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

Oh and no microwaves, showers or dishwashers (except maybe in more well-to-do houses than ours).

Of course no mobile phones of internet and computers were extremely basic (ZX81, Commadore64) and most people, schools and workplaces didn’t have them.

A perfume called Poison was big as was Body Shop Dewberry.

Perms were in fashion.

London housing was more affordable.

No, if the hole was there then you couldn't tape over it. Blank tapes came with a little tab that you could lever out to make them read only, and you had to put sellotape over the hole if you wanted to record over them again.

I knew it was something about sellotape and holes but yes that was it. Nothing worse than finding your Mum had taped Crossroads over your Robin of Sherwood.

I don't remember loads about the 80s, I was born in 83. My mum dyed her hair blue at one point and my friends thought it was cool I didn't! I grew up listening to U2 The Police and UB40 cassettes she left lying around, and I liked the way the reggae music boomed around Brixton indoor market, the acoustics were insane. But my mum also got her bag snatched there and I remember her utter horror and panic when she realised someone had cut the strap and quietly taken it (we were quite poor).
I also liked teddy bears picnics and adventure playgrounds in London. There was also a toy library near us and you could pay a small fee and borrow various toys for a week or two, it was great! I also remember the great storm of 87 because the road outside our house in Camberwell was completely silvery green from all the fallen leaves.

All jumpers were either sporty ( we all had Fred Perry for school) and logoed (never has an era loved its labels more) or batwing (batwing for girls only). There was NO inbetween. And boys wore the pastels as much as us girls

All the neighbours coming round and queuing up to play Repton 3 and Pacman and Ghouls on the Acorn Electron. The games were on tapes and you had to type chain"" to get them to start. They took ages to load up but it was so exciting.

@Trulyatraditionalman

No duvets????!!! 😱

I was about to pick up on that. We certainly had duvets, if not in 1980, not much later. I certainly took a duvet with me when I left home to move into halls in1986.

Thatcher destroyed whole communities and ra-ra skirts were fashionable.
I was a teenager/young adult in the 80s. It was pretty grim with lots of great music that wasn't played on Radio 1.

Who needs Call of Duty when you have Pong?

I wasn’t allowed posters or the fashion stuff once I old enough I brought my jeans myself but the music is what kept me going still an 80s fan today especially 80s Duran Duran, Charles and Diana’s wedding, me being a James Bond nut lived for the films. And I still love buying 12 inches though on cd now.

Rerversible jumpers with eg one big dog on one side and multiple dogs on the other. Puffball skirts.

@Egghead68

London housing was more affordable.

maybe but I moved into a house share in Hammersmith in 1989 and there where 5 of us in 4 bed house - purchased by two sisters who had inherited enough money to get a mortgage for £250K - to me at the time that seemed a crazy amount (the same houses now go for over 1 million!).

They had to buy it between them and let every room to pay the mortgage

Who needs Call of Duty when you have Pong?

Blip .. blip ...blip ...

Out playing till the street lights came on , bikes. roller skates . Ra Ra skirts
Horrible puff ball skirts !!!
Money excess

@Cattenberg

I was born in 1981, and although I had a good childhood, I remember the 80s as a decade of tragedies and disasters. Lockerbie, an Armenian earthquake, Hillsborough, the Marchioness disaster, terrorist bombings, a hurricane, plane crashes...

Same here. I also recall the shadow cast by the IRA. And that was in the East Midlands. Agree with a PP about long hot summers and the right amount of snow.

I remember leg warmers, neon, black and red wallpaper. Black ash furniture, plastic bangles, plastic earrings.
C&A skiwear that wasn’t particularly water resistant, zinc sunscreen
Oil that my mum plastered herself in, before lying in the sun for ages
Disappearing on our ponies for hours, the smell of the local tack shop (leather and wax jackets)

Lunch at the Bernie (sp?) Inn, parties at McDonald’s with wonderfully sickly cake, trips to Pizza Hut

Heading into the local city centre with friends, on the train (99p return) to shop and have a Happy Meal (also 99p, IIRC). Athena and stickers on a roll

Ravel shoes, Dash tracksuits

Christmas tat, tinsel and coloured lights, carol singing, the round table Father Christmas.

And yes, the darker times, I remember the Lockerbie disaster being reported on TV and the horror 😢

I was a child in the 80s (born in ‘77) and like PPs, I remember all the worrying things in the news. The earliest news stories I remember were Hillsborough, King’s Cross Fire, Lockerbie, Zebrugge, Challenger... The world seemed unpredictable and scary. Also remember how terrifying AIDS seemed, and the threat of nuclear war. When you look back, quite a lot of songs (and music videos) from that decade had a theme of nuclear war and the fear of the aftermath.

I remember the fashion being bright and showy, and although there was undoubtedly some superb music then, when people talk about 80s music, I always think of the frothy, cheesy pop stuff which I probably liked at the time but which I don’t like now! Overall, I remember enjoying 90s music a lot more but maybe that’s because that was the decade I came of age and could go out and enjoy nightlife!

In the 80s, we didn’t have a microwave, a dishwasher or a shower, and we were probably the last family in Britain to get a VCR. 😆 I remember the thrill when we actually got all of those things- everything suddenly started feeling so modern and futuristic.

And yes, everyone smoked, everywhere. And I don’t think people picked up their dog’s shit in the street either- but not as many people had dogs then as they do now so it didn’t seem so bad.

Dirty Dancing being the filthiest thing imaginable

Sony Walkman cassette player

Manually tape Blondie & other favourites on the top 40

Roller boots & skateboards

0 levels

Free tickets on your birthday for you & your friends to the local night club

Live aid

Fall of the Berlin wall

Interailing & needing different money for each country before the Euro

No internet
No mobile phones
No social media

I was a kid in the 80s. I never saw smacking at school.

I always had a duvet on my bed

Everyone smoked

We wore fluorescent Lycra

Music was great. We taped the charts very Sunday and watched TOPs on Thursday

Smash hits magazine

TVs looked like a cardboard box with twiddly nobs. We had 4 channels

Computer games involved playing a tape

Tapes were everything. And records. Walkmans

Perms

Corner baths were classy

I first tried McDonald's in 1989

Care Bears, barbie and my little pony

Everyone had (by today's standard) a big house

Mums didn't work

School was a a place to make friends and smoke fags

Saying the number when you answered the phone.

I had completely forgotten about this! Yes! So strange.

Gosh I was so scared of nuclear war. My parents bought me a cassette of When the Wind Blows which I used to listen to falling asleep... I wonder why I was anxious And then there were the dystopian kids’ books - Z for Zachariah, some of the Robert Swindells ones...

Gosh, yes, covering books in wallpaper, although mine were covered in anaglypta which was really difficult to write the subject name on.

The thrill of the first page of a new exercise book. Writing with the neatest handwriting for that page. Fingers stained with ink from leaky fountain pens.

Underskirts (slips), I always wore a slip underneath my school skirt.

Oooh yes to Athena- pocket money spent on posters of musicians and movie stars. And that black and white poster of the bloke with the baby that everyone had.

Also going to Happy Eater for kids’ birthday ‘treats’ 😆

Not sure what the no duvets thing is about, duvets were in the Uk in the mid sixties, and were everywhere in the early 70s. If anyone didn’t have a duvet in the eighties it was more their personal circumstances and was not common.

@waterlego

I was a child in the 80s (born in ‘77) and like PPs, I remember all the worrying things in the news. The earliest news stories I remember were Hillsborough, King’s Cross Fire, Lockerbie, Zebrugge, Challenger... The world seemed unpredictable and scary. Also remember how terrifying AIDS seemed, and the threat of nuclear war. When you look back, quite a lot of songs (and music videos) from that decade had a theme of nuclear war and the fear of the aftermath.

I remember the fashion being bright and showy, and although there was undoubtedly some superb music then, when people talk about 80s music, I always think of the frothy, cheesy pop stuff which I probably liked at the time but which I don’t like now! Overall, I remember enjoying 90s music a lot more but maybe that’s because that was the decade I came of age and could go out and enjoy nightlife!

In the 80s, we didn’t have a microwave, a dishwasher or a shower, and we were probably the last family in Britain to get a VCR. 😆 I remember the thrill when we actually got all of those things- everything suddenly started feeling so modern and futuristic.

And yes, everyone smoked, everywhere. And I don’t think people picked up their dog’s shit in the street either- but not as many people had dogs then as they do now so it didn’t seem so bad.

More white dog shit back then. You don't see that any more