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 was 9 in 1980. TV - How we used to live and other schools programmes in the mornings; Jamie and his magic torch and The Sullivan's at dinnertime; Kid's tv between 3.30 and tea time. Read my collection of Enid Blyton books; play my dad's collection of records and tapes; dress my Sindy doll; write stories. Play boy-girl with my sister or cut out paper people. We had tons of toys but we had a great time drawing entire families and cutting them out. We then used to attack my mam's old catalogues to cut out the furniture and toys for our paper people. If we go really fed up the board games would come out and we'd end up fighting!

Comics! That and those paper dolls you dressed and had to be careful cutting the clothes out for.

I used to play tapes (remember them) and write down and learn the lyrics. No option to google them, so I had lots of rewind-play-rewind-play fun.

@Standrewsschool I remember that episode! In fact, it's the only one I do remember...

On another note - a couple of months ago, for one reason or another, I googled Hartley Hare. Holy fuck!!! That thing is terrifying!!! Have a look, I dare you (you will be traumatised)

Reading books about ponies and making clothes for my Kermit doll (he was a very dapper amphibian).

I'm not quite 40 but have a long memory.

Mid-80s I was off school a lot with ear aches, croup, whooping cough, mumps and German Measels. I remember being tucked up on the sofa with my duvet watching the schools programmes and OU tweedy, beardy presenters. It does amuse me that that look is trendy albeit with a skinny leg rather than bell-bottoms.

I remember the long tedium of winter Sunday afternoons, when it was too dull and grotty to go out, and playing alone by the power of my imagination had worn thin.

DS would love the schools programmes although he's now discovered the Smithsonian Channel to feast his brains upon. I have a new second TV as my interest in The War In The Pacific In Color is significantly less than his

During the summer holidays of the 1980s, my cousin and I would create comics / magazines, writing them and illustrating them ourselves; and then post them to each other to read (we lived 100 miles apart).

I was 10 in the mid 80s. I would read, jump on my new lolo-ball (endlessly) or hit a tennis ball against a wall (endlessly).

BinkySodPlop ugh, I remember Hartley Hare from Pipkins. It looked like it had a fair few venereal diseases and probably myxomatosis. Filthy bastard it was.

Don't forget Crown Court! Oraybe that was the 70s.

Bloody hell, Pebble Mill at One, there's a throwback and the Sullivan's - loved that.

I loved Pipkins! I was 11 in 1980. I would have read a lot and I used to write lots of stories.

Does anyone remember The Cedar Tree at lunchtime after the children's programmes? I don't know if it was still on in 1980, but I used to watch it when I came home for lunch from junior school. I really loved that programme and I remember being really tearful when one of the characters died!

I would have mucked about with ponies with my friend, thoroughly snooped through my older brother's belongings, carved a boys initials into my windowsill, and got so bored I read my parents entire collection of 'Readers Digest' and New Scientist magazines. My teenagers have never once got bored enough to open any of our educational magazines or the sex education books I leave hopefully lying around to be discovered on the shelves. They would love our 80s Atari PAC Man games etc though.

My little sister was very much my partner in crime. We would write and illustrate little books and comics and make little radio programmes and record them on the tape player with music and jokes and drama.

We also had an awful lot of toys and games: dolls, construction sets, crafty things.

My mum wasn’t really one for playing with us, but she liked to bake with us and teach us to knit and sew.

Interestingly, my oldest kids are between 26 and 20, and I didn’t let them have computer games until they were mid teens. They were very creative and amused themselves in the same sort of ways, made up games with whatever was to hand.

Youngest DS is 13. I gave up the ghost with him and he’s grown up with screens. He is much less able to amuse himself, bored if we go somewhere with no WiFi.

I had my own radio station broadcasting from my bedroom to my bedroom 🎧

@Yellredder I was going to put The Cedar Tree but then I started doubting myself. I definitely remember that in the 70s, coming home from infants for dinner. My kids can't believe we used to come home for dinner in the infants and walked there and back ourselves!

I did have a look at Hartley Hare recently. He definitely had the mange didn't he!

Weirdly enough l was thinking about this just before l saw the thread

-only 3 or 4 channels at most. Not much children’s TV
-l sound ancient but seriously children / teenagers don’t know what boredom is. Try a Sunday afternoon in the 80’s for boredom!
-my parents were big fans of us entertaining ourselves cue reading, Lego, games like Cluedo or Monopoly. Then the inevitable bickering with siblings

I think my parents marriage would imploded within days They didn’t spend masses of time together and this would have made them

I was 11. Such a saddo I'd have played school. Read a lot, listened to my cassette tapes. My nana lived with us so she'd have given me jobs to do (ironing, hoovering, dusting etc) or we'd have done some baking. Played with my Spirograph, coloured in or maybe some puzzle books.

Hartley Hare was the Keith Richards of Pipkins

I loved watching g the schools programmes if I was off sick! I'd have read loads and loads
It saddens me that my children moan about boredom when I've temporarily banned the screens. I made magazines and had secret seven style club when my cousins were over. We loved lego and playmobil and board games the I agi ary games were good too, my brother's bunk beds were a great pirate ship. Our house was tiny and yet we did more in it it seemed than my kids do in their massive bedrooms and downstairs living space.

In the ‘80s I would not have been bored!!

Endless colouring books - my aunt always sent them from the USA. Bouncing a ball up against a wall in different patterns. Finger knitting!! Diaries. Listening to the recording of the top 10 from the Sunday before. Making up dances. Chalking on the path. Making apple pies from scratch and always burning my tongue because I wasn’t patient enough to wait for them to cool...

Yy to paper dolls and spirograph. Also a lot of colouring in, plastecine, those Stephen's sticker sheets of shapes, dot-to-dot, fuzzy felt, transfer figures rubbed into cardboard scene books (ie. ballet dancers rubbed onto theatre stages, if that makes sense?) Matchbox car games, Sindy, toy picnics, pretend horse jumping over jumps in garden, obstacle courses, bike rides with OS maps to explore new places, making 3D shapes. Definitely expected to keep ourselves entertained.

One I keep remembering but have never seen since: cardboard cutouts of boy and girl pairs in the national costume of different countries of the world, that you colour in. Anyone else remember that? Might be more mid/late 70s.

I was 10 in 1980, too.

I would probably have watched Go With Noakes, at some point. We would have watched the BBC news bulletins because itv wasn't trustworthy. That's off BBC wasn't on strike, of course.

It'd not really have changed much for me as parents were self employed from home so from age nine I had to work for them in the school holidays.

I was 8 in 1980. If I was bored I used to read - I was an avid Enid Blyton fan an devoured The Famous Five, Malory Towers and The Naughtiest Girl books. I also used to love playing with my dolls, Sindy and Pippa, with her long, soft, silky hair that I could comb for hours were my favourites. TV was only ever on in the afternoons, when we would watch cartoons and Blue Peter when it was on twice a week.

I'm feeling really nostalgic now. It truly was a different time.

Reading, records, more chores. We had a set of encyclopedias and a massive atlas, I used to spend a lot of time with those, and reading anything I could get my hands on. Also music , listening to records a lot and playing piano and recorder. Making up dances. Drawing and fashion design. Sewing and crochet. Collecting flowers and pressing them, making pictures out of stones and shells and old watches. Playing solitaire. And in the school holidays there was telly in the mornings, Casey Jones, White horses, we'd watch anything! In the afternoons there was stuff like Bonanza, which you'd only watch if you really had nothing to do.
I used to play cards and board games a lot with my brother and grandad, and he used to set us sums to race against each other. Wed make dens in the garden of the living room. My brother did legoand meccano for hours.
There was plenty to do, especially if there was more than one of you. My mum reckoned that boredom made you creative, and I think she was right. We were from a creative family, and were lucky enough to have a garden and a piano.