What do you miss from your past?

[Gottodosomething2026]

My algorithms seem to have been showing a lot of 80s and 90s nostalgia recently and it's really got me wishing for times gone by.

What do you miss from your past? (not people). For me it's:

• Cheery Christmases with carols, excitement, feeling the Christmas stocking in the dark etc.
• Walkmans
• Casette tapes and recording the top 10 to listen to the car
• Less choice in supermarkets, for holidays, tv channels/services, cars etc - so much easier
• Less plastic tat
• Technology that I could keep up with as it was all new and so simple
• Feeling joy at the simple stuff like Body Shop bath pearls
• Jelly and ice cream
• Less unhealthy food
• triangle crisps (I don't even know what they were called)
• VHS
• People being nice to each other as the norm
• Less red tape and measurement of everything we ever do
• Common sense
• Work ethic being the norm

Having only 4 channels on the telly but the stuff that made it on there was good. And you didn't need an advanced degree in technology to turn the fucker on.

Living life untrackable, unobserved and in privacy
This. No Big Brother watching you 24/7.

Also: customer service. You could go to a bank or the Gas Board or the Taxman and have a conversation with a real person! No hiding behind locked doors or answerphones. No need to book, just turn up. None of this "your service is important to us so we'll put you on hold for 9 hours".

Slapperdays 😂

Exactly. Now we have the same number of quality programs spread across eleventy billion channels.

Good manners being the norm rather than the exception...

Walters (later Burtons) Potato Puffs.
Best crispy snack in the world ever.

Spontaneity! You'd hear a band was coming to town, go to the Box Office to get a ticket and see them within the month. The venue would only be a few thousand so it was all in-your-face, sweaty and real. No need to squint at big screens half a mile away. You went for the music (from real musicians), not the costumes and choreography and special effects. And nobody left partway through to get an overpriced burger because they thought eating was more important than the band they had come to see.

Yes! Me too! Drinking £1 pints of cider and black and still getting up for college the next day. How did we do it?!

Spiras with a cup of tea!

My parents 🙂

Being able to drink all night, get wasted and wake up the next morning feeling more or less ok. That went at around age 30. Probably a good thing ! Thanks to the menopause I now can’t manage more than one drink without heartburn, hot flushes and feeling wobbly. Saves a lot of money but I miss it.

My dad

Thank you so much, I’m glad you aren’t in the club that no one wants to be in. I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.

Travelling to niters,dancing all night or yapping to anyone who would listen.
The scene now is a parody of what went before the obligatory Northern soul uniform that was a mere snap shot of A particular look that not many were wearing within a few years
It's best remembered from a youthful energetic scene
I done it from 82 to about 95 then it had got too much with the speed I was mentally spent

Phoning a big company and somebody just answering the bloody call.

I am sick to death of recorded messages, AI, bot chat, passwords, speech recognition technology and then foreign based customer services which are often unintelligible even if you do finally reach the nirvana of an actual human being.
If I hear the word portal one more time I will scream.

My husband. Passed away when our kids were four and six.

I miss my teenage bedroom, covered in posters of Elvis and my record player, the whole choosing what records I'd play and in what order

I miss going out with my best friend, now I go to bed at the time we used to go out and get up when I used to come home 😅

And sorry OP I know you said not people but I miss being able to look forward to Christmas (my son died on Christmas Day)

But most of all I miss my son, and i miss who I was before he died

I'm answering this as a 60 year old...

Taut skin
A body that didn't ache everywhere
The ability to sleep throughout the night
A bladder I could rely on
70s/80s music
A simpler way of life
Having a good conversation with people not distracted by phones
Less anti-social behaviour
A good high street that wasn't all barbers, nail/beauty salons, fast food establishments
Natural people who weren't all fake teeth/boobs/eyebrows/lips
Better mental health all round
Real advertising that wasn't AI generated
No internet or social media, it's good in a lot of ways but so, so damaging in others

A world free of screens everywhere.

I really miss the days before there was social media filled wih AI generated nostalgia slop.

Your last four are perception, not nostalgia. Turn off the news and engage with your friends and neighbours and your wider community. I Am certain you will discover they are not raging c*s.

I miss this too

Jobs being easier to secure.

Employers being willing to employ someone and actually train them to do the job they employed them to do.

A landline phone, I used to remember important numbers! Still have hard coded in my brain my childhood phone number.

Yesterday I went bowling, in the lane adjacent to ours, so right in front of our view, there was a group of 5 young girls no older than 14. The 2 adults that were with them went to buy drinks. What do you think the girls did? All of them sat looking at their phones like zombies for the entire time until bowling started. It was such a sad scene.

Broke my heart. I miss people having more human contact and communication.