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 should add that there was no public transport where I was, so it was impossible to see friends.

The only highlight was the top 40 on radio 1.

Hmm I agree that at times, particularly with school dread hanging over you it could be boring but is that necessarily a bad thing? I think one of the problems with society today is the constant need for entertaining. Being bored can give you time to think... and to reflect on things..... and plan... and come up with ways to entertain yourself. I think boredom is quite an essential life skill to master and help with personal development...

I live in rural France.
Sundays are still like the 1980's.
The supermarket closes at 12.
If you run out of anything on a Sunday afternoon or fancy a bit of chocolate you go without until Monday.
In summer there is more going on but October through to April is very quiet.

And you're not supposed to make any noise on a Sunday either, so no mowing your lawn etc.

I'm used to it now but i wonder if french dc are bored. Visiting the uk and having petrol stations that sell basics is such a perk to me.

Are you?

There's no halcyon nonsense thanks. The 80s were a shit time for a lot of people but they were better than today's society.

You are projecting your awful home life.

That's your experience, not the experience of the rest of the population.

My parents spent the whole day doing chores, so I would say they were hard work and probably fairly boring for them. They never stopped. Both worked full time and spent the whole weekend doing stuff in the house or garden.

For me as a teenager, it was probably quite boring.

We lived in Germany for a few years, where shops are shut on Sundays. We took advantage of cafes and the ‘enforced’ family time. It was all v positive. Now living in NI and enjoy shops not being open till 1. Typically only head out to shops if urgently needed.

Ha- we must have been the only 2 people to buy Suzy - nobody else I know remembers it! I also bought Girl, but don't remember Dreamer! I also loved the Photo Love magazines later on, do you remember those?!

And also I don’t think the mental health of young adults was all that back in the 1980s. Half the university seemed to be on Valium or Librium, loads of us were bulimic, and everyone was freaking out about AIDS.

The university counselling service was busy, very busy, and so was the health centre. Only about 5-8% achieved Firsts, postgraduate status and funding was rare, and our housing was abysmal - mouldy, spore-ridden flats and houses with rancid carpets and still the occasional outside toilet. Cheaper, yes; acceptable, no.

We've recently re-watched Porridge - watching things as an adult that you first saw as a kid is eye opening to say the least! Some of our funniest shows have quite a darkness running through them, but they're also really interesting to watch to see how attitudes have changed :)

All of this! All those puddings! Mum often made cakes from a packet then filled them with Dream Topping!

I liked school though, so no Sunday dread. School was a lot less taxing and demanding than it is for my kids. I’ve been appalled at what they are expected to know.

My home life wasn’t particularly awful in the scheme of things. But if I am being subjective, so are you? Who are you to state what the “rest of the population” experienced?

Everyone’s home lives were different. Some things about that era were better, some worse. But I just am tired of endlessly being told how much better things were then. It was really pretty shit overall in the 80s.

So utterly boring. The Sundays when we visited grandparents or they visited us were nice, but otherwise it was the misery of church/Sunday school in the morning followed by a lot of sitting about doing nothing.

There was nothing for kids on tv and you could t go anywhere. I spent a lot of time reading and drawing which was nice, but it was mainly just an endless drag, plus the dread of school/work hanging over you. And my mum always cooked a Sunday dinner (evening, not lunch time) which would invariably be something foul (mince and onion crumble, anyone?) so there was that to dread too. I wasn’t allowed to play out on the street so it was a lot of sitting on the house waiting for the day to pass. Oh, and I wasn’t allowed to listen to pop music/the radio until I was nearly 12, so no top 40 countdown for me.

Hated Sundays in the early 80s in Scotland. Nothing open, buses not running, only 3 channels to choose from and your viewing was either songs of praise or black and white movies.

Just dull.

Definitely “family time” here, we were never allowed out to play. There were no other kids on our road and school friends weren’t nearby.

So so so unbearably boring!

I remember being bored all the time as a child. Saturday morning we did the food shop, Sunday my mum slept in so she let us make our own breakfast from when we could open the fridge ourselves. Sunday evening we went to my grandparents for dinner but they were very seen and not heard types. It did mean I played out a lot but I wasn't supervised and got into all kinds of scrapes I would hate to happen to my kids. I'm not saying screentime is the answer, my kids don't have it regular but I don't feel I had active parents which contributed massively to being so bloody bored

It was always raining in Northern Ireland. Songs of Praise 😱 And then the horrible sinking feeling that you had school the next day…

I will add that I do feel that kids these days have too much entertainment (endless clubs and days out plus constant access to tablets, phones etc) and would benefit from being bored sometimes because that stimulates creativity. However, in the 80s we had that low level boredom most of the time, and we would seek out things to do and be creative to relieve the boredom. But the Sundays were extreme in their dullness. We were bored (and creative) enough already without that.

My parents had their own business so we were left to entertain ourselves a lot of the time. I didn’t find Sundays particularly boring in the 80s: had homework to complete, listened to the charts and have always been a fan of the antiques road show.
when I moved to Germany in 1995 shops opened on a Saturday afternoon only on the first Saturday of the month - which was a giant pain in the arse. Shops in Germany and Austria are still closed on Sundays.

They were so boring, I used to dread them. I was in rural France recently where Sunday was very similar to uk in the 80s and I found it stressful.

Formulaic rather than boring, eg war film, snooker, programming was seasonal so you looked forward to autumn when the new stuff came on. Long walks, games in the park… we had a spectrum computer and an Atari games system that shared the second tv, cue arguments!

It was boring. I remember the adults all falling asleep in front of the TV. I remember Sunday night school dread

This is what I remember. Really, really boring. The only exciting thing was the charts.

Same. Bored all the time. Entire school holidays spent in bed reading Enid blyton, getting more and more in the habit of boredom breeding boredom and having low motivation because of that

Really formulaic and boring was my experience.

Mass in the morning followed by reading the Sunday papers. Visiting grandparents in the afternoon - the adults chatted and pretty much ignored the children tbh.

Homework, ironing and mum (teacher) would have marking to do. Even Sunday TV was deathly dull - Songs of Praise, Antiques Roadshow, Last of the Summer Wine yawn.

We didn't always have a roast but if we did it would be some grey overcooked chewy beef. Bleurgh.

Highlights were sweets after Mass, taping the charts and being allowed to stay up to watch That's Life 🤣