Back to the noughties

So, I had my long distance girlfriend over for the past two weeks (another post about that is in order one day, maybe?), and on the night before she left, I decided to open something that’s been in my loft for just over 11 years.

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Back when I was 9 years old (1999) one of our school projects was to build a time capsule for the millennium, the idea being to fill it with things from the first year, and to open it again later in time.

Many people went time capsule crazy around this time, possibly, in part, due to the popular BBC Children’s TV show Blue Peter opening their boxes.

I decided, at the time, to open mine 10 years from sealing it. I actually forgot about doing this, until something reminded me of it whilst my girlfriend was still here. So I fished it down.

Ok, I admit, I’m not really much of an artist, or a builder, so this box doesn’t really look like much. But after being in the loft for 11 years, I couldn’t remember everything I’d put into it.

So, first thing to do was to remove the two screws that held the lid on.

When I took the lid off, I had no idea what the piece of paper stuffed in the top contained.

Upon closer inspection, it turns out it was a map of the Millennium Dome, which hosted The Millennium Experience, a huge exhibition in Greenwich, London, which celebrated the the turn of the millennium. The exhibition itself was considered a failure due to less visitors than expected.

At the dome, as a bit of a social experiment, there were various terminals asking yes and no questions, and each person that visited got a voting card with a unique diamond shaped bar-code in the centre, which depending on the way it was inserted into the terminal, would add a vote of either yes or no to the question that was being asked. My voting card was also found in the box.

Next (well, this came out of the box before the voting card, but it makes more sense to put the Dome stuff together), a little closer to home, was a ticket to get into Newcastle’s Centre for Life, which opened in 2000. The Centre for Life is a science museum and research facility open to the public.

Collecting Pokémon trading cards was still quite popular by school kids in 2000, so I included one in the box.

Finally, in the box, was a bag containing a new set of coins in circulation at the time. After being kept in the box for 11 years, they were still shiny.

The bag I put the coins in had the date that I put the contents of the box together. It took me a year to collect the new coins, so the box wasn’t sealed until the 31st December, just in time for the new year!

It was great to look back at these things.  One day I’ll make another box, and maybe keep it sealed for many more years!

Did anyone else make a time capsule? And if you did, when are you planning to open it?

Cheers