Memories of mid 80's for my short story?

[onesmalldog]

What can you remember of the mid 80s living in the UK as regards house decor, colours, house style, furniture, knick knacks, wallpaper, doors, flooring, light fittings etc?

Also what did you eat and drink?

I'm writing a story need this sort of detail to make it realistic.

Would be so grateful to hear your suggestions - and fun!

I was very late teenage in the mid 80s .

Habitat was the height of chic

Fashions were very tight jeans ( they had lycra )
Hair either permed or asymmetric 'Human League'
Monty Don type earrings
Gold eyeshadow and blue liner +mascara (navy was more sophisticated)

Donkey Jackets ( black / navy wool blend )
Tucker boots (flat with a fold over cuff)
Miss Selfridge - the 'Kiss' dressing gown
Razzle Dazzle

Square base glasses
Black square crockery was just easing in ( more late 80s)
Lots of grey/pink or peach/sage
Grey/Red/Black/White
Bodyshop
Pineapple was popular (though we all bought copies)
Big jumpers / sweater dresses
Lots of black

One of my schoolmates had a burgandy bathroom suite with white tiles and burgandy grout , I was

And they call the 80s the era that taste forgot !

@BreconBeBuggered homity pie! I'd forgotten about that! I now live in Norfolk and think all the 80's vegetarians came here to retire. We have a vege restaurant in town that channels those days. I really enjoy lunch in there, home made hummus with various grated salads and an 'it's all kicking off Pru' vibe

Patterned flowery carpets...
Fake pointless dado rails...
Rag-rolled painted walls...
Wallpaper borders...
Brown corduroy buttoned sofa...
Huge boxy TV...
Pink/green bath, sink and toilet...
Knitted toilet roll covers...
Weird-smelling tupperware...
Brown/beige flowery crockery...
Quiche and flan dishes...

Hmmm. I quite fancy a flan.

Apple white, Barley White paint. White with a hint of... it was marketed as. Woodship and artex was going out by then but essential to have a wallpaper strip round the top of the room or like a dado rail. Or even in the middle of the wall. Eternal beaux was sold by BHS. Yes to habitat but is was nicknamed Happicrap and build quality wasn't great according to middle aged parents. I hated those pierot things - bloody awful. Duvets were common place by then amongst those with teens, kids, young marrieds but not with parents of such or grandparents. Original features was a thing and lots and lots of pine. We still have our pine coffee table.

The brand 'My Mum's' was the cheapo go-to brand (My mum's cola was just like drinking brown water) cost about 10p. But My Mum's frozen jubblies were ace!

A packet of 10 John Player superkings cost about 45p - me and my friend went half on a pack and hid them in secret local places, both scared to death of trying to hide them at home.

3 channels on TV, remember watching Channel 4 on the day it started, first programme was Countdown, think it was 1982. Oh and remember feeling we were the height of technology when we got a video player. The remote was attached with a wire, no infra-red remotes for us 😆

My gran got a microwave, we went round one night and all stood round it and marvelled at this bowl of baked beans coming out hot. Magic!

I had 'Snatch the dog' bedding

Many people didn’t have phones and still had black & white TVs. There were only four channels so popular shows, eg soaps, sitcoms or TOTP would be watched by almost everyone. TV schedules were full of American imports, eg Starsky & Hutch, Fame, Magnum. Video recorders and videotape rental were a BIG deal. Everybody wanted one.

Football was far from the glamorous family-friendly big business it is today. Stadiums were dumps, violence was commonplace and it was rare to see women & children in stadiums.

I don't know anyone who.didn't have a phone in the 80,s and one friend had a black and white tv in th mid 80,s which I thought was very odd ,we got a colour tv in about 1977 and my parents didn't really do mod cons we didn't get a VCR untill.1990 ,we did ha've a crappy black and white portable tv that I shared with my sister ,it was a terrible picture though and very fuzzy

I think we have missed out aerobics and the green goddess, Roland Rat, Dallas and Dynasty, HE Bates TV adaptations, Brideshead and The Jewel in The Crown.

My parents-in-law had a b&w TV. It was much bigger than ours. They could easily have afforded a colour TV but my fil wouldn't pay for a colour licence on principle. (You paid less for a b&w licence.)

We got a phone installed when we lived in a tiny rented flat in the early 80s, but you had to fill in an application form and then you went on a waiting list for a few months.

I haven't read the whole thread. Has anyone mentioned phonecards? They came in at some point in the 80s, I think. You bought them from the Post Office (newsagents as well? can't remember now) and used them to pay for phone calls from public kiosks instead of coins. Much more convenient.

Lots of people paid for their gas and electricity with a coin meter. We did, in the aforementioned flat. If you ran out of coins of the right denomination, off went the electricity or gas. We kept a stash of coins for the meters and another one for the launderette, as we didn't have a washing machine until we bought our own house.

Harvest by M&S

Cream, orange and beige design, had it for my wedding gifts

Athena Posters

Jelly bags and shoes and bracelets

Lace tops

Neon laces

Walkman’s

Red and black everywhere.

@ProfYaffle

I went veggie in 1985 - slightly older than you but not a lot. I had forgotten all about Sosmix!

It was a nightmare eating out. I hate to think how the militant vegans of today would have coped. I don't think they really understand what trail blazers vegetarians were decades ago. I still use my Cranks cookbooks - the nut roast never fails to please at Christmas.

But to the poster who mentioned Human league. Saw them at a festival last year -they were mega. Unlike Boy George who has not aged well at all. (#fuckingprimadonna)

Cranks were amazing - everything was so fresh and vibrant compared to the brown, worthy vege recipes we'd had until then.

Ascot water heaters in the bathroom and kitchen

Clair gas heaters

In rented shared houses

OP watch Ashes to Ashes

My friend's dad got a brand new Ford Sierra - someone said it looked like a blancmange.

Grey and pink or red and black were popular decorating colour combinations.

Listening to Dire Straits.

Findus crispy pancakes (mince ones) for tea!
Angel Delight for pudding
Toffee or chocolate sauce on ice cream (came in a plastic bottle)
Soda Stream for fizzy drinks
Mr Freeze/Frosty for ice lollies
Steak dinner at Berni Inn or Harvester for treats!
Pudding trolley came out where you could choose!
Neon colour ankle socks
Country Diary of an Edwardian Lady or Holly Hobbie stationery/calendars
Wham! Or Duran Duran on Top of the Pops on a Thursday
Fuschia or bright green faux silk shirts belted in over long length black pencil skirts
Winkle picker black pointy flat shoes, then Doc Martens!
Brightly coloured jelly bags (basically like big net shopping bags but in plastic, mainly pink) Pencils and pens fell out of them at school!
Body Shop animal shaped soaps
Day of the Triffids on TV-terrifying!
V on TV-ditto!
Dallas, Dynasty and The Colbys
Always The Slipper and the Rose at Christmas and Ben Hur films at Easter!
Pale pink (called Pink Whisper) bathroom suite and terracotta painted/rag rolled walls
Short curtains (ie: to the end of the window, not to the floor)
Athena posters: if you were a boy, you had the fit tennis player scratching her bum-looks sexier than it sounds, lol! If you were a girl, you had the fit topless bloke cuddling a baby
Posters of your favourite band members on your bedroom wall and rosettes if you were horsey
Terrifyingly, Aids adverts on TV with a gravestone saying "Don't Die of Ignorance"
You said things were cool or ace
Wonderful times!

So sorry, massive list. I had a nostalgic time of memories though, thanks!

We bought our first dishwasher in 1994. I remember going to Allder's white goods section in Bromley and a young male shop assistant came over to ask if we needed help. When I said we'd never had a dishwasher before, he was amazed. So some people had them in the 80s!

Black ash effect - yes, that's very 80s to me. MFI was very big then, selling flat pack furniture. Google tells me IKEA opened up in Warrington in 1987. I think the first London store was Brent Cross in 1990, give or take a year or two.

Just found this link to pictures from the Next mail order catalogue from 1988: www.flickr.com/photos/46774808@N00/sets/72157623255165642/

Oh Phonecards - they were green. I think you could get £1/£5/£10 ones .
Phone boxes with coins always got robbed ( and people knew you were using a call box because you dial, wait to connect , hear the 'pips' and push the coin in )
Public phone boxes always smelled of piss and the phone handset stunk of old ciggies and was always wet from someones breath vapour .

Teens don't know they're born today

Sunday trading.

Shops and pubs were shut all day on Sunday.

There were supposed to be phone directories in every box, but there often weren't, so if you didn't have the number you wanted written down or memorised you had to ring directory enquiries, which was cheap then.

A good trick lots of people (e.g. young people who'd not long left home) used to avoid paying for a call in a phone box was to dial the number, wait for it to be answered, let it ring two or three times but not put any money in. This was an agreed code and the person at the other end would then ring you back (if they knew where you were ringing from).

Phone books were delivered free to every house with a landline, as we didn't call them then, every few years and you generally kept them under or near the phone. You got one that listed all subscribers in your area in alphabetical order, businesses as well as householders. The one for London ran to four chunky volumes. You also got the Yellow Pages, updated every year, which listed all local and some national businesses by category. If you wanted to find out the nearest place to buy (say) doll's house furniture, you had to take a guess at the likely categories those businesses would be found in. You might find Doll's House Furniture as a separate category but more likely it would be under Toys (Specialist) or something like that.

The Central Library for the are would probably have a complete set of phone books for the whole country.

We had a dishwasher in the early 70s,

Fake Tiffany lamps
Lots of chintzy pastels
Black/red/white/grey checkerboard and grid patterns
Primary coloured geometric patterns
Athena prints

Big shoulders

McDonalds and KFC were a treat
Pop Tarts
Lean Cuisine ready meals
Vesta curries, pot noodles, super noodles
Spud u Like

Salmon steak, new potatoes and peas, followed by posh ice cream, maybe also strawberries for a full on, proper A level results day type treat. Posh ice cream was Vienneta or Gino Ginnelli. Haagen Daz shook the world when they landed in the late 80s.

Shimmery, pastel pink lipstick. Blue eyeshadow.