To ask for your Eighties memories

[sadsack78]

Hi! I'm starting a project based on my mum's memories of being a teen/ young woman in Eighties Glasgow, and would be delighted if anyone who lived there at the time would share any memories or stories. Especially about what you wore, the music you liked, your memories of the city at the time.
This thread is also open to anyone who lived elsewhere in the UK and fancies sharing what their Eighties were like! Thanks everybody, I can smell the Cacharel LouLou from here grin

I was very young in 80s Glasgow and done if this may be 90s but:

Going to the first McDonald’s on argyle street. I had chicken nuggets and was sick.

The sauchiehall centre

Watching the demolition of tower blocks in the gorbals from Queen’s Park

Blue trains and orange buses.

The non hurricane devastating the south.it blew the glass out of my aunt's school's windows.

We (parents, brother and I) were on the way back from a holiday in the US that night. Our plane couldn't land at Gatwick in the morning so we were diverted to Prestwick airport in Scotland. We sat on the tarmac for a few hours and then went back down. When we got there our taxi had gone home and there were no trains for the journey south, my dad got the taxi to come back up and eventually we got home. Then the power was off for days!

Ooh I've just remembered another couple - I remember cola flavoured lip gloss that was in a see-through tube and had a roller applicator attached - that stuff was amazing - well, 10-year-old me thought so anyway!
I remember going into department stores and testing Poison perfume.
White Musk from the Body Shop was a favourite scent as was Le Jardin and its evening equivalent, Le Jardin D'amour - bought them both again recently for old time's sake and the daytime one smells a lot nicer than I remember and the evening one doesn't smell quite like I remember, at all!!

And MiniPops - how could I forget that show? Little girls made up to like their favourite pop stars, didn't realise at the time how wrong that really was! And the boys got to dress in denim and pretend to be Shakin' Stevens!

Watching World of Sport on a Saturday afternoon and my gramp watching the wrestling - usually some the main event was something between Big Daddy and Giant Haystacks!

And one last one to be going on with - I remember the Dulux adverts with the big sheepdog. I also remember one Saturday morning my gramp taking me down to our local shopping centre as he often did and the Dulux sheepdog was at a local branch of Woolworths - I wouldn't go and stroke the dog because 'he is too famous' and I was shy! They probably had hundreds of those dogs in different stores on the same day!! Ha ha!

No, I remember it! South coast, at school in the 80s.

I didn't get a single of the song though sad

Glad I'm not the only one, Ereshkigal!

I found it with a few other quality classic singles of the time, including Fandabidozee by the Krankies and It's 'Orrible Being In Love When You're Eight 'n' 'Arf by Claire & Friends, so I'm not convinced that you have actually missed out that much

Not the 80s so sorry for the derail, but they made a dance version of the theme from One Foot in the Grave with Victor Meldrew saying "I don't believe it" at regular intervals.

My best friend and I found a copy in a charity shop at the start of uni in the late 90s

Remember Claire and Friends too!

Not the 80s so sorry for the derail, but they made a dance version of the theme from One Foot in the Grave with Victor Meldrew saying "I don't believe it" at regular intervals.

My best friend and I found a copy in a charity shop at the start of uni in the late 90s grin

Yes, I still have the CD single from my student days of 'Supermarket' Sweep' by the Bar Codes. So terrible that it was.... terrible!

I Also remember wearing awful school shoes from Clarks horrendous horrible brown lace up things in first year of high school then in second year be able to wear pointed baby stiletto heels then having a pair of huge bow on slip on shoes .
Also remember when skin tight jeans became fashionable and next door neighbour taking in my jeans. I remember people saying wear jeans in the bath to make them shrink never tried that!

Calling Tippex "liquid paper" or was that just me

Dotis I was once sent by my primary school class teacher (in approx 1981) to the school office to ask the school secretary for “the magic paper”. Imagine my disappointment when she handed me a little white bottle!
Tippex was mystical stuff in those days though, I remember how exciting it was when my Mum got an electric typewriter that had a delete button that applied it. And when you were older there were all sorts of rumours about people sniffing it.

I was a teen in Central Scotland, turned 12 in 1985. This brings back a lot of memories. I remember a big school trip to the Garden festival and queuing for hours for the Coca Cola Roller Coaster, and that I had got my hair specially curled with bendy rollers the night before. But I also remember not really understanding what the rest of the GF was about- was it just gardens?

My best friend and I would go through to Glasgow on the train to Queen Street, shop all day in the St enoch centre and our Mums would give us money to eat our tea in the Deep Pan Pizza Company before we came home. Razzle Dazzle, Coppernob, Dolcis, River Island on Argyll Street when it first opened and was all lacy blouses and flowery shirts and they played 1920s music inside. We never had money to buy more than one top but we loved just trying stuff on. It was the height of sophistication to drink a coffee in the Buchanan Galleries shopping centre.

London:
Capital Radio - taping songs off the radio/top 40
Ra-ra, and later Puffball skirts
Calling the operator and saying ‘is there someone on the line’ , and when they said yes, answering with ‘your better get off, there’s a train coming’
Drainpipe jeans
Walkmans - Sony was the best!
Jelly shoes
Casuals
Filofaxes in the later 80s
All the music - Duran/Wham! Etc
School was on strike a lot
Change from O levels to GCSEs
Sodastreams - I coveted our neighbour’s one
Teasmades
Grange Hill et al - coming home from school and watching an hour or so of great kids’ TV followed by Crossroads at 6pm when we ate dinner.

I was also 12 in 1985

I had Le Jardin De Amour. It smelled gorgeous.

ForKatt
I loved the Rock Garden - now it’s an Apple shop.
Also Camden Palace in late 80s/early 90s for me.

I remember my mum having posh dinner parties she'd spend all day preparing, making chestnut parve and fancy stuff like that, and getting all dressed up

My mum also had a really out-there hairdresser and had a succession of outlandish big pink/purple etc haircuts! Other kids at school used to say to me 'Why's your mum a punk?' - I loved it!

She also used to go clubbing with her hairdresser - at a time when all clubs were in Soho and if you didn't look fashionable/wild/exceptionally good looking, you didn't get in

I was so excited when my dad bought a Nissan Silvia that had those headlights that pop up

I remember going on holiday abroad and there'd be this panic that you couldn't buy any familiar branded food once you got there! And you booked your holiday in January when all the travel agent catalogues came in the post.

I was born in the late 70s so was fairly young for most of the 80s. However I do remember... :
Rara skirts
The All Aboard children's record that was played at every party
Half penny sweets (you got more for your 10p mixup)
Chopper bikes
Legwarmers
Roller boots
Look-In magazine
Going into Woolworths to see the singles chart and all the records
Recording the radio
Ghetto blasters
Stereos with tape-to-tape so you could make mix tapes
Hiring a VHS player from the video shop that we had to tune to the TV until you had 2 white lines!
I awyays wanted to try Findus Crispy Pancakes but mum wouldn't buy them
Mr Frosty (my friend had it. It was rubbish!)
Tammy Girl
Get in Shape Girl workout gear!

Twas the decade of the glitzy miniseries.

Lace

Mistrals Daughter
Princess Daisy.
A Woman of Substance
Hold the Dream
Return to Eden.

And Deceptions where Stephanie Powers played twins who swapped places

So the same decade gave us glitzy glam miniseries and programmes like The Mad Death and Threads.

Glasgow Garden Festival
The SECC being the coolest place ever
Been taken to the Barra’s on a Sunday, and then to the car market across the road. There was always a distinctive smell of fried food at the Barra’s.
Not being allowed to go to the football as there was still too much ‘trouble’ . Got to my first game in 1988.
Lewis department store.
Tower Records.
The massive Whatevery’s on the dodgy bit of Argyle Street.
The preparations for Glasgow becoming the city of culture in 1990.
Hanging out in the Virgin megastore.
The Trees restaurant on Union Street.
The transport museum being over the South Side of Glasgow.
The circus and fair at the Kelvin Hall.
The Granary on clydeside (now trendy flats), my dad used to tell me that’s were Granny’s went to.
Visiting my Godmother in Sighthill in the high flats, watching the train’s appear from the queen street station tunnel at her window...in amongst all the other high flats.
Murphy’s bakery on Oswald Street that sold chocolate snowballs :)

Stereos with tape-to-tape so you could make mix tapes

And taping the charts every Sunday, getting excited about what would be number One and trying to pause the tape when the DJ spoke between records!

Early 80s Glasgow. Mods everywhere we would meet at weekends from surrounding areas at the bandstand by the river Clyde. Walked or rode scooters to Paddy's market (posh name - the briggait) and the barras to buy vintage clothes and 1960s records often badly scratched. Great outfits as a young teen were to be found in these shopping haunts. I loved my beehive black eyeliner, slingback shoes and leather coat. Mid to late eighties loved the Smiths, Jesus and the Mary Chain, Echo and the Bunnnymen. Visited the Rock Garden pub, danced at the art school disco, Bennett's, Vamps. Cheers in Carnegie's and Fouquet's! We went through an awful lot of hairspray and pan stick make up!

Buzzwords and names from the news.
Perestroika, Glasnost, Chernobyl, Scargill, Reagan, Sue Lawley...

little Get In Shape Girl! I've not thought of that for years! I can hear the ad jingle! I think I had a leotard and skipping rope . Was it green and pink??

Oh so many memories here! I was 15 in 1983 and saved my dinner money for the weekend to spend on rothmans and Pernod and Black. I would have been all permed and "Shader"ed up with White Musk perfume and purple eyeshadow. Checked shirts and Wham t-shirts. Chunky chain type jewelry. Multiple ear piercings. I used to stay at a friend's house at the weekend whose mum worked nights. The stuff we got up to! My dd has recently turned 15 and doesn't understand why I look at her so nervously