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?

Oh God, the Must Sit And Eat At Table as a Family dread.

Typically accompanied by Pea-Gate, Broccoli-gate, GreenBeans-gate or whatever the latest vegetable was that my brother wouldn’t eat, None of us could leave the table until the Enormous Row had peaked and parents gave up because from my brother’s perspective they might as well had been trying to force him to eat dog poo.

I have no idea how he’s made it this far in life without getting scurvy. But I do know that forcing the issue had zero impact on expanding his palate and made me allergic to events involving a sit down meal, the starter is always a sense of impending dread as soon as I see a set table.

They could certainly be boring for kids. But for parents, at least so long as you weren't under pressure to feed a big group of people for which you'd not got prepared, I'm sure it must have been bliss. So few interuptions. proper long phone calls if you wanted to family. No big food shops open, hardly any shops at all, not sure about petrol stations but I suspect few were open.

I know my brother and I must have felt time passed quite slowly compared to the other days but I don't think it harmed us. these days I really think we have too many distractions. There is no time to just be. There's a book I think called "Amusing Ourselves to Death" and I've not read it but I think that probably sums up what's happening in " civilised" countries.

I’m stunned that you framed going to the gym as ‘interesting’ whereas going for a walk or cycle as boring, in your OP

You misunderstood.

I'm saying back then exercise on a Sunday would be walking and cycling rather than going to the gym. I love walking, loved my bicycle when I was a kid and have never set foot in a gym.

I loved Sundays in the 80s. The ones I recall most fondly I was late primary aged. Parents would drop me at the stables and I'd fart around in fields with ponies while they went off to play badminton. They'd pick me up in time for lunch (soup and crumpets). In the afternoon we'd get something from the video shop (independent, way before Blockbuster!). I can still remember the smell of the shop. We'd all watch together. Then roast for dinner.

Boring? I'm 43 and from the age of 11 I worked all weekend, first on a fruit farm, 7am to7pm for around £8-10 a day. Then in the autumn picking potatoes. Then from 12 babysitting first nights and evenings then all day Saturday for £20 a day from 14 onwards. Boring? I'd have loved a chance to be bored..

Sorry, I know that's very walked uphill to school barefoot 😂 but seriously as small children we were running round wild and feral then by 8/9 looking after siblings then onwards we were free or cheap labour.

Thank goodness was things have improved, whether you spend all' Sunday at softplay or parks or the cinema or at home playing boardgames and studying few kids are working all day to supplement the family income. Which is a good thing

Do you have children?

My kids spend ages every day and certainly over the weekend out on bikes and scooters and dog walks and playpark and forest walks and whatnot. I do go to the gym for a bit of alone time and strength building but do you think that means I don't also go for a forest walk and a cycle? And take the kids swimming?

I think you might have your decade a bit wrong

I meant to put 70s/80s in the title. I was going for the decades before large stores were allowed to open on Sundays which Google tells me was 1994.

Your family might have eaten out regularly but mine and our relatives/friends certainly didn't.

Reading my primary school "diaries" our Sundays were spent visiting relatives or them coming to us. I liked my grandparents and aunties so it wasn't a drag. Loved reading and was quite creative (as a child) so found something to do when I got bored.

No rose coloured spectacles from me. I remember the miners' strike and my mother's illness and death whilst we were teenagers.

Channel 4 started in 82 so we had 4 channels for most of the 80s

So it was 4 channels rather than 3! Still not as many as today!

Boring boring boring. One thing I always remember is i wanted to craft/make things but we never had any stuff or paint. Even if you wanted to draw I didn’t always have paper.

I just associated Sundays with school the next day as a child and hated all of it. It was the most boring of days.

I think we are looking at them through rose coloured glasses.

My parents were very busy. Dad spent the morning at the allotment. After lunch we would visit family or have visitors. Mum spent Sunday morning cooking a roast and then baking for the week. Sunday evenings she was stood in front of the ironing board ironing everything from uniforms to dads y fronts.

edited to add I never found them boring. We lived in a cul de sac and the mornings were outside playing with the other children. In the afternoon I would be playing with cousins.

Whst on earth are you going on about 😂

I miss the time we had...

Is this why my great grandads (one from a country where Christianity wasn't the main religion, the other from Britain but an atheist) were very pro keeping Sunday trading, I wonder? Admittedly, they were reckoning without the internet, but I quite like the idea of a Twixmas type day off each week, but don't know if it would work now.

My sister and I were always up early but there was nothing on the TV in the mornings - I vaguely remember a programme with Willy Ruston but can’t remember the title. The Sunday Roast was the main event and us kids always had to wash and dry up. Yes, we did play outside but by the time I was 13/14, I had lost interest and stayed in my bedroom with my records. Paul Young’s No Parlez on repeat 😊

Willy Ruston ! Blimey, I remember him.
i watched a programme once on Sunday morning’ open university’ ! It’s a shame it didn’t make me brainy 🧐
lol

It was Willy Rushton - I dropped my h 😂

Absolutely not restful for me!

I was 13 in 1980, and for the previous 5 years, and until I left home aged 23 I had to hoover clean and dust the whole house. Clean the bathroom, make all the beds, clean the kitchen, which included my mother taking out every single jar or tin she had and wash and dry them. Wash out the cupboards, take the silver rings off the cooker and clean them too. Polish all the cutlery, I didn’t mind doing this so much, as I used duraglit, and I loved the smell of it.

I had to hang out all the washing, take it back in and fold it, ready for me to iron on Monday evenings.

The best bit is, my mother often made my favourite meal of steak pie, or beef stew, I wasn’t allowed any of it til I’d finished all the things the old cow made me do, and sometimes not even then. I was allowed to make myself a poached egg on toast or fry a cheap burger, with cheap crisps on the side.

I loathed, hated and detested Sundays! I was always so happy to go off to school on a Monday morning to escape.

Don’t spend the time with elderly relatives? In the 80s that was almost
every weekend. They’d come for Sunday lunch, children had to be on best behaviour. Then sit around talking all afternoon (children expected to be silent unless spoken to). Then there’d be an afternoon tea sort of meal with cake. Then they’d finally go. DM would then be tired and in a foul mood from all the cooking.

A Sunday now would involve a walk, bike ride, maybe church, trip to a park with a cafe and play area. Not an elderly relative or roast dinner in sight.

You had a very privileged UMC childhood that the vast majority of the UK didnt have.

DM was anti-Sunday trading and Sundays didn't get any more interesting after 1994.

Yes I am eye rolling a bit at all the “I wasn’t bored at all! I had my pony to ride, we used to holiday in the Bahamas every summer and my parents paid for a fun fair to set up in our back garden right next to our tennis courts every weekend. I can’t imagine why anyone might have been bored as a child in the 80s?!!” 🙄

A few people have said about the boredom of elderly relatives coming round but wouldn’t that happen just as easily now? Wasn’t that just a way to support them? I can imagine it’s boring but I have been carer for a few years for my parents which is just as time consuming and often boring in this decade!

The 80s was a time when so many people were crippled by interest rates, that may explain a lot of the 'boredom'. Life was monotonous because the spare cash wasn't there for activities, days out etc.

Started work by the early 80s, Sunday was often just another workday. 70s were teenage/ primary years, don’t really remember Sundays being boring, different way of life, as a kid, you actually played , not stuck watching a screen, you had real friends who you had to go and see rather than just contacting by social media , you talked to people, we quite often went out on a Sunday as a family, it was what you made it and certainly seemed less stressful than current days