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

I was a kid. It was great, from my own little bubble I remember: (in no particular order)
Playing outside tonnes and much more freedom to roam.
Computer games just coming about. Space invader type games were amazing. Though my dad bought a computer that was crap for games and sometimes we had to sit for hours typing in code to get a basic game up and running.
We all ate tonnes more sugar. Lots of sweets, sugary coke and sugar in medicine.
Parents weren’t so involved as I remember. I certainly never had my parents micro-manage me the way we do now (guilty myself).
My parents going hoopla over all electrical mid-cons: dishwasher; video player; teasmade even electric carving knives and our chest freezer.
Bad things I remember:
People had a much worse survival rate for cancer and bad illnesses.
Terrible sexism. I can remember dreadful inappropriate comments and assumptions even as a kid.
Limited food. My parents were dinosaurs and we ate nothing foreign and nothing that wasn’t served with chips or potatoes (my friends families were often more progressive).
I remember some dreadful news/tragedies too: Lockerbie; Chernobyl; space shuttles blowing up; awful suffering with strikes; apartheid in SA. The troubles in NI being very bad.

We had very modest holidays, if any. Think week in an English coastal guest house/butlins or someone else’s caravan (always loved that!) .
We always had a crap rusty car.

Oh, I forgot. There was also Chernobyl. So you knew that radioactivity was drifting over you to the extent that sheep were deemed unfit for consumption and there was nothing you could do about it. Accidents at Sellafield as well (having previously named it from Windscale due to a disaster).

And being interested in not being cruel to animals or even not eating them was a sign that you were a mental Animal Liberation Front member and therefore by definition a terrorist. Probably expected to be force fed meat as well, as only Muslim/Jewish children were permitted to have grated cheese instead of the pork/beef mince that got dished out at school; you were just 'being fussy'.

I was 12-22 in the 80s
Great music, Ian drury, madness. Costello.
No credit cards or credit.
But
Terrorism
IRA
Nuclear threat
Cold war
Rife unemployment
Miners strike
Aids.
Riots

It wasn't all ra ra skirts and Duran Duran

I was a teenager in the 80s. I spent a lot of it clubbing. Easy to get in if you were under age, but you could make faked ID easily.
Clubs were cool then, lots of lasers lights. I wore shiny geometric jump suits and geometric hair cuts. Make up was bold. There were music phases like Mods, then moved to New Romantic. Also Ska music and Rude Boys.
Not as many drugs, although people did smoke weed, and occasionally drop acid. Then it was curly perms, highlighted, and everyone's hair looked like cotton wool. Everyone smoked including at work. It was fairly easy to get a job. Yes , I had a duvet.
Downside, Thatcher, miners strike, a LOT of racism and very anti gay especially when AIDS hit. I had gay friends and used to go to gay pubs with them, and there was often a fight outside because people went " gay bashing ".
I did various jobs in early 80s and then went to Uni. Student grants back then. Students were reasonably well off, and could claim benefits in the summer. Loads of strikes, student marches, CND marches, threats of Nuclear war and Cold War was at its height ( pre Gorbachev).
Lots of bad things about the 80s, but a lot of good too, but I am glad I grew up in that decade.
I don't think anyone who is younger could ever appreciate that you couldn't travel to East Germany, Poland, Hungary etc, until the fall of the Berlin wall. They fascinated me. I absolutely love travelling to former Eastern Bloc countries now, although the life they lived under Communism is pretty much consigned to History books and Museums.
Oh ,forgot, people really weren't as far travelled back then as now. There was no budget airlines really, you saved up for an annual trip abroad for 2 weeks to Greece or a Spanish Costa, and if you were skint, you went by coach.

When VHS came out I used to lie in front of the TV to tape my favourite songs off Top of the Pops.

And putting a bit of sellotape over the hole to ensure nobody taped anything over it.

No worries about phones or photos or social media. No crap abput designer clothes

Or bad perms which looked vaguely mullet like in teenage girls.

The 80's for me are summed up by

• miners strikes

-unemployment

• bad perms
• shoulder pads

And every fucker smoked!
Except me. I was asthmatic. Because everyone smoked

@LApprentiSorcier

The worst rumour that could go around school was that somebody was gay

Yes - the blatant and open homophobia in schools was shocking. Any term associated with being gay was used as an insult and flung around without a thought.

Has that pretty much gone now in schools?

God bullying was rife. And if you were a crap teacher you were just a crap teacher. I mean it seemed to be expected that some teachers were crap but what can you do. Our o level history teacher was a case in point. Recruited in the post war drive so no training, and forty years later he was just biding his time till pension kicked in. We spent 18 months with him sat at the front of the class telling us to copy out information from text books. That was literally the lesson.

Also all the PE teachers were bastards, every last one of them. There's no way they'd get away with that kind of shit now.

Lots of consensus about the importance of the music.

It wasn't all ra ra skirts and Duran Duran

It was a bit. [blush For me anyway.

Best decade ever! Played outside all hours, smoking stolen cigarettes, spin the bottle in our church yard, Hammer House of Horror, Top of.the Pops, Fun music, Happier people, Less materialism, Cinema, Queen live at Knebworth, No concern for brand names, no mobiles, arcade games, skinny dipping, Ringo's crisps!!!

Has that pretty much gone now in schools?

I really don't know - I don't have children so all I know about the schools of the 2020s is what I see on Mumsnet.

@SpiderinaWingMirror

And every fucker smoked! Except me. I was asthmatic. Because everyone smoked

Mainly in the downstairs loos in school 'B block' at morning break.

Oh, when I say it was easy to get a job, it was if you wanted white collar work. If you worked as a miner, in manufacturing etc, it was shit as Maggie closed everything. 😡.

If I listen now it's much more fun listening to 70s music. The music from the 80s was very overwrought and pretentious. Well quite a lot of it. Even though I liked it at the time and it's still nostalgic for me.

@pugdogmom I had a friend who worked in the Student Union at my local Tech and he used to make up fake ID cards and sell them for a couple of quid. Well worth it to avoid the "will they/won't they" on the club steps as you tried to blow your fag smoke out in a mature way and not giggle.

I was 3 in 1980, so I spent my childhood in the 80s becoming a teenager in 1990. I continue to live in the same town and attended the same school as my kids did. We always had computers and game stations as my dad was an electronics engineer who worked with them. We had sky tv from being fairly young and had holidays abroad. We played out for hours on our bikes and made dens etc, but my ds 13 does these things now. I suppose I'm saying that my childhood and my kids were very similar. Not much has changed round here since the 80s

I was a teenager in the 1980s. I’m sure there will be a lot of posts about popular culture, so I will be a bit serious & boring.

The Cold War was very, very real, and it was fucking scary. The thought that a flashpoint between a few hotheads at a border checkpoint in Berlin could escalate into nuclear annihilation and the destruction of human civilisation within a couple of days was never far from your mind.

The sense of relief and optimism when the ‘Iron Curtain’ collapsed in 1989 was extraordinary. It may sound naive and silly now, but the song ‘Wind of Change’ really did speak for millions of young people all over Europe.

Oh well, what might have been....

@Pugdogmom

Oh, when I say it was easy to get a job, it was if you wanted white collar work. If you worked as a miner, in manufacturing etc, it was shit as Maggie closed everything. 😡.

Closing all the big blue collar industries and privatisation. So city types could buy up all the shares.

I remember my pocket money going up to £5 a week when I was 14, which handily was how much an album cost, so I used my increased wealth to buy Like A Virgin by Madonna which I loved. Also remember kissing each Duran Duran member goodnight from the Rio inner sleeve.

Now feeling old as OP is the same age as one of my children ! Loving this thread though.

@OhioOhioOhio

The summers were hot, filled with ice cream and fun. The winters had exactly the right amount of snow and cosy perfection. You missed a real treat.

I couldn't agree more. Summers seemed to last forever and winters had proper snowman building snow. I tell myself that it's because I was at school so had all summer off to enjoy every bit of sun as an adult I find I'm working a lot of sunny days so feel summers aren't as good.

@sparklingbrook This sounds hilarious, do you have a link to the video at all?

The 80's makeup pics online never have the bright blue mascara that everyone wore. I remember pausing the video of the likes of Madonna and Janet Jackson on top of the pops to try to copy the look, together with the pink eyeshadow. I must have looked like an albino rabbit. Their photos online now (I've just searched) are all wearing black mascara and eyeliner which was def not the done thing.