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?

Definitely boring and miserable in my recollection.

I remember Sunday TV for most of the day by late 80s! Not that I allowed my DC to watch it.

I loved Sundays as a kid (am 50). My dad worked hard all week so it was lovely to have some quality time with him.

At various ages I'd either walk with him to the paper shop and then go to the park; or he'd take me swimming or for a walk through the fields behind our house - sometimes we'd go to the Happy Eater for a treat and get poached eggs on toast and hot chocolate.

I might play out with friends a bit but was equally happy amusing myself, reading, drawing or building dens.

Bath and hairwash late afternoon while mum cooked a roast, then dinner in front of Ski Sunday or One Man and His Dog 😁.

Sundays were relaxed but definitely not boring!

Unbelievably dull and boring.

As a child, mind boggling dull.

Nothing to do, only visit dusty old relatives who had nothing interesting to say.

But that may have been because my Ps were very dull as well.

If I complained of being bored, the answer on a nice day was always 'you've got a lovely garden, go outside' or in the winter 'you've got an entire room full of toys, books and games, find something to do'.

I only saw my Dad angry twice during my childhood and once was a 27th December when I complained of being bored and my Dad was furious saying 'hundreds of pounds worth of new stuff 2 days ago and you're bored?'

He had a point.

I was in my 20s, I spent a lot of it in bed after a very late Saturday night out or coming home from somewhere then probably doing something like my washing. I used to sometime go to the pub at lunchtimes also. Saturday afternoons were for shopping with my friends, usually buying something for the Saturday evening

I’m stunned that you framed going to the gym as ‘interesting’ whereas going for a walk or cycle as boring, in your OP. I find the opposite. Gym is something I do ‘because I have to’ ( to slow my rapid descent into decrepitude) whereas walks and cycles are fun leisure time.

Anyway, where I grew up there was not a whole lot of stuff to do anyway, so as kids you just played out whether it was sat or Sun. As teenagers I guess there were shops to walk around on a Saturday, though I wouldn’t describe that as wildly exciting.? I enjoyed just hanging out with my friends though.

I actually think that now I find Sundays duller, as I have gone from a city to a quieter area where most things are shut on a Sunday and it pisses me off that of two days off a week, on one of them most things are shut. It’s totally the land time forgot here! ( or I guess we just have lots of independent shops that close Sunday!)

Ooh I forgot the Sunday session with a recording cassette in front of the hi fi!

By late 80s lots of 'attractions' were open. In my childhood - 50s,60s - nothing was open but the paper shop. My late DH said his Sundays (provincial city, I was brought up in London) were boring apart from the predictable row that his DF was late back from the pub at lunchtime - he did this on purpose to wind up DH's DM (who worked all week, including Saturdays, a 5 and a half day week with half day off on Thursdays when she did her shopping, housework etc ). The past is both better and worse than we remember.

Bit like the economy and fears nowadays 😂

I think the difference then for me was that there wasn’t as much comparison and competitiveness. Everyone was similarly poor, we used to have to hide behind the settee when the window cleaner came for payment! It didn’t matter, we made our own fun

That was my immediate thought. Waiting for the charts to start at 5pm. Pause, re ord and play, pause...

A far better option than watching Highway on TV after a day out on the bike or in the woods with friends.

And yes, this. Not the rule for our family but was quite common and, together with other friends visiting family, it meant the pool of people to play with was much reduced.

I have lovely memories of Sundays and weekends in general as a child. Sundays mainly revolved around Sunday lunch and my father getting things done at home like gardening or working on the car. Us children just played and hung out with our friends. Occasionally we would go out for the day to various places. Then on the evening it was a bit of TV whilst mum did the ironing. Simple but I loved it.

My memories are of:

• trudging to an empty train station to look at the timetable (for my Dad)
• sitting on the floor watching a boring af black and white film as my mum ironed behind me
• all of my street friends being out, so no-one to play with

I loved reading as a child, and playing out... but I guess I'd be bored of reading after a couple of hours.

I distinctly remember a lack of interaction with other children and the bored that ensued.

Really boring, but you had to make your own entertainment:
I was a kid and we sometimes had family round or went round to them for afternoon tea.
As I got older I had friends round or went to them.
My mum took me to museums (thankfully they were open - in London anyway!).
At 5pm l’d listen to the charts and tape the songs off the radio. Then we’d have our evening meal and watch Antiques Roadshow and the like!

I do have a vivid memory of being at uni in 1990 - my friend and I were so bored one Sunday we went to sit in McDonalds as it was the only thing to do (we lived on campus so it was a bit isolating on Sundays(.

During the 1990s (I was school age-ish) Sundays involved

• cooked breakast
• church at 11
• dance class at a community hall
• sunday roast (maybe before or after or during visit to grandparents)
• bath with the UK chart show
• Corrie and bed (or maybe +Heartbeat/Silent Witness)

Switch out church for a nature walk (I keep my own faith these days) and this would still be my ideal. Thanks for the thread and the reflection, as I’ll try and recreate some parts of it!

Sorry this nostalgic nonsense. I’m so sick of this narrative.

I agree about the over-reliance on being online and devices etc but it doesn’t follow that the 80s were some halcyon era.

I’m really tired of the whole “we were bored and it didn’t do us any harm” narrative. A lot of parenting in that era was characterised by neglect or apathy. Parents had far less involvement in their children’s development and largely ignored them beyond making sure they were fed and no that wasn’t always a good thing. It’s very fashionable at the moment to criticise how “child centric” parents have become.

But I remember what it felt like to be largely ignored all the weekend long while my parents were preoccupied with their social lives (usually involving alcohol). And being denied the opportunity to do clubs or activities because they didn’t want to spend the money or couldn’t be arsed taking me. And the general feeling of being an inconvenience. With no autonomy or money to do anything about it.

No it didn’t make me “resilient” (and that word has become the most overused buzzword in the history of overused buzzwords). Sitting inside watching Top of the Pops or sitting in the car in the pub car park waiting for my parents didn’t “stimulate my creativity”. It made me resentful and angry and more inclined to go off the rails when I hit my mid teens.

There’s definitely something we can learn from an era where people were online less. But for the love of God can we stop treating the 1980s like the Garden of Eden.

Ps: my mum always did the ironing in a Sunday evening - I can just picture it now! Unf I was an only child which def added to the boredom.

Antique Roadshow and Ski Sunday was my idea of a perfect Sunday evening with my dad 😅
Church activities, look lunches at parents friends, grandparents visiting - a lot more fun than being dragged around a shopping mall like some kids are today. We weren't allowed to watch daytime TV so had imaginations and always playing or fiddling about with something. I spent hours on the piano as well.

There was nothing to watch! Anyway!

Fuck me it was boring on a Sunday. TV was good on Saturday morning and evening but otherwise dreadful - football, horse racing, songs of praise kind of crap. Maybe Sunday night had a film, can't recall. Apart from the summer when we would take a picnic to the beach for the afternoon it was generally bloody dull. I lived in a village, just did the same nothing each week...and I was the active kid!
Saturdays were better. We'd go to town, get sweets, get the shopping, other than that similar to Sunday except it was sunnier, people smilier and the TV was better 😁

The eighties were that shit I didn't even bunk school. People bang on about that decade like it was brilliant. It really wasn't. Music was shit. TV was shit. Food was shit. Daily life was shit...and we all thought we were going to be obliterated by nukes or acid rain! The only interesting things that happened were the Falklands War in 1982 and people streaming over the Berlin Wall in 1989.

I remember being bored on weekends and the long school holidays in the 80s. Mum was a SAHM but spent all her time cleaning. Dad was never home as he was off having affairs. I read a lot of books.

Very quiet. All the kids would play outside and the dads would watch tv smoking a cigarette or cigar with the bottle of port or sherry out on the side. Mums would be cooking a roast dinner that took hours (not sure why as it only takes me 1.5 hours to make a roast on Sundays?!) No cars would move from the street. It was a bit boring but nicer than it is today.

Relaxing. Sunday paper in the morning, a roast lunch, bit of gardening or maybe back to bed in the afternoon. Film in the evening.

With children hard work as there were often sleepovers on Saturdays so you'd be managing breakfasts for a load of fussy kids or bacon sandwiches for the teenagers. Then a game or kite flying when they were younger before extended collection times.

In the 80's I was between the age of 10-19 and my earlier years I'd create nature books with a friend down the road, we'd spend hours colouring in. We'd make rose 'perfume' or play water fights, climb trees, spend hours poring over jigsaws, ride our bikes up and down the cul-de-sac. I used to make assault courses with ramps and the like out of Dad's wood in the back garden for my bike as I used to love watching 'kickstart' on TV. I was very much a Tom boy and my best friends were boys. I used to play on my skates, or space hopper. As I got older I'd play Monopoly with Mum and a friend or work at the riding stables or do simple programming on my Spectrum computer. Dad would spend hours playing football or swingball or badminton with me. Sundays were always fun. I never had time to be bored. I loved my childhood.