What were the 80s like?

[flowerwild]

I’m nostalgic for a time I never experienced.

Excellent music, but honestly, I spent most of them either being unhappy at my rough secondary school, cramming for exams that would be a way out of poverty, or campaigning for reproductive rights.

Fun ( for me at least !) because I was a teenager going out a lot, working. Early 80s.
I'm sure for many others it was hard , but there was an air of anything is possible back then and a lot more social mobility amongst the ordinary working classes. Mostly because they had a chance of home ownership that the previous generations didn't have as much.
Turbulent politically with the miners strikes and the conservatives selling lots of things off too.
We had negative equity for a while , that was hard. Seems strange we could do so much without the internet or mobile phones too
(Although some huge 'brick mobiles ' did start to appear especially amongst builders I knew. Cost a fortune though )

Fun!
Great music - awful clothes.
Best years of my life, as I was at 6th form, university and then starting work and living on my own. Still friends with lots of people I met then, including my husband.
First house had ridiculous interest rates, but still live there happily.

Greed is good, Thatcherism, closure of industries, miners strike, yuppies, shoulder pads, drainpipe jeans, Ra Ra skirts, perms, pastels, new romantics, goths, post punk, fall of the Berlin wall.

For me, the 80's were going out 5 nights a week. Disco's, nightclubs, gigs. Great music. First holiday abroad. Massive shoulder pads. Massive hair. Perms. Matt make up. Heavy brows. Getting married. Giving birth.

I just remember it been very positive. There was this idea that if you worked hard you could achieve. But I was a teenager and appreciate not everyone would have felt the same.

great music, fashion was certainly of its time but we loved it at the time.

Loved them....just graduated, lived in London, big hair, power dressing.

Music was great. Fashion was great if you did it yourself rather than from the usual shops.

Political landscape was grim. Fear of nuclear holocaust was high (if you let it)
I was told at school that I would never know regular employment.

Bought 1st house, moved after 2 years to 2nd house and 1st house had gone up by 7k in 2 years (about 35%!) Couldn't afford to go on holiday until 1992 and that was to stay with a friend who'd moved abroad.

Really, it was a time of belt tightening and only being able to afford the necessities

I was 7-17 and for me it was a great decade. School was fun, music was brilliant, clothes were eclectic. My dad was doing well so we were comfortable.

However I lived (still live) in South Wales so have very clear memories of the miners strike. The loss of the mining industry and other related heavy industry in this area had a huge impact, including on my dad’s business. He eventually sold up and retired in 1999, far too early, and became old before his time.

I loved the 80’s because I had a lovely childhood; I was 5-15 in the 80’s and lived the music, the clothes and the tv, whilst being too young to fully understand the political landscape (and too young to rage against Maggie as I do these days!)

Easier because it wasn’t all about taking pictures, videoing, looking at phones- you just did stuff!!!😅

I absolutely loved the music, clothes and culture.
The early 80’s were grim economically, and the country did have a sense of unrest eg Falklands war, miners strikes, threat of nuclear war.
I was lucky both of my parents were in decent jobs although I remember we didn’t get central heating until I was 18 - the house was bloody freezing!
I was also lucky enough to get a good education and then go to Uni in the days of grants and no fees. I always had some sort of job/a few jobs in the go as well.
It felt like a time when women were really going places - it wasn’t always ideal, and it isn’t now, but I felt a huge sense of social mobility.
Madonna set a standard - she absolutely changed how I felt about being a girl.
Loved the glamour even though it looks a bit ridiculous now! Big hair, big shoulder pads, big dreams.
By the time the decade closed and the rave scene came in, it passed me by. I wasn’t interested in house music or drugs.
I absolutely loved the decade as a whole. It was a great time to be a teenager and to be able to go to see world class pop stars and groups as gigs locally for a fiver a time - bliss.

Fun! Great music: Duran Duran, Wham, Boy George, Madonna, etc. Fun fashion (see: Boy George & Madonna), neon!, no internet, no mobile phones, etc etc.

Best decade ever. (Although I have ‘70s nostalgia too. But that’s really just about childhood memories.)

The ‘80s were the recovery of freedom, modernity and sense of purpose. No decade is easy for all. But the ‘80s were a huge turning point to the benefit of most.

Music, style, travel, diversity and fun.

A senior colleague had a Honda car, it was the first Japanese car that I remember that was as good or better than British. Previously they were thought to be flimsy.
A management meeting that we were told that there would be a crisis over pensions in 40 years time.

I was 4-13 and spent a lot of those years bombing around the local industrial estates on my BMX.

Spitting Image
The Young Ones
Butterflies
To The Manor Born
were all my programmes

One of the many strikes at the time led to being sent home from school at dinner time with a packed lunch, and if I ran quick enough, I could watch all the kids telly on ITV and then run back to school. Rainbow, Puddle Lane, Let's Pretend, can't remember the other ones. And if I was off school, Open University or Schools programmes on Channel 4 or ITV.

The smell of smoky bus stations.

Travelling around the whole of the north east for 5p.

My mam's Flair perfume.

Having no money or holidays or a car, but being totally happy.

(Midi) Hi-Fi systems being THE thing you would covet as a young person if you didn't have one.
Clothes... memories of C&A.
Really good fish and chips. Italian quite good, probably better where more cosmopolitan, but in any case a far cry from the frozen pizza section of the day (in a good way!)
Early Kylie, later in the decade.
The Argos catalogue and Ceefax being the closest to what would turn out to be the Internet - both compelling when you found out their stranger hobbit holes (Ceefax daily quiz, anyone?). And turned page corners over (Argos) with what you hoped for around Christmas.

I watched these vlogs filmed in the late 80s of a man called Nelson living in NY and he was friends with Ru Paul (before he was famous) and he features in it a lot. And there’s the famous Club Kids.

I think I’m nostalgic for the music, the lack of technology, the fashion.

I was a teenager and it was great, amazing clothes and music and just so much optimism and enthusiasm for everything. I was pretty and popular and had ponies and went to Private school
I am sure there were a lot of bad things going on that I didn't see but my life was great in the 80's

Watched ‘Blinded by the Light’ about an Asian lad growing up in Luton, based on a true story. I feel it gets the era well ,

I was born in 81 so don’t remember a great deal of it but I do remember it feeling so much more….’free’
At age 6-9 I was out in our village knocking for friends and biking up and down the road with my mates. The village policeman would be wandering around as we went from shop to shop getting freebies - the bakers for the squashed cake, the greengrocers for an apple, the newsagent for some penny sweets. Everyone knew everyone and kept a look out for each others kids.
My brother (8 years older) would walk home from secondary school and I’d help him build go carts and we’d take them up the rec with his mates and push each other down stupidly high hills.
My parents would have dinner parties most weekends and us kids would all play out while they ate ‘fancy food’ and drank wine. We’d be allowed in to finish off any leftovers.
We spent most of our time outside. Building fortes and collecting bugs and rolling in mud.

I loved being a child of the 80s…mainly because I got to be a teenager of the 90s and that was the best!

My experience of the 80s was fabulous.

I still maintain that 80s buffets were the finest culinary delights of the western world!

Incredibly stinky! Everyone smoked everywhere all the time - the cinema, a restaurant, on the bus upstairs. The entire world smelled of cigarette smoke and fag ash.

Walls in pubs were yellowed with it, ceilings were disgusting.

Political and financial climate was rough in the early 80s, then Greed Is Good consumerism in the late 80s.

Lots of good music, lots of homophobia and racism as perfectly normal. So a mixed bag, really.

I was a kid so it was pretty carefree. I remember it being very social though. People got together a lot more than they do now. Pubs, churches, community centres, youth clubs, family visits.

Kids were pretty free range. We went everywhere on bike - we were always off having "adventures". We'd walk to friends houses on our own, if they weren't in then we'd go to another's. Parents didn't know where we were but we knew to be home for tea or when the street lights turned on.

I'm pretty nostalgic for the era myself.