What was life like in the 80s?

Born in 1969, started secondary school in September 1981.

My school had a shortage of chairs and tables. Text books were shared one to three people and a lot of our lessons were actually the teacher copying from the only text book n onto the revolving blackboard. We then copied it into our books.

Teachers were on a work to rule for a few years, which meant there were no after school clubs, no sports fixtures, and during breaks and lunch hour the school was locked as they refused to supervise us during lunch hours.

This goes a long way to explain why Wimpy Bars, and the cafeterias of woolies, BHS and littlewoods did so amazingly well in the 1980s.

At school we did athletics during summer. Well we weren't trusted with javelin, discus or shotput. So instead we watched the pe teacher do it.

We wore a pe kit that had huge pe knickers, a pe top and a pleated pe skirt. We had to wear this with knee high kicks and white lace up plimsolls from the baskets outside Freeman Hardy Willis. If you forgot your kit you had to take a penny and a shoe to the pe office and they would give you old kit that stunk. Your friends would then call you Linus, as in Charlie Brown, for weeks.

Our school uniform was colours rather than blazer and tie. Teachers were more interested in shagging each other than teaching.

In the second year a lady with a short bubble perm and a dodgy home knit jumper would arrive to give the girls a talk about periods. This would include telling us to use pads rather than tampons, "just like that lovely Suzanne Dando on the Bodyform advert in Jackie magazine".

Which brings me to magazines, we read Jackie, Blue Jean's, Fab 208, My Guy. They had agony aunt columns, Cathy and Claire in Jackie magazine who were the older sisters that we never knew we needed. We read photo stories which featured models pulling odd faces and crying as Barry in the bomber jacket fancied my best friend and not me.

I bought clothes from markets, Chelsea girl, top shop, and perhaps a clothes shop that sold the same stuff as the market but the carrier bags were trendy so I paid more just to get the carrier bag.

I used my pocket money to buy singles, 12 inch singles or albums. We used to play them once to tape them, then the record would never get played again. Partly because I was forbidden from using my parents music centre if they weren't at home. I wasn't allowed to touch any of the dials.

Rest of my pocket money went on the make up stall, rimmel pink shimmer lipstick from superdrug or maybe something from the Avon book. Or bodysprays, musk by impulse was for nice girls. Limara body spray was for trollops apparently.

We went on a five day trips to France, we all bought bangers, flick knives, long packets of sweets that tasted of cola and drank orangina laced with vodka that we had nicked from the duty free shop on the ferry.

We had school discos that were from 7 to 10 on a Friday night once a term.

We took our options in the third year, but really our parents chose them. If you were clever you did o levels, or you did cse exams.

We went to pubs from 16, but drank cinzano in bus stops on the way to to parties from 15. We wore white skirts with knee high canvas boots, had really big mullet hair, wore cricket jumpers and lots of gold Belcher chains.

We would share our clothes with friends and hold swopping evenings to get rid of stuff we no longer wanted.

None of us dressed like madonna on a daily basis, that is a myth.

If you were a boy you were a casual and wore branded golf jumpers. Boys were Farah trousers and had wet look perms . Or wore the Miami vice look.

Yes to Anais Anais but your older sister wore Youth Dew, Paris, Rive Gauche or Opium.

TV was only three channels, you weren't allowed to talk during a programme if your parents were watching.

The telephone would ring, but it was never for you. When you went anywhere you would do the two rings signal when you got there, then again when you left.

Everyone knew someone who had a relative who went to fight in the Falklands. Pubs gave them free pints when they came home.

Police knew your parents, park keepers knew your parents, milkman knew your parents. The only people who didn't know your parents were others peoples parents.

Radio one was popular, they did live roadshows in summer. These were from seaside towns, they had games such as bits and pieces.

My favourite TV shows were totp, the tube, young ones, blackadder, Murphy's mob, that's life, Hale and peace, spitting image, tenko, Dallas, dynasty, the holiday program.

M&S sold "exotic foods" like proper baked cheesecake and tabbouleh.
Alan Bennett plays were big at the time.

For me it was a time when being openly greedy and self-serving became socially acceptable or even desirable. Harry Enfield's Loadsamoney character was meant to be mocked and derided but he became celebrated. I remember feeling very uncomfortable seeing him on TV and I think I read years later that Enfield felt the character had been a bit of an own goal.
I also remember alternative comedians being new and lots of sexual politics at university. I was also a vegetarian and it's great to see how much easier it is now.
Then there was the Faulklands, Greenham Common and the Miners' Strike.

You could walk into casual work. There used to be job ads at the back of the Evening Standard for waitressing and labouring. I would come home from travelling abroad, get settled in a quiet phone booth and ring around. I usually had a job or two by the end of the same day.

I remember Chicken Kiev and pasta with pesto being served at really glam dinner parties. And Prosecco was so rare only M&S sold it.

I worked in a factory at 16 and got paid every Friday. Weekly pay in those kind of jobs was the norm. I knew people at 16 working as chambermaids and waiters. We were seen and treated as young adults, not children like so many 16 year olds are today.

I was in my 20s and living in London in the 80s

I could leave one job on the Friday and get another in the Saturday.
Dp and I were working 9am-6am a couple of days per week.

I could buy "exotic food" like okra in London, but outside of London food was basic, I was going with a group of friends to Wales. I had to leave later because of work, and before I left I got a phone call from friends in Wales asking me to bring garlic as they could not find any garlic at all in the nearest town.

...and nobody I knew had ever gone to University, I don't think I would have even known anyone who'd finished college.

I didn't really know many people with a professional job, I knew one person who was a nurse and my uncle became a social worker at a children's home. Everyone else I knew would have been working in factories/labourers/unemployed ex-miners/dinner ladies.

Funnily enough....a PP said life doesn't seem that different for their children but it definitely will be for mine.

'Holidays' were spent at the local park or a local lake that had a fake sand beach (which was black if you dug more than an inch down).

The excitement of the year was getting on a coach that took you to Blackpool a couple of hours away and drove through the Blackpool illuminations and then took you back home again.

Food was very different for us - fruit was very basic (apples, pears, oranges), strawberries at pick your own in the summer, rhubarb when seasonal. That would have been it apart from tinned peaches and pineapple.

We would never have tasted anything like mango, passion fruit, etc.

No 'exotic' food at home so nothing like lasagna or curry. They would have been special meals to eat at the pub. At home spag bol with meatballs or ghoulash were the only 'fancy' meals.

Mainly, as we were poor (single mother in a mining city) we ate a lot of beans/egg/mushrooms on toast. Then to Grandparents twice a week for meat!

Trips out were rare...so eating out was occasional and at a cheap pub or a jacket potato at Yates's. Cinema occasionally which would have an interval break for ice cream.

Once a year we might take a trip to somewhere like Southport beach. We would never have gone to a National Trust property or anything like that.

So very different to how my children are likely to grow up in the commuter belt of Hampshire with middle class parents.

The 1980's were totally fabulous. It was my time.

And yes the music! I was at the opening night at the Hacienda in Manchester. Long before house music and drugs took over I remember them playing Culture Club - do you really want to hurt me echoing round the place with no one there to listen to it. And Boy George clones everywhere. I remember queuing up in my dinner hour with my fake ID to get my membership card. And having to queue up to get tickets for concerts because that was the only way to get the good seats. And sigh … John Taylor such a beautiful man.

No internet and no mobile phones but life was so much more chilled. I think the world is a much more scary place these days. You could go to the airport for the day and sit in the departure lounge. You could be in a crowed space and not once feel afraid of some nutter blowing himself up. You could walk down Downing Street. Sundays were actually really nice - no shops open, hardly any traffic on the roads - the country almost used to grind to a halt and like it or not it gave you chance to wind down and spend a bit of time with your family at home.

Dynasty, Dallas and Miami Vice were on the telly. And after God Save the Queen on the stroke of midnight telly finished for the night. No late night movies or 24 hour news channels and people probably benefited from that. I know I stay up way too late and don't get enough sleep these days. Sleep was kind of enforced because there was nothing else to do.

Last orders was at 11pm and 10pm on Sundays. If you did go out to a club on a Saturday night they closed at 2am and you could get the bus home and not fear for your life.

And chocolate - non of this rubbish fake stuff that is called Cadbury's. The 80's chocolate bar was much bigger than today's pathetic size and fewer chemicals in fizzy drinks either. And crisps were crisps and actually had flavour.

And I had loads of money - I left Grammar School at 16 and walked straight into the job of my dreams and earned a small fortune for doing not a lot. Sadly, Rupert Murdock put an end to it all in the late 80's but never mind it was good while it lasted, I had the time of my life and somehow managed to buy a house by myself at the grand old age of 20.

I feel very lucky to have been a teen/young adult in the 80's. My DC's have so much more pressure to succeed than I ever had and although they have more opportunities - they really have to work so hard to achieve them. They certainly couldn't walk into a job like I had without at least a degree which I think is sad.

I grew up in the States. I loved my 80s childhood. I was ten in 1982 and 14 by 1986, so I was totally immersed in Duran Duran, moving onto New Order and Joy Division by 13. I loved everything to do with 'England' and everything that came out of it: the music, the fashion, the chocolate.
Music was sooo organic back then... the way you'd go to the record store and fish through vinyls, absorbing all of that amazing artwork, finally buying the record you'd been saving for, taking it home and delicately slicing into the plastic with a knife to begin opening it up like a present. The smell of that record. Any record. I loved that smell.
I was always terrified that nuclear war was about to happen at any minute. I had a legitimate fear of nuclear war and couldn't wait for Reagan to crack on with the Star Wars programme (which came to nothing- we're still here, so it all worked out).

I watched a lot of MTV, Bugs Bunny, and our 80s Stranger Things: The Twilight Zone. And Three's Company.

I was a child in the 80s my memories are mainly:

Cheap black veneer furniture from MFI, candy and chocolate cigarettes, everybody smoked and pubs (and some houses) had yellow stained walls, 10p mix sweet bags, much more freedom as a child to roam around, the first computer consoles with games cartridges that took ages to load and were very simple games but seemed amazing, school discos, IRA bombings on the news, the man from the 'Pru' and the football coupons man coming round, the Argos catalogue which seemed like the best thing ever.

I was in a mining town so I remember singing a song in the playground at primary school that went something like "2,4,6,8...who do we not appreciate? Maggie Thatcher, put her in the bin..."

People still hitchhiked in the 80s.
Wet suits for the sea were rare as they were expensive. I went on a sailing course wearing jeans and t shirt and pretty sure everyone else did too. Jeans were much stiffer with much less give than these days.
YHAs were much more basic than today but cheaper.

Schools tended to have buildings that had been poorly maintained because of a lack of money. Princess Di and the Royal Wedding was a very big thing. Schools trips abroad tended to be to France by ferry. People used travel agents as there was no internet.

Pizza Hut and Garfunkels were popular restaurants, as well as lots of local independent Italian restaurants. There was no minimum wage and local authority pay scales went lower than current minimum wage.

Lots of protests by students as the 80s is when gradually lots of benefits were removed such as housing benefit. Lots of sit ins in student unions.

Every student union had a Nelson Mandela bar. Big march in London calling him for to freed and the song was released - Free Nelosn Mandela. The GLC in London was abolished as it was left wing and the Tories hated it. Overnight the number of voluntary groups plummeted as lots lost their grants. Before the GLC disappeared there were lots of free concerts and events in London paid for by GLC.

I was 18 at the end of 1980. I thought much of the music was pretty dreadful to be honest but we did go to a lot of gigs mainly rock bands. There actually wasn't much to do really at all other than cinema, pub and the occasional meal out. I think young people have so much more fun and opportunities now esp with cheap travel and all the festivals.

80s is when shopping centres became a big thing. Some had glass lifts and mini fountains. This was a big thing and I and my friends thought they were glamorous. Plenty of teenagers hung out at the shopping centres.

Unemployment was high, but that meant a flowering of alternative comedy and music. Plenty of people spent a few years in the dole writing music or comedy or painting, and then made a living out of it. The 80s is the rise of the comedy clubs and comedy gigs, and the decline of traditional working mens clubs.

70s and 80s is when much more liberal ideas hit schools about teaching kids. Lots around about how kids had to be ready to learn. Some of it was good, but some of it meant that some kids pretty much drifted.

Kids with disabilities were still being institutionalised. Friend left school and worked in local place and said it was horrific. Staff sitting in the office, only feeding and changing kids but rest of the time leaving them to their own devices.

OFSTED did not exist. There were no DBS to work with kids and no oversight of childcare. Although paid childcare was still more likely to be a woman who was a neighbour or that you knew locally.

Lesbians were still being committed to institutions just for being lesbian. And police targeted gay men for arrest through enticing gay men to try and pick them up in toilets. Perfectly legal to sack people and deny them housing for being lesbian and gay.

If you were disabled and living at home and wanted help, someone would come to your house and assess you. Then you got a council carer visiting and giving you help. No extra money though.

The institutions that had housed people with mental health problems were all being closed down, it was called care in the community. As you can imagine it did not always translate into much care at all.

Absolute freedom, because there were no cell phones. Seriously-could go out with my boyfriend for HOURS and no one could text or call. Lived in Florida then (and now) and went off to sail around the state, gone for almost a week without any TV or phone calls. Rent was cheap, didn't have to pay cable, cell or internet, so more disposable income for young people. We could actually afford to live on our own! Jeans worn so tight, I'd lie down on the bed, thread a shoestring through the zipper and pull it up. Permed hair, shoulder pads, Miami Vice, Hair bands (meaning men in rock bands with loads of hair, not hair bands we wore in our hair!), awesome music, MTV, music videos, dresses with puffed sleeves and puffy bottoms, and always the feeling that we were the coolest generation that ever walked the earth.

@nevernotstruggling I was around more in the 90s/00s and I still got most of my clothes from pool market or Woolworths. and remember the excited novelty when an escalator was installed in Truro.

I worked in Primark (Pree-mark, folks, Pree-mark) in Belfast city centre as a Saturday job in the eighties. This funded my bulk purchases of L'Oréal Studio fixing spray, which kept my hair suitably rock hard for a night of dancing. I suppose I would have been described as Goth in appearance. Black clothes, white makeup. Hair dyed black.

Arrangements were made in advance, then you stood outside the chosen meeting place just hoping the other person would turn up. No mobiles, so if the person was late, you had to find a phone box and ring their house to see if they'd left. But then, that was true of all decades before the nineties.

I loved the fact that loads of male singers happily wore makeup and that it was no big deal.

Timmy Mallett, Mallet's Mallet

I was born at the start of the decade and remember most of the 80s.

I think if I went back now, things would seem very dimly lit and dark. Lots of 70s brown still hanging around and 60s/70s brutalism concrete architecture was still around and getting tired looking. There was a better calibre of graffitti, and more litter.

My family started the decade struggling with the recession, but things boomed for us as it went on. The corporate world was more fun, my dad got things like work days at the races. Liquid lunches and smoking in most places were the done thing still. Non-smoking was the minority for places like restaurants.

I remember seeing a mobile phone about the size of a toddler's shoe box with its long aerial. We had a car phone wired in!

Sundays were boring. A trip to the tip was an exciting outing!

Generally and with exceptions (such as inner cities and pit towns where industrial decline occured) I think it was a progressive decade and we entered the 90s in a better place than we left the 70s in. It wasn't a PC decade and lots of terminology such as "The Spastics Society" changed into the 90s, but there was much more opportunity for social progression with student finance if you had the academic potential.

Lots of kids still left school at 16. The big push at the time from the government was to encourage kids to stay on at school till 18. There was an education maintenance grant introduced for the poorer families to encourage kids to stay on.
In the main only well off people went to university. At my school in a poor area the sixth form was tiny as most left school at 16. About mid to late 80s they abolished the right for kids to be able to leave school in the term you turned 16. Before that you did not have to wait till the end of the school year.

Corporal punishment was made illegal in schools in mid 80s. Before that it was used in some schools a lot.
There was lots of gender bending by pop stars such as Boy George and Marilyn. But apart from Fred Perry boys, there was little branded clothing amongst teenagers. There would be fashions but you could buy the equivalent in a posh shop or the local market stall.

The 80s is when vegetarians were becoming more common, but it was still seen as a bit way out. Stories abounded of people visiting older relatives, telling them they were vegetarian and being served chicken, because some had the idea that being vegetarian meant simply that people did not eat red meat. Mung beans were the chai seeds of the 80s. I remember a popular vegetarian restaurant in Covent Garden, wholemeal pastry quiche and lots of salads, and the seating was long pine tables and benches. Nouvelle cuisine took off in very expensive restaurants. But this is also when pizzas and hamburgers became common food.

Oh yes, smoking in public was a big difference. I didn't go out drinking etc until the mid-90s but the public smoking then was still awful. I swear hangovers were made far worse by the stench of smoke in your hair.

There was also loads of dog poo everywhere, but that seems to be making a comeback.

I was born late 70s so was a child through the 80s. I look at my own children and think there isn't that much difference between my childhood and theirs, with the rather large and obvious exception of technology. They play with similar toys, take similar holidays, wear similar clothes (although fewer ra-ra skirts!), do the same extra-curricular activities, even the food wasn't that dissimilar (my family were early adopters of the avocado pear). Primary school uniform is exactly the same. There is a lot more structure and work in school now though. I pretty much spent my whole primary school years making things out of cardboard boxes.

Some of my most distinct memories were of hairstyles - teenagers with bright green mohicans or old ladies with blue or pink rinses. The music was fun - I've just been watching Top of the Pops from 1988 on BBC4 with Tiffany and Debbie Gibson!

You were allowed to smoke everywhere.
At work, - in view of customers and in the staff room. Walking into the staffroom in my first job at the start of the 80s was like walking into a smog.
When you went out at night you'd get home stinking of smoke - your hair, your clothes etc. No avoiding it.

You could smoke on planes.... you used to get asked 'smoking or non smoking' but you were in the row behind and in a big box in the sky with nowhere for it to go.

However, people were a LOT less flakey about arrangements. We didn't have mobile phones, let alone internet / group chats so you made your arrangements where you were meeting someone and at what time, and then you turned up.

Sundays were days when few people worked. A 'day of rest' even if you didn't attend Church (but a lot more people did than do now).

If you went to a night club, the bouncers could / would refuse to let you in if you weren't dressed according to their dresscode (am still amazed how casually my dc are dressed when they go "up town" ) - but then I remember my Dad being horrified at the concept of us wearing jeans for a night at the pub / cinema etc when for him, denim was 'working mans' work wear' .
OTOH, it was much easier to get in to a pub / get served under age. Though of course wine was only about 9% alcohol and a 'glass' was only 125ml.

I'm sure you got a whole lot more crisps in a bag than you do now

We went to lots of pubs and nightclubs. Eating out was a special few times a year treat. We spent hours on the phone. Food was very English. It was the 90s before I ate pizza, pasta, rice etc. There were 3 channels (then 4). No tv was on until lunchtime except school programs. It went off about 11pm. Couples got engaged after about two years together and then got married. I don't know anyone who lived together first. All girls I knew were engaged by age 20. You left school at 16 and got a job. You didn't do a levels unless you wanted to be a doctor , Solisitor etc. I don't know anyone who did. Most girls were nursery nurses, hairdressers, nurses, secretaries or worked in a bank.