To wonder if Sundays in the 80s were restful or boring

[IlovedLadybirdbooks]

Large stores were closed on Sundays. Eating out was a rare treat. No Deliveroo. 3 TV channels to choose from. People got their exercise from a walk or cycling rather than the gym. Children played out rather than being taken to organised activities.

Just pondering ... were Sundays more relaxing or a bit of a drag?

I found Sundays boring. We use to have a Sunday roast with my grandparents even when it was too hot to have a roast. My granddad would start an argument over the smallest thing and he always had to be right.

The Sunday roast was such a big thing for everyone with some kind of dessert. A tradition that seems to be rare these days , mostly because a joint of meat is so expensive and people tend to go out instead.
I can’t remember the last roast I cooked.

We only recently stopped automatically doing a Sunday roast ( BBQ in summer) - there's seems less point with just three of us though we still do them.

Eating out on a Sunday - we tend to try and do when IL are over - has got a lot harder as I also think more people are going out for Sunday lunch than previously did.

I worked most Sundays - I had 2 jobs to pay the mortgage so no, they weren’t restful.

A bit boring at times as a child but we lived in the countryside with acres to explore and no adults to supervise so I used this to the max!
I read lots of books and we usually had family over for lunch so that hroke it up a bit too.
I was still bored at times and always had the sunday night dread!

Sunday roast followed by Vienetta ice cream (which we all thought was posh food!).

Then we'd have tea later on which was boiled egg salad followed by mr Kiplings fondant fancies or Battenberg cake 😆

Places were open! We'd go for pub meals, garden centres were open or Dad woukd drive is to a place of interest and hopefully we'd find a tea room for a cuppa. TV would benold films which Inloved and still do, Channel 4 started in 82 so we had 4 channels for most of the 80s

I was a young adult then so not hanging around at home. Had an active social life and belonged to an activity club that had events on Sundays. Videos came in then and it was exciting to choose a film you wanted to see and watch it at home, rather than wait for it to be on TV if you hadn't seen it at the cinema.

In the 70s it was boring when I was still at school, but I was bored a lot then, when my social life dipped. Sat at home waiting for lunch to be ready and trying to do homework while listening to the radio, or dragged off to visit relatives several hours drive away.

Boring. You have not known true tedium until you have lived through an old-style English Sunday.

Couldn't even go down the pub (Sunday opening 12 -2 and 7 - 10.30).

That sounds lovely tbf!

I remeber really hating them too. My parents would make a roast and the smell was awful, they would bicker.
Sooo boring as well, especially in the rain.

I'm from another country in Europe and I loved weekends growing up, because we always had these family parties with a lot of freshly cooked amazing food and freshly baked mouth-watering cakes and lemonade and booze.
Sometimes drunk men fought about politics.
But we - kids - just roamed freely outside.
It was bliss.
No TV, no shopping and no other entertainment.
In summer/autumn all families used to go to the forest to pick mushrooms. I think they still do it.

So what do people do now on Sundays that are so radically different. Admittedly you can shop till you drop between 10am and 4pm or stay glued to Netflix/your phone all day, but otherwise what am I missing?

I’ve always hated Sundays.! worst day of the week, but probably just a hangover from boring ones I had as a child and then the school dread!

Pubs always used to close at 3 pm didn’t they.
It was like a late siesta for so many places back then. Some chain restaurants are open all day now.

I remember playing out and reading. Going 'for a drive' with my dad. Literally end up anywhere. Sometimes we'd go to Gatwick and watch the planes. Visit family. I read a lot of books and don't remember being bored

Teenager in the 80’s. I worked really hard at school, Saturday job, always had some other job on the go so Sundays after a roast (had to be done) it was off I went. Usually to meet friends, a boyfriend when I had one, we had some great laughs. Seaside resorts. The odd gig. Even sneaking into a pub if we could get away with it. None of which our parents knew about as long as we were home at a decent time.
Yeah I was just at Sharon’s.
Yeah we just went to the park again.
Oh and the cinema I was obsessed, anything by John Hughes, I can remember going to see Absolute Beginners, we had one nearby but again get the bus into town and make an afternoon out of it.
Then there was the odd sunbathing Sunday when I’d be out in the garden for 12 hours in factor zero carrot oil. Waiting for the Top 40 to start on Radio 1.
Mt siblings were pretty much the same, my dad was out having a pint and I now realise why my mum was fed up as she’d be doing everything else.

You can go for brunch, meet friends for coffee, visit a museum, art gallery, garden centre or National Trust property, catch a film, go to the gym, Parkrun or a fitness class, browse a farm shop, or head off on a spontaneous day trip. And if you'd rather stay at home, you can stream endless films and TV shows, video call friends and family without worrying about the cost, browse the internet, book a holiday, plan meals, get home décor inspiration, take an online course, or access millions of books, podcasts and documentaries instantly. There's simply far more choice than there used to be.

I'm a bit baffled why people are acting as if life hasn't changed since the 80s- it has massively

Markets used to open on Sunday for half a day years ago pre the change. I don’t like markets much so didn’t go. I am not sure why they were exempt from the Sunday opening rules.

Not boring, but we weren't out on trips every weekend as kids anyway. I did extra curricular activities after school so weekends were pretty free. Shopping for food on Saturday. Sunday we'd go to Sunday School in the morning and then come home and play. I would generally complain there was too much sport on the TV, so yes I was clearly bored some of the time, but not on a bad way. We had plenty of indoor and outdoor space to play. I might go and see my friend up the road, or I might go to lunch at my friend from Sunday Schools. Evening we had a roast. Later on there was the dreaded homework to avoid.

@marblechair "You can go for brunch, meet friends for coffee, visit a museum, art gallery, garden centre or National Trust property, "

Admittedly brunch wasn't much a thing but you could go anywhere (restaurant, pub etc) for lunch, just as you can now. You could also meet friends for coffee, visit a garden centre or farm shop (Sunday was probably their busiest day) and go to an art gallery or museum. You could also go to any number of attractions such as a zoo or animal park, adventure park or theme park just as you can now. In my home city of Bristol there were various boat trips, the Exploratory (bit like the Science Museum), an ice rink, loads of cinemas, several city farms, several very cool indoor water parks not far away, bowling alleys with on site restaurants and arcades, Longleat, The Costwold Wildlife Park. I mean almost anything you can find now you could've found then unless it exclusively involved the internet. Yes you can stream "endless" films as you say, but does the average family really spend all day watching back to back films, any more than they would've in the 80's?

They were boring.

Very very boring.

Unless I had a new Jilly Cooper or Tom Sharpe to read until my eyeballs almost fell out. And that wasn’t very often cos the library never had them in and books were limited to what was in the shop, and what my paper round money could afford.

I have ADHD and back in the day my H was strong, boredom was my kryptonite, so I would invariably have some Genius Flash of Inspiration to keep myself occupied and get into trouble. But at least your parents shouting and going “but WHY ?!?!” is less boring than staring at the grey Sunday sky, with undone homework dread building, but the capacity to make myself actually do it shrinking by the minute.

I bloody loved the internet the moment it arrived. That siren song of a modem attempting to connect and make all the boring go away…

I'm trying to remember what I did. I guess as a teenager I spent most of Sunday morning in bed. Then I had homework to do. I remember going for bike rides with the girl who lived up the road.

No stately home visits for me. And I wasn't sporty, so no sporting hobbies.

When I was older I had a Saturday job and the shops used to open for a few Sundays in the summer as we were in a holiday area so I used to get double time for working Sundays.

Anything or nothing just as long as it’s not the same thing week in week out.
I love a quiet Sunday or a busy Sunday. I even enjoy the previously loathed walk in the woods because I’m not being forced to do it every week.
I’ll still much prefer a roast to a fry up though.
Interestingly though my parents go all over the place on a Sunday these days and my own kids hate Sundays!

60s / 70s Central London - museums were open, often went Sunday morning swimming and we just rocked up and spent as long as we wanted in the pool and it was affordable! Visit the park and play. Helping with Sunday lunch, relatives visiting, playing games, finished up homework, reading, sitting down and watching tv as a family, making model kits... not boring, we got on and made the most of the day.