It's 1986!!

[NorthernLiner]

TOTALLY inspired by Dame Jilly Cooper's 'Rivals' finally gracing our screens today😄

So what were you up to in 1986?

Michael Jackson's music and watching people breakdancing.

Just started university, had taken up fencing and finding I was really quite good at it, getting my first boyfriend and living away from home. I was also thinking music was going downhill, the early 80s were it as far as I was concerned.

6th form, listening to John Peel Monday to Wednesday 10-12, painting my nails black, writing 16 pages in my diary most nights about absolutely nothing, crushing on my English teacher.

Aged 6, I had most of the year off school as I had meningitis.

15, drinking cider on Roe Green or trying to get into pubs in Bolton.

I was in my first year at University, I was reading English and had always read pretty highbrow stuff until a friend introduced me to Jilly Cooper!

I was 9 and my family had sold our house and moved into a rental, the house we wanted to buy had fallen through. We rented in a busy housing estate really near my good friend. We spent our days on our bikes and making a camp in the scrub land across the road. I shared with my sister and she made a line with tape along the carpet and i wasnt allowed cross to her side. I wrote many 'books' and a few plays. We got a kitten who my Mum was allergic to so had to give it away again. My Dad brought home a computer from work with a floppy disk during the Christmas holidays and we experienced video games for the first time. To this day the days in that rental house are some of the happiest memories of my life. 1986 was a good one.

I was 11, just started secondary school. Perms, pop music and fancying boys mostly I think!

Trying to become invisible, largely.

Needed to avoid the girl in the year above who hated me (never did work out why) and would beat me up at every opportunity.

Needed to avoid the girls in my year, as they hated me for being poor, not having the latest fashion shoes/bag/coat/not being feminine enough/whatever and for being good at schoolwork.

Needed to avoid groups of older boys, as their favourite pastimes were grabbing and groping girls or trying to force their way into the girls' changing rooms where they knew we were made to have showers.

Needed to be ignored at home as getting hit regularly was really pissing me off - although life improved immeasurably the following year when her back fell to bits and she spent the next 3 years in bed off her tits on painkillers. Sadly, the NHS worked wonders and she was back to full punching strength just in time for me to disappear off into the distance aged 16 with the first boy who quite liked me.

Then there were blistered hands from carrying all the textbooks without gloves, chilblains, blistered feet from crappy shoes, cold from not having a warm coat, the most evil period pain in the world compounded by the 'let's steal her bag and see if she's got her period/if she's got Tampax in there, that means she's not a virgin' bollocks.

It's hard to feel positively about 80s music when it was the soundtrack to things generally being pretty shit.

1989-90 was when things started to improve.

I was born in December 1985 so I suppose lot of drinking milk, sleeping, crying and crawling.

I would love to remember the 80s though!

Staring at the posters of Morten Harket all over my bedroom walls while playing Scoundrel Days on my tape player on repeat. I still love that album. I was also writing a lot of appalling poetry and wishing I had a boyfriend, but I was covered in spots, had a bad perm and went to a girls’ school, so that was years away.

I was also learning about sex from reading Virginia Andrews novels. Riders passed me by, although I remember avidly watching Lace on telly, which must have been around that time.

DH and I were just discussing this. My tastes in literature were rather questionable and a lot of fun at that time.

Sixth form, doing A levels. Loving the music, loving the fashion. Boyfriends, vodka and lime, and an ability to eat anything I liked without putting on an ounce. Some of my happiest days ever.

😁 I scared my parents witless.
It was mainly something grabbing my feet when I was in bed. Even when I was between my parents it would tickle my feet. It gets strange because it was a clown I was seeing the odd time. I can remember how the feet being grabbed felt. Shudders. My dad said years later he was poked.
In the spirit of Halloween....I was talking to a presumed ghost in hospital as well...in 1986. A man who had a hospital gown on who was really nice to me. I wasn't in for mental health it was stomach related stuff. I told my mum I was never alone because the nice men kept checking I was ok. It was a kids ward that didn't allow randoms on. I still remember what he looked like. He even told me I had to behave and be nice to other kids.

1986 was quite good fun for me.

I was 6 years old living my best life in leafy Wimbledon. I had 2 cats and a tortoise. My mum was pregnant so I had all the excitement of a sibling arriving but none of the actual horrors of a new sibling. Bliss! It was a really hot summer and we had loads of BBQ’s and even hired bands for parties.

I remember my mum and her friends hiring a famous portrait photographer to come and photograph all their kids in our garden because it was massive.

I think this might have been the summer all the grown ups discovered lambrusco. My mum used to wear these cute jeans with a t shirt and a baggy bold print shirt over them and jazzy earrings. I thought she looked the business. She also had a good load of oversized off the shoulder neon t shirts that she wore cinched in with leather belts. Also Laura Askhley smock maternity dresses and a puffa coat. Tres chic!

Whatever four year olds were doing in 1986. I watched quite a lot of Thomas The Tank Engine, as I recall.

I was a student. Worked one evening a week at McDonald's.

Starting my GCSE’s so it was pretty rubbish!

So I had just graduated from Oxford. It was an EPIC time to be alive and 21😊. I was from a state school in a non-Oxbridgey location and it was like a rocket fuelled entry to the 80s. Lots of people who crop up in the news - from Boris Johnson to Frank Cottrell Boyce were my contemporaries (important note - not mates!).

I was just discussing with my hairdresser today, who is constantly staggered by how many hairs I have per sq inch, that I had a root perm, which must have been the most inappropriate treatment ever. I looked all of Bananarama rolled into one 😊. I spent a lot of time dressing like a cross between Madonna and the girls in the Dexys Midnight Runners video. I wore huge amounts of slap. We used to be able to buy cheap wine for £1 a litre!! We danced a lot in our student flat and all fancied George Michael. I had a very hot and, erm, enthusiastic boyfriend!

Then I had to go to law school..I got a training contract (historical accuracy - articles!). It was like … winter is coming.

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Graduated university, got married and moved to the USA. Just a quiet year!

Goodness me: A sudden flashback.

To update my earlier post, I remember my housemate was a huge fan of Nancy Friday's "Women on Top". TBF she was a psychology student.

Well I went to an event and met Gordon the Gopher but my efforts were pathetic and it was only in a local shopping centre.
This is next level. I would dine off this ✔️✔️✔️

I was 14. We'd not long moved 200 miles from where I'd lived nearly all my life. I had no friends in my new school and was bullied badly. It really affected my self-esteem and confidence throughout my teens and 20s. On a lighter note, I did enjoy reading the dirty bits in Rivals!

At Andy and Fergie's wedding. That day she had charisma beyond that which most people had experienced. Her vibrant eyes and hair captured everyone there. You could see those colours coming at you, from a distance.

London was jumping then. The vibe was extraordinary.