

And before anyone says it, yes, I understand that nostalgia has a funny way of making everything seem better than it actually was.

I’m more than aware the ’90s weren’t perfect.

I’m sure i remember there were rubbish shops and there was definitely miserable shop assistants, usually a spotty teen who was desperate for their shift to finish so they could be free to do the exact same thing as the teens they were serving.

I’m sure I spent entire Saturdays looking for something and came home with nothing. But that’s not really the point. The point is that we were there. We were outside, we were interacting with real people.

We were experiencing things rather than simply ordering them. The high street was part of the weekend. It was part of growing up and I think kids today have missed out on that.

They don’t know what it was like to arrange to meet someone and then actually have to trust that they’d turn up.

They don’t know what it’s like to spend an hour looking through music shops hoping they’ve got the album you want.

They don’t know the utter frustration of discovering someone has hired the last copy of the film you wanted.

And they certainly don’t know the excitement of finding something completely unexpected while you’re there.

Everything is available now and yet somehow, we seem to have less.

More choice, less experience. More convenience but less adventure. More connection through technology but definitely less actual connection with people.

And maybe that’s the trade-off we accepted without really realising it.

I’m not suggesting we all abandon the internet, throw our phones into the sea and start riding Raleigh Burners around the country. Although, if anyone fancies it, I’m probably still young enough to manage about twelve minutes before my knees give up.

But I do think we’ve lost something.

The high street wasn’t perfect. It was noisy, crowded, sometimes frustrating and occasionally bloody freezing while you waited for the bus.

But it was alive and that’s what I miss. I miss the hustle and bustle, i miss the shops, i miss the people. I miss not knowing exactly how the day was going to turn out.

Most of all, I miss the feeling that Saturday afternoons were an adventure, even when all you were doing was meeting your mates, buying a cassette and maybe a copy of RAW Magazine so you could find out about the riot your favourite band had caused at a venue 3 weeks previously.

Maybe the high street will come back one day.

Maybe the next generation will get bored of sitting at home and decide they actually want to experience something. I hope so because convenience is brilliant yes, but it doesn’t make memories and I’m pretty sure that’s what we were actually buying all those years ago.

It just took me a few decades to realise it. but.. 

It could just be me.