To absolutely long for the 80's again

[bertybertyberty]

I was around 16 during the peak of this era. I was just coming into pop music, walkmans & fashion.

Young, care-free, no responsibilities, slim. It was such an easy-going era. No smart tech. You could phone a company and actually speak to someone without waiting in an endless queue or going through a list of around 10 different options. Shops had extra stock 'out the back' so you could always ask them to check 'out back' for more sizes etc. Less cars on the road. Less rules/regulations/H&S in general, much more easy going (although I recognise that some of the rules nowadays are essential and should have existed back then) Less tech meant less opportunity for scams/thieves/hacking.

Life was generally so much more laid back, casual & easy going. I LONG for these days again so much. I don't actually like modern day and the stresses that come with it. I wanted to make a booking for a day out with the DC the other day, I was on hold for 1 hour 45 minutes. I gave up and hung up.

Anyone else resonate ?

The constant chasing of affluence seemed non existent. I know there were the yuppies but not in the sticks where I grew up. We were dead happy with clothes from Woolworths and topshop or a market stall. No one has any super expensive tech in their house and a Nintendo or a video machine was considered flash. That's the simplicity I really miss.

Was it really a lot cheaper? It might have been "simpler times" only because people didn't have so much stuff because no one could afford it! No buying shite for the home for the sake of it....such as fancy cushions and those stupid "live laugh love" signs etc.

No weekend trips abroad; it would have been prohibitively expensive. I'll give you an idea. My family had a whip wound to send my nan to Ireland. In today's money the fare was £300. Nope, most people made do with a week in Selsey or if you were posh two weeks in Lloret de Mar....no one went for 4 nights. No one. Wouldn't dream of it

One thing I miss though is a bit of peace and quiet, especially the roads on a Sunday. That changed as soon as the Sunday trading laws were relaxed.

Yes, it was. We regularly went for day trips to France, shopping and had lovely holidays abroad.

@Dovewings Really? Ark at you.

Although I'll concede on the day trips..they were great fun when you go for 50p or take the car for a fiver. Don't think day trips to France are popular anymore are they? They've closed down the route to Boulogne and there's no hovercraft or catamaran....such a backwards step imo. I have been to Calais a few times...it was a dump 30 years ago dread to think what the place is like now.

I think things go in cycles- the early 80s were tough with the miners strike, high unemployment, high inflation, industrial base closing, strikes etc. By the second half the 80s things were going pretty well albeit built on a housing bubble.

Then there was the recession of 1990-93 after the housing bubble burst. And things didn't really get going again until Tony Blair and Cool Britannia of 1997 which trundled along nicely until the 2008 financial crisis.

I do think that the boom and bust of the housing market really does have a lot to answer for.

I dont think it's just you. I've yet to meet anyone who lived through it who would disagree. I feel sorry for the young now, everything is false and pressured. I would happily live 80s/90s on rotation.

I loved the 1980's - the music in the mid eighties was fab mostly. Life was so much simpler and slower then.

I was happy spending my pocket money on cans of mega hold hairspray and mega hold wet look gel keeping my back combed, crunchy hair in place!

Thought I was the dog's bollocks with my Le Femme bag ( think they were called that), pixie boots in winter and stilettos or jelly shoes with my (rolled up ) school skirt and oversized blouse messing about with my mates and reading J17 and Look in!

Hated the homophobia, the sexism, the major disasters ( Kings X fire, Zebrugga and Hillsborough) and that terrifying aids advert.

The YTS was slave labour and crap by today's standards, but £30 a week went a long way when you were young, free and single! I could get a weekly bus ticket for £1.50 !

Best of all though there was no smart tech, we were not always on 24/7, teen mistakes were not snapped and shared, the high street was thriving on a Saturday and Sunday's, though often boring were a day of relaxation for most!

Would go back in a heartbeat if I could !

This is very true. I have great memories of my 80's childhood and late 90's teenage years - carefree, fun, great music etc. But most of that is because I was a child with no responsibilities and no worries except whether a boy liked me or not.

If I look back at the news reports for Ireland in the 80's it was grim: terrorism, emigration, unemployment, inflation. My dad was also on strike with work for months (which I don't remember) so financially things were very stressful for my parents. I was happily oblivious.
Also things like abortion and divorce were still illegal in Ireland, along with gay marriage. The church was still dominant over communities, things were not great for everyone.

I feel for younger people because they seem to have the weight of the world on them, and are exposed to so much grown up stuff at a young age which they should be protected from. Also todays music is piss.

Despite all the tech now people were actually more connected then . You lived in smaller homes with one TV people watched together as families , microwaves only starting to come in so most people ate together , sport was relatively drug free . If you made arrangements you kept to them dating was personal . And the music was new varied and innovative.

I preferred the 1980s and 1990s. I also don’t like how fast paced and tech driven everything is.
People seemed nicer back then too. I think social media with all of its pile-ons and bragging and outdoing has rewired peoples brains. In my life the people who have never used the likes of fb and insta are like I remember people being back in the 80s/90s. The people who are avid insta/fb etc users have become quite unpleasant. It’s like they have had personality transplants.

Late eighties rather than early 80s - yes.

Not me. The 80s were an awful time, although I was at university, one of a relatively privileged few at the time, with my tuition paid for. Thatcher, unemployment, the strikes, the Falklands, Aids, homophobia, routine sexism. Clothes were really expensive, everyone smoked everywhere ( on the bus, in the office, in restaurants, even in tube stations - remember the Kings's Cross fire?) One look at the Argos catalogue from the time will show that consumer items we take for granted cost a fortune compared to wages at the time. I realise the explosion in cheap goods from China hasn't been a great idea for the planet, but the choice and low cost we're used to now was unimaginable in the 80s.

Football hooligans.
Police corruption and fit ups.
Homophobia
Open racism
The miners strike
Teacher strikes
Thatcherism
Pollution
Institutional child abuse
No student loans

Shall I go on?

I don't think it is entirely nostalgia.

I seriously doubt anyone in a few decades is going to be looking back and saying 'Gosh, I really miss the 20's'.

All the wars, riots, divisive politics and pervasive negative social media and news 24 hours a day. The massive population boom leaving many crammed in to conditions that seriously stress humans. Unchecked immigration leading to sense of community vanishing and increasing anger over dwindling resources due to lack of investment in infrastucture.

Another 80's fan. My best time was 1982-86, post STD's (so we thought!) and pre AIDS. You could work all day, party all night and still have change out of a fiver!!

I feel this about the 90s, I honestly get so nostalgic. I do feel like has changed and it’s irreparable due to the bloody internet.

"in my teens so all the shit stuff passed me by"
This nails it.. everyones favourite era is the one we aren't children but don't have responsibilities yet

Absolutely. I turned 18 in 1980 and headed to uni. I had a fab time there and met DH. We married in 1985 and bought our first home. We had a ball for 5 years before DD2 arrived in 1990. Those 10 years were the best of my life.

The music isn’t “shite” at all. Just because you don’t like something it doesn’t automatically make it bad you know.

Job hunting in the 80's wasn't much fun if you were a young married woman. I was asked at more than one interview what my plans were about starting a family, and I'm absolutely convinced that I didn't get the jobs because of it. Fairly conclusively proved at another interview when they asked me the same question - I lied and told them I was infertile so couldn't have children. I got the job.

No phones no SM parents could parent kids being kids.
Street lights were my curfew to go home.
Riding my bike without a helmet the chip van ice-cream van the penny sweets.
People being people meeting each other no making appointments to go visit anyone.
Reading books was cool. (still are to me)
Being asked out by a man in person.
Going to a jumble sale on sundays.
The list goes on.

Yes there were bad times but i like to look at the good times looking back we didnt know how good we had it.
Im off to build a time machine now.
Let me know what date you want to be dropped back off in.

I think you always think the decade of your youth was the best. For me it’s the 90’s when I was 15-25. God it was great. Stuff like the early 90’s recession just went over my head. There was always loads of part time work ( albeit no minimum wage). There was always somewhere with pints for a pound. I went to sixth form college, then Uni and had the best time and then went to London for work and we easily found a flat between four of us and it was literally like Friends. Pretty sure it never rained either 🤣

But honestly if I really analyse it there was lots of stuff that is just unthinkable now in terms of ingrained sexism, racism and homophobia. My Cambridge college was only 33% girls in the undergrad population and it wasn’t the most unbalanced- some weee only 25%. Barely any non white people.

I do remind myself that nostalgia ain’t what it used to be.

But we have equivalent horrors now, with added stress and bullshit from tech and social media. There's no escape.

Although to the pp who said people didn't fill their houses with tat back then, my nanna had a hearth full of brass ornaments, a straw donkey, and a doll with a crochet skirt covering the spare loo roll.

I feel a bit like this but slightly later, I was a tween during the 97 election, D-Ream playing everywhere and it really felt hopeful, great music , plentiful cheap gigs and festivals in the nineties/early 2000s too. I went to Reading festival for the weekend for £75. Also the added hilarity of my gran turning into a prepper and thinking planes would drop out of the sky at midnight on millennium eve

I turned 16 in the 2000s and I miss those days! I think that most people miss their teenage years, whenever they grew up.

You don't realise just how good that period in life is until it's gone. Everything still to look forward to, everything to play for.