Other people turn around and laugh at you, if you said that these are the best days of our lives. Not me though. Well, not if you’re talking about the summer of ’96. Heady days for a 16 year old who had just finished his GCSEs (and look how useful they’ve proved to be), basking in the warm summer sun with a Hooch in his hand, 3 lions on his shirt and Blur on his walkman.

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Fast forward (not on my walkman though, it only had rewind) 13 years and you start to wonder if you can ever recapture that feeling, the sheer freedom that only a total lack of responsibility can provide. But, for a couple of hours in the setting sun on Friday night at Hyde Park, Blur managed to bring it back.

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An old and oft&rsquo; repeated argument suggests that although Blur won the &ldquo;Battle of Britpop&rdquo; with &ldquo;Country House&rdquo; (beating &ldquo;Roll With It&rdquo; to the top of the charts in &lsquo;95), it was Oasis who won the war. Oasis seem to have been around for ever, releasing singles and albums almost as regularly as their beloved Man City changed managers, whilst Blur went their separate ways in the early noughties. Graham Coxon threw his toys out of the pram and went solo, so Damon Albarn did the Gorillaz thing and wrote operas (no, he wasn&rsquo;t in London&rsquo;s Burning), Alex James became everyone&rsquo;s favourite space-loving cheese-making left wing columnist, and Dave Rowntree got all political-like.

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From the brash opening of &ldquo;She&rsquo;s So High&rdquo; (the first song on their first album, and still fantastic) to the final, almost mournful strains of &ldquo;The Universal&rdquo; that refused to die away, you wondered why they ever left us. &ldquo;Country House&rdquo; had everyone singing, &ldquo;Beetlebum&rdquo; got the hands swaying, and &ldquo;Parklife&rdquo; got the bottles flying &ndash; Oi!

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Clever lyrical tricks (near-timeless classic &ldquo;Girls & Boys&rdquo; finally became so with the line &ldquo;Love in the 90s was paranoid&rdquo;) were interspersed with musical fun and games. &ldquo;We&rsquo;re the only official Fred Perry sponsors left now that Andy Murray is out!&rdquo; joked Albarn, before the brass struck up a rendition of the Wimbledon theme tune. Albarn&rsquo;s patter was a feature of the night; as weird as ever (&ldquo;I was just imagining what the sunset would have looked like on the Crystal Palace&rdquo;) but adding plenty to the experience, especially when he grabbed a megaphone to &ldquo;politely &ldquo; ask the people at the front not to have so much darned fun. &nbsp;You could hardly blame them.

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&ldquo;Tender&rdquo; almost had me in tears (but I&rsquo;m putting that down to a cider overdose), and &ldquo;Song 2&rdquo; did have the person in front of me in tears as I leapt onto their back. Although I really shouldn&rsquo;t admit it, I played Song 2 song five times at my 18^th birthday and was naturally quite keen to hear it. I was kept waiting until the first encore, but once the crowd realised what those slow and strangely quiet chords were building up to&hellip;cue the chaos (with hilarious consequences etc).

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My memory of the last time I saw Blur (at Wembley Arena way back when) is, for want of a better word, Blurry. Most of the people around me agreed that, somewhat like a mature country cheese, they had improved with age. Perhaps it&rsquo;s natural, but to me they looked like a band who felt they had nothing left to prove. The played as though they were enjoying the same freedom I felt in the summer of &rsquo;96...it really, really, really, did happen&hellip;