For the over 40s - lighthearted!

[MissFlite]

I'm not trying to make light of this whole situation. Well I am a bit as otherwise I might lose the plot.

Just thinking about how this whole crazy scenario would have played out in the 1980s. My children have so many things to occupy them at home I'm sure they'll be fine if we need to stay home for weeks on end.

I was 10 in 1980. If school was shut there was no work sent home, no way of getting any and resource books just weren't a thing!

Would not be be allowed to phone friends as too expensive.

A week to wait for a decent programme to watch (Swap Shop)

If I was stuck at home back then I'd have been arranging my books endlessly and playing Simon, Mousetrap and Spirograph, alone probably as no siblings and parents didn't do as much 'quality time' as they do now Maybe writing stories.

Our kids are so lucky and they just don't know it.
What would have kept you amused back in the day?

I think this would have been a lot different because people were less hysterical and more pragmatic about death.

I’m 44. I cannot tell you how much I miss stiff upper lip now.

However, as a child I’d have just read books and been happy to stay in doing that.

Yes, I suppose from that point of view the amount of information available would have been a tiny fraction of what we have now!

I think one of the problems is access to constantly changing information and the impulse to look.

Back in the day we had three news updates and the morning paper ! Now it’s every second

I used to watch schools TV and open university programs if I was off school sick in the 80s. Never had to do it for very long though. I think it would have been harder then though overall, with no social contact

Open University programmes! They were always a very beardy man in a tweed jacket pointing at a diagram from what I remember

I spent a lot of time off school in the 80s aged between around 9-13 while not really ill (the reasons for this would be a whole thread in itself) so I think I can answer this. I read a lot, often the same books over and over, and I watched a lot of daytime TV.

The mornings weren’t too bad, it was schools programs most of which were reasonably entertaining, then at lunchtime you had the preschool stuff, Rainbow, Playschool and little animations like Button Moon or Pigeon Street, too young for me but they passed the time. Next came adult daytime stuff, Pebble Mill and it’s ilk, sometimes a cookery show or a homespun local magazine show, Victoria Wood was especially good at spoofing these kinds of shows. There were also afternoon Australian soaps, not Neighbours and Home and Away but A Country Practice, The Young Doctors and Sons and Daughters. Old films from the 40s and 50s usually filled the latter part of the afternoon, on a good day it was a musical or a comedy, on a bad day it was a western or war film, as an adult my knowledge of old films gleaned from this period has come in useful in quizzes. Then children’s programs started, kicking off with pretty much the same fare as lunchtime but moving through to older programs as time passed.

Ah yes Pebble Mill! Sons and Daughters was good, was there a girl called Kitty who had long plaits? I had plait envy I think

I had forgotten about pebble mill!!!

I was also 10 in 1980 OP. I'm also American so we had 12-15 weeks vacation in the summer and trust me, it could get really dull. My only sibling is eight years older than me and my two best friends who lived on my street went away all summer to their grandparents. I was alone a great deal but it wasn't too bad.

I did a lot of reading, roller skating, bowling, drawing and bike riding. My sister worked for the cable company so I watched many movies but I loved the show that came on twice a week that showed music videos from Australia and the UK. It gave me a glimpse to far away places and I still love the music I heard in 1980 on that program. We got MTV in late 1981 so I spent hours being transfixed on it. I also taught myself to touch type, knit and sew and learned how to cook really basic food. I remember that I also did a lot of swimming and since my father was a carpenter, I used to put things together with the spare wood in the shed. Once a week, I used to hang out with my cousins and they had an Atari. I played Space Invaders and Pac Man until my Dad had to drag me home.

Wow. I hadn't realized how much fun I did have as a ten-year-old kid.

I'd happily be watching 'How We Used to Live' on BBC 2 school's programmes. Probably read a bit after that but God knows how I'd have coped after that. I used to struggle getting through a Sunday without dying of boredom when I was a kid.

Yes it would be like weeks of Sunday afternoons.
Without the bath and hair wash

I liked Pigeon Street and Bagpuss. I was 4 in 1980. My parents had Englebert Humperdink records!

I loved reading then, not so fussed atm. We had a garden so I could have spent time outside. Fond memories of flying doctors on tv. Also lots of drawing, though I was rubbish at it.

I was a very imaginative child so I would have probably turned the whole thing into some kind of "game". Pretended we were prisoners or something! My mum would have been complaining about having to feed us. My dad would have been complaining about the pub being shut. They weren't great parents so it wouldn't have been great to be cooped up with them.

I would be listening to my DM’s Barry Manilow and Neil Sedaka records, whilst making a concoction in the kitchen, which consisted of anything I could find to throw in the cooking bowl. Of course it was totally inedible but I liked to believe that I was being filmed like Delia

I’d then after all that hard work go and grab the old Enid Blyton books and settle down to read.

“How we used to live” - I still record an episode of that when a colonel went hunting, jumped over a hedge, fell of his horse and got lockjaw as a result.

I’m similar age. I think I would read, listen to radio 1, watch tv as above, - also Walton’s, Crown court, The Sullivan’s,

News would be derived from Radio 4 - 8 o’clock, 1 o’clock, and 9 o’clock on tv in the evening.

My bedroom would have been spotless, and rearranged several times over. Loved rearranging my room.

The Sullivans! Maybe I remember Kitty with the plaits from there, not Sons and Daughters.

Yes to bedroom re-arranging.

I would have been playing in my treehouse/back garden or messing about in fields.
Or reading.
Or my little ponies/care bears etc.
Or writing a book or cycling/roller skating.
I was always good at entertaining myself.

There was an annoying "educational" programme with manky stuffed animals in. Hartley Hare? It's time for a story... Etc.. Nope. If we'd been good, we were allowed to friends on Saturday morning, and they were allowed to watch Tiswas! Height of cool.... I listened to Listen with Mother (poss pre-1980) on the radio and do a lot of room tidying.

I'm 42 but had a military father who thought that tv rotted the brain. I don't ever remember being bored as a child. I think I'd much rather be 10 than a parent right now.

I read a lot. Build things out of cardboard. Read dad's textbooks. The summer I had rubella, I'm fairly confident I could have stripped a Harrier and rebuilt it (sadly I wasn't allowed to test that theory).

Where we lived, we had one channel. That channel played kids' shows from 3-4pm. So that would have been religiously watched.

Otherwise, I'd be drawing, reading, playing with my dolls house and plastic horses, playing records and dancing, and sneaking off to ride my sister's horse when she wasn't looking.

I was also 10 in 1980.

I was a creative child- if you gave me a piece of paper I would draw on it, fold it, cut it, glue it back together to make something. Also an only child so I spent a lot of time with grown ups, probably driving them mad asking questions.

I read A LOT. I had a very advanced reading age so was probably reading all my mum's trashy novels like Scruples and Valley of the Dolls. I remember reading Fear of Flying and The Dice Man and being confused by the sex scenes.

Other than that I was probably bombing around Hammersmith on my Chopper, going to the adventure playground in Ravenscourt Park or swimming at Lime Grove baths. All unattended. It was a different age.