If you could go back to 1983, what's the first thing you'd do?

[Sinat]

I'd buy a brand new Volvo 340 straight from the Volvo dealership

Tell my grandad to lay off the booze and fags and get his heart checked out so he would live long enough for us to meet.

Nah, man. You shoulda sat the CSE paper - f*cjk O Levels !!!!

Go to Streatham High Street for clothes shopping at Che Guavra, Benetton and a few other shops including hippy gift shop Abraxus and Pratts (John Lewis).

Have a pizza 🍕 with starter and soft drinks at The Deep Pan Pizza Company.

Buy a 7 inch single at WH Smith’s or Our Price.

Have a milkshake at McDonalds.

Go ice skating at Streatham Ice Rink. Sunday though so no disco in afternoon.

Browse the gift shop with the Athena posters and Garfield merchandise next to ABC cinema.

Go and see a film at either ABC cinema or the Odeon, a 5-10 minute walk away. I think Electric Dreams was out in 1983 and I did see that at the odeon.

I would love for someone to recognise that I wasn't some oddball.
I would want my ASD diagnosis there and then as a child.
It would have prevented so much bullying and torturing of my own mind wondering why I was so different from anyone else.

Tell the career advisor to fuck off and stick to my plan!
It would've saved me £££ and I would have turned up for my exams.
Tell my now DH that he would get to marry the best woman ever .... although that would have been all sorts of creepy and very wrong as he was my best friends kid brother 😂

Sounds similarly creepy to The Time Traveller's Wife unless you were also a baby at the time!

Lose weight.

Haha I didn’t exist yet 🙃

Change sixth forms, get off the Oxbridge entrance track so that I ended up at a university that was good for me, and definitely not get involved with the controlling BF.

Bond with my new baby brother instead of looking at him like he was an alien. Maybe he wouldn’t have turned into such a nightmare teen if I’d taken any sort of interest.

I had an art teacher called Mr O'Higgins, his daughter was a complete bitch.

I'd go to the Hacienda and see The Smiths.

I'd meet my Gran.

Not have the seriously awful perm that made me look 36, not 16.

Believe one of my close friends when she confided in me that her 2 older brothers were raping her, rather than laugh uncomfortably and pretend she didn't say it. I'm so sorry, H.

Ooh -another one ! I’d spend more time with my great grandparents who were born 1898/99 and were (looking back) so wonderful! , they ran a pub when younger, had so many stories about WW1/WW2 and coming from Portsmouth/Southampton also used to tell stories about Titanic … I was 13 at the time and found it so boring and wanted to go and listen to my Duran Duran album (on tape) .. 🤦‍♀️🥲

I d still protest about nuclear weapons but wouldn't lie in my bed worrying about nuclear war after we were shown Threads at school.
Like my mum said at the time we wouldn't know anything about it and here I am at 55 still here.

Hit Karen C even harder than I did after months of her bitchy bullying.

I teach at my old school now which is really weird as I have to walk past the classroom it happened in daily.

Not ask for a violin for my 7th birthday because, really, it would have been a kindness to everyone not to get one.

Write Harry Potter!

Choose different A levels that I might actually enjoy/pass

I did and it wasn't all that. You had to change a fuckton of money to go over for a day, and there was nothing to spend it on. In east Berlin, everything was very clean and calm and quiet. West Berlin was smokin'!

Tell my waste of space father and (to-be) abusive mother to leave newborn me with my paternal grandparents as soon as I'm able to leave hospital.

Knock for my friend opposite and play out on our skates

This

I'd buy the brownstone in downtown Jersey City with the octagonal library for $98K that I really wanted. It would be worth north of $2m now.