To ask you to tell me about the '80s?

[Trulyatraditionalman]

I was born in Dec '89. I absolutely love '80s music, and the way it is depicted in films and TV makes it seem like it was the most amazing decade.

I'd like to experience the '80s through your memories

Although Mum made me have a top sheet still.

My parents still do this! If I stay at their house I discreetly take it off.

White socks with suits
Neon Legwarmers
Huge hair for girls and mullets for boys
Shoulder pads
Dallas
Peg waist stone washed jeans
Buying a three bed house at 21 and paying my dad back the £500 the building society wouldn't give us due to ironclad lending criteria by working Saturdays for a year.
Music actually played by the band.
Golden age of cinema.

Darksides too - IRA bombings, miners strike, mass unemployment. Lots of drinking at lunchtimes then driving home and smoking everywhere in the office whether non-smokers like me liked it or not but overall for me personally, golden.

The opening bars of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Relax' and I am right back there.

Oh yes. And radio 1 wouldnt play it. Even when it got to number 1

As pp said we did have "continental quilts" but i also had a candlewick bedspread

Born 81, went out to play and just had to be in when the street lights came on, went many walks on the country roads and into the big woods (werent allowed in there but it had a great big swing on a tree).
Went on a bus to town from age 10 to go swimming, cinema or just run riot in town. Never got a lift anywhere by parents, had to walk or get bus.
Music was amazing, school discos with mini skirts, plastic jewellery and everything bright colours.
When raves started it was amazing a d school discos were then called raves (make me laugh now with the teachers thinking they were cool but no idea about the illegal raves)

Agree about the nuclear fear. It was very real. We had documentaries shown in the early evening about what a nuclear bomb would do to you with graphic illustrations of the effect of a nuclear winter on the human body. I remember one where they had a man and a woman, just their faces, and it showed them aging rapidly and talked us through what was happening to them as we watched their faces get old, haggard, I'll, diseased and their hair went all white. I honestly really thought we'd just die in a nuclear war one day. There were enough nukes to blow up the planet fifty times over. It was a bit grim. Then in the mid 80s we all got told that we'd die of AIDS as well.

The music and fashion were great though, especially early 80s new wave and synth pop. You had all these bands doing experimental creative things, j think mostly because so many young people were unemployed so it was cooler to say you were in a band than to say you were on the dole.

So pop culture in the early 80s was counter culture. I don't think that is the case now. Also there were lots of squats, people just taking over buildings, hooking themselves to the grid. Then of course all the rave scene as well.

There was quite a lot of rebellion in general as I remember. Not just from young people but obviously with things like the miners' strike and much later on the poll tax riots too. I never did pay my poll tax. I think I was only supposed to for about a year and then it got scrapped but I didn't pay it. There were so many of us doing the same that they never caught up with us all.

So I remember it is being quite a bolshy (in both senses) time but I guess it depends where you were. I was in the North and we were kicking back. I've heard it described since as a time of great wealth and slick hedonism but have to say while we heard about "yuppies" and the like on the news and comments programmes they might as well have been on Mars, they were so outside of my experience.

@LApprentiSorcier

Although Mum made me have a top sheet still.

My parents still do this! If I stay at their house I discreetly take it off.

I have a feeling my parents still have a top sheet too. I can't be doing with it and as soon as I moved out-no top sheet!

And weirdly I remember my mum watching Cagney and Lacey while I played with my teddies - years later I saw a repeat and had a huge flood of memories from the theme tune!

Top of the Pops.
Smash Hits
The Sunday night countdown of the top 40...

Teachers hitting pupils in class still.

Huge variety in pop music styles and fashion.

SCRUNCHIES

We had quilts and a shower

Lots more power cuts than nowadays

Lots more freedom as a kid

Far fewer cars

Smoking was everywhere - workplaces, buses, planes. We even used to sneak a smoke in the school toilets, the staff must have known.

Exciting new music and fashion - people pushing boundaries of class, gender and education. The advent of convenience for the masses, and access to a more liberated lifestyle for many especially young women. Package holidays took people, relatively cheaply, to new experiences. I distinctly remember that previously, outdoors eating was a picnic. After experiencing al fresco abroad, people had patios installed in the U.K. and patio furniture was born. Many people had permed hair! There was also dreadful issues, the threat of nuclear war was very real. We had leaflets and public service announcements about what to do, but essentially we knew we’d all die. There was a drama called ‘Threads’ about the bomb being dropped near Sheffield, that I really wish I hadn’t watched, it badly affected my MH. The miners strike was horrible; we collected food and made up parcels for families at school.

Band aid. Though reading pps I did worry a lot about nuclear war!

The police beat up the miners during the miners strike and they beat up the print workers in Wapping. The banned Gerry adams from speaking on the telly and an actor spoke his words - which was odd. There was section 28 was around and no one was allowed to talk about being gay at school.
There were a lot of people wearing pastel and big big big hair.

Wonderful times! Frothy pop fun like Wham and Duran Duran interspersed with the musical beauty of The Smiths and the Cure. Taping John Peel's show and the Top 40 Countdown on the radio.
My friends and I lived for Top of the Pops night.
Big hairsprayed crimped hair, smelling of Linco Beer or Silvikrin.
We spent the day at school together, then clogged up the single home landline phone gossiping to them all night.
You felt the burn watching Jane Fonda, the Green Goddess or Mr Motivator doing aerobics.
We were glued to Dallas and Dynasty.
Perfume was Anais Anais, Loulou or Body Shop Whire Musk.
Clothes were a bright silky loosely belted shirt over a tight skirt with winklepicker shoes, then as the 80's progressed, it was "bodies" worn under men's workshirts, 2nd hand faded Levi's and Dr Martens.
Food was Findus Crispy Pancakes and Angel Delight for pudding.
Soda Streams, Mr Frosty, Diary of an Edwardian Country Lady notepads, Body Shop baskets and scented erasers were on my Christmas list, along with Rimmel makeup (especially Heather Shimmer or that blueish purple iridescent lipstick that made you look dead.)
Read Just Seventeen and Mizz incessantly for 'relationships advice' on my non existent relationships/how to make my crushes fall in love with me. There was a photo story and 'position of the month'!
Smoking, underage drinking in pubs and clubs.
Board rubbers thrown at you if you weren't paying attention in lessons.
I was aware of and affected by the AIDS campaigns.
Consumerism and Thatcherism meant everything was larger than life - Sloane Rangers, Wall Street, big shoulderpads and sharp suits. So much money in the city.
I loved this decade in my life.

Born in 65. Love to oblige but worked in the City, all a bit of a haze 🤣

I loved growing up in the 80s and have some great memories. We had the best music, the best films, not so much the fashion though lol, although I look back at it fondly.
No phones or internet (definitely not a bad thing!) So we could bunk off school much easier lol! Me and my mates used to do that a lot, and follow Bros (ok so not all of the music was great! ) or go up the West End to Tower Records at Piccadilly Circus. Have sleepovers and rent out horror films on VHS from the local video shop and scare ourselves silly! Great times.
I was born in 75 btw

Things that stick in my mind as an 80s kid-Dynasty, smash hits, the hitman and her , top of the pops, Adrian mole, also really traditional- Sunday roasts, church, people got married young, people aged 60 looked much older- blue rinses etc, plus would have served in the war etc
Lots of pretty shocking things compared to now -homophobia (see it's a sin ), racism, sexism was mainstream and on telly
Jimll fix it - prime time Saturday viewing
Bill wymam marrying a 16 year old Mandy smith.
Big divides between north and south eg striking miners and yuppies
Cold War with Russia still a big theme and fear of the bomb
Very different feel by the end of the decade with acid house , rap, madchester bands

First half of the 80s, I worked for a stockbrokers in the City. Lots of money about, boozy lunches, excess. Then the second half of the 80s i was a SOHM , OH a high earner. Mum and baby classes, Gymtots etc. But interest rates 15%, so money worries despite being supposedly comfortable. Happy days though.

@Trulyatraditionalman Following this thread as I was born 9 days before the 90s and love telling everyone I was an 80s baby. Even though it was only for 9 days.

wow op i could have written this!
dec 89 baby too,, and feel like i missed out on the 80s!!

Honestly, the duvet thing has floored me! I swear they show duvets in almost every period drama I've ever watched. I'm off to go and snuggle in my two winter duvets and feel so grateful for them now!!

I'm so sorry to the pp who lost friends to AIDs. That's terrible.

Had no idea that nuclear war was such a threat!

All the outfits, nightlife and phone-free activities sound amazing.

I'm so glad I started this thread...keep it coming!

First half of the 80s was school. Fantastic music, Duran Duran, Spandau, Depeche mode, Human league. Tights with leg warmers at the bottom at school. Lady Di hairstyles with a long thin “tail”. Second half of the 80s started work, a YTS scheme, started going to clubs. Loads of hairspray. Twilight teaser lipgloss. Boyfriends with Ford Escorts or Capris. Latter part of the 80s, went off to college. Music started getting crap (Stock Aiken and Waterman) so I started getting into early dance then indie (the Cure, the Mission, Wondersruff, New model army). Loads more hairspray and crimped hair! Some great films at this point - Dirty Dancing, LaBamba.

Some darker times. Miners strikes, IRA troubles, Hillsborough all stand out in my mind.

I turned 12 in 1980 so remember it well. The comedy - Ben Elton, Not the Nine O'Clock News, The Young Ones. Adults hated it or didn't get it. The music: The Jam, The Communards, Bronski Beat, Bananarama, Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Wham, Madness. I wasn't a fan of Boy George/Culture Club. The TV - Channel 4 starting, Brookside & everyone swooning over Barry Grant.

Fashion - big hair, T-shirts with massive logos like Relax. Pixie boots. Lots of denim and leather jackets.

Mass unemployment, people hated Thatcher, the miners strike then as I went to uni, the boycott of Barclays Bank due to apartheid. As others have said the nuclear threat hung over us, the brave women at Greenham Common trying to stop nuclear weapons being based here. Was it also the decade of Swampy trying to stop new bypasses being built?

My DDs adore the music of the time. It was a strange time to be young, but an exciting time. By the end of the decade I had a job, I wore a suit and people had "portable" computers (you needed massive muscles to actually carry the thing). Data was on 5.25" floppy disks. God, I am showing my age!

@BonnieDundee

The opening bars of Frankie Goes to Hollywood's 'Relax' and I am right back there.

Oh yes. And radio 1 wouldnt play it. Even when it got to number 1

As pp said we did have "continental quilts" but i also had a candlewick bedspread

Yes Mike Read (Radio One Breakfast show at the time) was having none of it was he? Banned-and straight to number one.

Their single 'Two Tribes' about nuclear war contained the lyrics-

When two tribes go to war
A point is all that you can score