How to live like its the 1990s?

[Coffeeandcake12]

Inspired by a thread about how people were happier in the 90s, how can I live more like we did in the 90s?
Obviously no Internet, I already don't use social media apart from mumsnet.
But what made the 90s so good that I could recreate for me and my children a bit more?

Get the night bus home from Trafalgar Square

Watch old children's programmes on 📀. I just saw a bit of Thomas and Friends cartoon . God it's really shit. Crap drawings and Thomas & pals have icky voices. Nooo!

I was under 10 in the 90s so...

Go to primary school, come home for a bit of after school telly (Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Kenan and Kel). Listen to the radio and wait hours for your favorite song so you can tape it. Have a tuna jacket potato for tea. Read a Goosebumps book or Smash Hits magazine. Refuse to go to bed and bug your mum instead. You're in bed now but you can't sleep as your brother who you share a room with is playing on the sega megadrive.

I do miss it!

Lovely post @alwayscrashinginthesamecar1 . You lived the life. I was already a parent in 90 so no raves. But I watched on happily. You could feel a big change coming in the atmosphere for sure.

Arrange to meet friends in a club, realise its closed. Leave a msg in lipstick on a poster about new meet up point. Wait til friend arrive and have a great night. We managed just fine without mobile phones!!

Was it any better?
I.look fondly back on the 90,s because it was when I wss young and had no responsibility, I left school.in 1990 ,and starters my nurse training in 1993 qualifying in 1996 and starting my working life I have lots of good memories of being young free and single and have g money to enjoy myself but I'm not sure that's down to being the 90,s more likely being young.

I know people are nostalgic and lament the rise of tech but just revisiting some of this stuff I don’t miss the totally analogue

Some stuff is just easier.

Book a mystery holiday like we used to on ceefax , Turkey £99! That’s all the information you have.
don’t read the reviews, don’t Google the hotel, just throw caution to the wind and off you go!

Book a mystery holiday like we used to on ceefax , Turkey £99! That’s all the information you have.

We used to spend hours watching Teletext for this. Missed all the information? Tough luck, sit and wait for all 27 pages to rotate round again

I was born in 1989 so I'm a 90s kid. We were obsessed with the Spice Girls and my mum took me out of school one day to see them in concert. I remember watching Live & Kicking and Top of the Pops every weekend. All the kids down the street used play together, we were in and out of each other's gardens. Me and my friend went rollerblading every weekend.

Ohhh it’s just so lovely. I was born in 89 too. Such a fun homey life. I don’t know. I think that’s just nostalgia though. I was bored a lot too 😄 I think it’s pretty much guaranteed that our kids will feel nostalgic about their childhoods too, because that’s the nature of nostalgia.

Having said that, this month we have brutally slashed screen time for our 8 year old and he’s living such a richer life. More outside time, writing stories, playing with sand and play doh, making dens all the time, playing with toys more. Sounds simple but honestly he is so much more stimulated and happy. So there’s probably something in that too with the 90s lack of screens.

It probably is rose tinted but it felt like it was the best. Going down to the corner shop with a pound and getting a bag of penny sweets, a panda pop and a packet of space raiders and bringing home change 😂 in the summer we'd all have water gun fights in the street. I couldn't let DS do any of that as a kid because we live on a main road and it's just not done here.

We had our first house in the early 90s. No paternity pay. When the conservatives were in power despite the fact that dh and I worked full time, we were so poor that we would push the sofa right up to the gas fire trying to keep warm. No central heating in the house. It was so cold that I could not bare to get out of bed during the night and go for a wee.
We didn’t have meat as pet of our Sunday roast. Could only afford bacon ☹️.
No help with childcare costs. No after school or breakfast clubs.
Things improved when labour won the general election and we managed to save up and have gas central heating fitted.

Contrary to threads on here I remember a lot of kids running about and screaming, we definitely weren’t expected to be silent and pub gardens/parks/car parks were all seen as fair game for kids to go wild with skateboards and water pistols the parents were usually watching on with a fag and a drink (or just mine?) and found the whole thing hilarious. If we got hurt then we shouldn’t have been so stupid, it was a wet paper towel and a plaster.

Lots of youth club and disco type stuff on - used to love getting dressed up in my glitter denim skirt and one shoulder top to impress the local lads who spiked their hair with what appeared to be chip fat.

I remember an awful lot of negging - it seemed to be the only cool way of flirting. You just said something mean back, then obsessed over whether he actually secretly liked you.

Got all sorts coming back to me now I think about it!

I was born in 1988, so was a child in the 90s. If I were to live like i did (so presuming same ages etc) I would only buy Bang on the door clothing (which btw is BACK! Insanely expensive but you can get T-shirts), listen to the tail end of Brit pop because you’re not entirely old enough, listen to the spice girls and covet Geri’s Union Jack dress and some buffalo London platforms (which are also back but honestly look a death trap now I’m old enough to actually go anywhere in them). I grew up in Manchester so I’d hang about aimlessly in afflecks palace and chicken out of shoplifting random bracelets and tat, and use a massive desk top computer on AOL which had a weird ‘signing in’ screen that I still don’t understand, shopping in town was a massive day out sort of treat and was always ended by watching blind date with a Chinese take away on a Saturday night.

I do feel like the 90s were way less pressured in lots of social ways than today. Lots of things were shitter, but it was quite a cute right of passage to have shit make up and blue hair mascara. Now children-young teens have a lot of pressure to conform, made worse by social media, and everything costs ££££ and they all want to contour their faces and all that nonsense. I would have hated that, I was happy with my groovy chick bedding and being unashamedly cringe. There seemed to be a lot of hopefulness in the 90s that even the bad stuff could get better - now it looks like it’ll probably only get worse.

What I mean is that in 1992 the EU became a full union - not just an economic one. We could live and work anywhere in the EU. That happened in 1992.

What breaks my heart is that had we had a vote re the further integration treaties after this point, Brexit would likely never had happened and we would still be enjoying these rights today.

Manchester would still be the coolest place on earth Manc born and bred and not all flashy and wanky with over paid footballers and their perma tanned, boob jobbed, botoxed wags everywhere!

Indeed ,and it waz just going into.town down Oxford road or whatever not all.this Northern quarter nonsense !

was*

Free university tuition and maintenance grants, affordable housing, fully functioning NHS, availability of NHS dentists, easy to get doctor appointments, nobody had even heard of a food bank.

Most working class people leaving school at 16 and straight into full time jobs.

Not my experience. Most stayed on until eighteen and lots of us went to uni, I was one of the last to get a student grant right through uni. It was about 800 quid a term IIRC in 1991, enough to live on with a part-time job, and no fees of course. A friend of mine finished uni with 500 quid saved up, I left debt free although I drank a lot more beer than her!

That may have been your experience at your specific school.but even in the 80,s and 90,s many schools didn't have sixth forms
My school.never had a sixth form about half went to college either a sixth form college or further education college Including me
But many certainly left to.go.straight into.a job,
A lot did a YTS.

the nhs wasnt good,
which is why many become Trusts in 1991, so they could try and save themselves

Wear foundation too pale and dark brown lipliner!