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 ?

I'm 55 so the 80s formed such a huge part of my life as it was my life from age 11 to 21. So many memories. Some bad but mostly fantastic. Great music, fashion, high school, college , first jobs, learning to drive and getting my first car. Going down the market every Friday after work to buy a new outfit for the weekend.

I feel the same about 1998-2006 or thereabouts. I was an older child than a teen and it was all so exciting compared to now. I used to love the music - Britney, Christina Aguilera, Steps, S Club, Busted, then moved onto Blink 182, Green Day, Fall Out Boy.

Loved the clothes, body glitter, straightened hair, little denim mini skirts, crop tops with rhinestone slogans, big hoodies, my playboy belly piercing 😬

We had mobiles so could contact people but no internet so you could only text, call and play Snake. Used to love getting flirty bantz from some shaved eyebrow boy and consulting with my friends how to reply 😂 kids had more freedom, we went to youth clubs from about 10 and after that we wild camped and drank Bacardi Breezers and smoked, had house parties most weekends.

Things were just more exciting, there was more anticipation, you had to wait for things a bit more, find things out for yourself and parents seemed to expect you to test the boundaries without getting too worked up or telling you you would end up a penniless alcoholic.

Fun times.

I remember going straight out from work and dancing till dawn, we were always out, clothes shopping in Oxford Street, the music was phenomenal, meeting so many different people yet feeling perfectly safe. First holidays abroad with friends, crying on the plane on the way back, we just didn't want it to end.
Its a different world now, my children who are young adults are not making the same memories, l know time has moved on but l know what era l would have preferred to grow up in.

"my nanna had a hearth full of brass ornaments, a straw donkey, and a doll with a crochet skirt covering the spare loo roll."

We must be either siblings or cousins, for sure!

Newsflash - everyone feels this about their late teens and twenties, OP. Whatever the decade/s.

Yeah- I kind of know what you’re saying. I have said to my teen kids please don’t go to uni just to leave, live at home and stare into a screen in your bedroom on Zoom all day for years, slowly dying inside while you save a deposit. Go out, meet like minded people. Do crazy stuff. Just live a little. Or indeed a lot.

It was laid back. I have fond memories of it but not the bits where we had to sit on each other's knees in the car. A car that had no seat belts. I can remember a relative laying in the boot once because the car was full. I realise this was not normal, even for the 80s.

I agree. I kept all my letters from my youth including when I was working abroad in the mid 90s. I discovered the box recently when moving stuff in the attic. A lifetime of correspondence with the last letter from 1997 sitting on top. I had all my photo albums organised, ending at 1998. When I'm dead and gone someone will wonder why my life ended in the late 90s!

There was always a division of money but people accepted it more, no one who worked on a low paid job expected to have the lifestyle of a high earner. We've all become a bit envious and entitled.

Its rose tinted nostalgia of course but I think the young people today won't feel the same for their time, they seem very negative.

I remember being bored to fecking tears on a Sunday afternoon. Losing touch with people when I moved school or town. Only having three TV stations.

I'm pretty sure every working class house in the country had these things. I kind of want a loo roll doll...

I was a young child in the 80s so don't remember much but my abiding memories of are dirt and grime. The city I live in was full of factories, the beck in the park was fully of shopping trolleys and there was litter and shit everywhere.

I still live where I grew up but things seem so much more civilised and pleasant now.

I definitely long for stress-free times, no responsibilities etc and, for me, that was the 80s. I love the 80s music TV channels and so many songs take me right back.

It was easier to get a GP appointment, though hospital waiting lists were very long then, too, under Thatcher The Milk Snatcher. There were good things and bad things, but life was easier, i think. People had all the mod cons that we still have, just no mobiles/smartphones. And we managed absolutely fine.

Smoking was allowed everywhere but I was used to it as both parents smoked. Made me resolve to never smoke so I'm glad that is different now.

I started working in the mid 80s, so can't speak for the whole decade, but a lot of my colleagues had been made to leave their jobs when they had children so those rights in place now feel very different.

@TheLeadbetterLife 😂my nan had one of those crochet dolls too! And weird magnetic holders for soap, which had multiple bits of soap squashed together.

This. It's a mix of nostalgia and comparing the time in your life when you were teens/early twenties and life was fun and frivolity and now, when you're possibly peri/menopausal, mortgaged and a bit morose. Fifty year old women weren't having a blast in the 80s like teenagers were. It's not the decade, it's your age. Sorry!

Not for me. I remember the homophobia, the open racism, the catcalling and groping of young teenage girls, the violence in Northern Ireland, the AIDS deaths, the pit closures and miners' strike. I remember how bullying was ignored (and often confined) in schools, the gender stereotypes that shaped our expectations, the terrible quality of some of the teaching, the terrible treatment of girls I was at school with who, with hindsight, were clearly neurodivergent. I remember how grooming of teenage girls was seen as a bit of a joke.

under Thatcher The Milk Snatcher

🙄Tell me, @MaidOfSteel, if free milk was such a marvellous thing, why didn't Tony Blair reinstate it? Or Gordon Brown?

Oh yes, it's because hundreds of thousands of children didn't drink their milk, so gallons of it got thrown away.

Totally agree with this. And sexism in the workplace, smoking in the workplace, pubs that women didn't dare go into, body shaming, slut shaming, casual racism and homophobia.

That was because by the time it had been left in the sun till mid morning it was warm and split or the birds had got at it and crapped on all the bottle tops.

It was certainly normal for the 1970s!

I'd go back to the 80s in a heartbeat. So much has gone wrong in the past 25-30 years, so it'd be great to reset the clock and try again.

Didn't have a phone at home so had to go to the phone box that stunk of cigs and beer, condensation from someones breath on the handpiece and a pool of some liquid on the floor that might be water but best not take any chances .

Then when the PhoneCards came in, you'd keep one in your purse ( they were bright green)

Yes people bought tat/home decor . Those Pierrot duvet covers with pink'n' grey or Red/Black/White geometric

The Body Shop at its peak brilliance

Having to watch something on TV when it was on. Very few people had VCRs and even fewer could watch one side and tape another
Video shops you paid to join , tapes were £ and the selection was either wait or rent a rubbishy horror film.

Make-Up yes and Hair .
But apart from false nails (stuck on) or false eyelashes people didn'yt have botox, fillers , those awful eyelash extensions

But we had sunbeds in the 80s ( you could look at a house a see the blue light )

Fashion was brilliant (and I had the body for it)
Chelsea Girl , WEWW (What Every Woman Wants) Mark 1 , Razzle Dazzle

Nights out were a pub or a club . Or a pub with a room in the upper floor or a hotel and a DJ .
Vinyl records (that everyone took a pirate tape recording of )

David Sylvian (listed as the Handsomest Man in the World)

HIV and AIDS

With unemployment, strikes, power cuts, mortgage interest reaching 16%. Really?

My teen years so nostalgia for sure but there was far less pressure to look a certain way. The average teen/20s didn’t inject their face with poison, tattoo on make-up, and there was nothing like the social media vanity we see now.

Music was fun, fashion was fun. Life was less complicated overall.

So glad there weren’t camera phones to record what we got up to though.

Those high mortgage rates were in the late 80 s and early 90s.

Tetrapaks existed. Fridges existed. Rooms not in the sun existed. So why didn't Labour reintroduce it?

And I'm sure that you are aware that a previous Labour minister stopped milk for the over 11s.