What was life like in the 80s?

[Strangerthanadeadting]

As a recent fan of Stranger Things and having only been four years old at the end of the eighties, I'm fascinated to know what life was like for teens & adults back then.

It's depicted as being so much fun on TV. So colourful, the music is brilliant, the fashion so vivid. It was a time before the Internet, social media, plastic surgery, the Kardashians.

I'm fascinated. I'd love to hear what life was like. What people did for fun, what they ate, how different a working day was, if it really was as glamorous as it looks, if the hairstyles took forever, what people thought the future would be like? Was it a better life? A better time?

Ellmau the issuing of library books was called "banging and stamping". 😀
Waterstones started in 1982 and was wonderful.

It seems very different to me, although I'm not that much older than you OP. My memories as a child/ preteen:
Cassette tapes and video tapes that you had to rewind to listen to / watch again, which took ages. Music tapes cost a lot of pocket money.
No Internet. People read books and magazines. 4 channels on tv - Neighbours was cool if you were 8-18 yo, Top of the Pops mandatory. You put up posters of your favourite pop stars that came free with Fast Forward magazine. Going to hang out at friends' houses or the youth club instead of communicating online. Or phoning them on landline phones (with my parents and sisters nagging me to get off). Having to physically write down your homework, no option to check online, and physically writing your essays. No online resources to study from, whether schoolwork or hobbies.
Food was very different, much less exciting. 'Avocado pear' was something you only had at naice restaurants as a starter, probably with prawn cocktail. My mum pretty much made meat and two veg, shepherds pie, etc, chicken nuggets and chips, Findus crispy pancakes.
I feel ooooold now
More seriously, I was convinced we were either going to all die/ become monster zombies in a nuclear war, or colonise space. Tomorrow's World on tv fascinated me. I couldn't have envisaged the Internet, but thought by now we would have holographic watches and wear cool metallic clothes

What a lovely, nostalgic thread this is! I was a young mum in the '80s and much of the music and events of the early years of that decade passed me by, as I was too occupied with the day to day life of SAH motherhood.

Life was simpler than today. Most things (housing being an exception) were much more expensive than they are nowadays and people had less money on the whole, so we made do with 2nd hand stuff a lot of the time and we ate simply. Our house had no central heating and our son was born in mid winter, so we had to buy a plug in heater for his room (overnight temperature in the house was sometimes below freezing in other upstairs rooms, as there was no heating upstairs at all). I recall one morning going into the bathroom to empty the nappy bucket (nappies from the previous day/night were soaked in a bucket of water with Napisan) and finding it frozen solid and the loo was also frozen!

Oh and have flying cars

Wow I could talk for ages about the 80s. Like others I was 5-15. Completely agree about Findus crispy pancakes 😆

Besides those, normal food for us was Mac cheese, cauliflower cheese, eggy bread, spaghetti Bol, chilli, shepherds pie. Roast on Sundays. Delia was big! And Freezer Cookbooks. I was lucky my DM and DGM were amazing cooks.

Games: pretend play ruled. We also had a game based on Dukes of Hazzard. 40-40, Polo, Grandma’s Footsteps were big at school. We played out at lot! Had Care Bears, I loved Barbie dolls and Sindy accessories. Strawberry Shortcake, Star Wars figures! Loads of board games especially Game of Life & Ratrace. Garbage Pail Kid stickers; Cheeky Charles made me laugh the most.

Tech: ZX Spectrum! We played loads; Horace Goes Skiing, River Rescue, Manic Miner, Orc Attack, some game with a character called Photon Man that involved the Raiders destroying the Operatives computer. My best friend and I conquered Penetrator through dual control; we also went berserk the one day we destroyed the Operatives’ computer; the on-screen celebrations were brilliant.

Loading games by cassette; the onscreen wide red and turquoise bands followed by the narrow yellow and dark blue bands.

Also those hand held consoles; I had Parachute and my sister Donkey Kong. The appreciation of the improvements in graphics was something I feel lucky to have gone through. Pong, with its daytime/sunset/nighttime backdrops of famous world landmarks I remember loving and being really excited to see which came next. My sister and I played this game The Dagger of Amon Rah towards late 80s and the graphics on that were another step up.

Media: I vividly remember Return of the Jedi; I loved Luke and thought Leia was sooo beautiful. Grange Hill, Battle of the Planets, Ulysses, Dungeons and Dragons, Penelope Pitstop, Oliver Postgate shows, Crackerjack, Cheggars Plays Pop, being terrified of the Vortex on the Adventure Game. Mr Men Seesaw programme at lunchtime. Chockablock, Button Moon, the Flumps, the Fraggles and Muppets in general. Speak-singing in films! Like The Slipper and the Rose. Plain Jane Superbrain’s transformation in Neighbours.

Fashion: lots of bright colours and ra-ra skirts. Plastic beads and chiffon scarves. A pattern of paint splashes known as ‘scritti’. Puccini Peach lipstick from No. 7. Body Shop White Musk scent; although def remember Anaïs Anaïs too (pronounced Annay Annay until some posh person corrected us). Leggings coming into fashion.

News and fears: Def nuclear war and AIDS. Challenger and both Royal Weddings. I remember loving Di’s dress but I preferred Fergie’s when it came along; I loved the bumblebees embroidered on her train. I don’t remember much news; I don’t think I liked it. I do have some recollection of the miners strike and the Falklands but not much. I remember the raising of the Mary Rose.

Entertainment: Roller discos (Love and Pride and You Spin me Round were the ‘must skate’ songs as I recall). Swimming centres with slides were big treats. MacDonalds, sadly. Cinema. We still went to a lot of National Trust places, but we mostly played and went on walks.

Education: The cane was still occasionally used. I remember health campaigns like ‘Not so fast Nick-o-Teen!’; the terrifying ones about trespassing on railway lines and the ‘Natural Born Smoker’ ones (shudder), Tufty Club and Green Cross Code for road safety. We did Normans in Y3 but I can’t remember any other years. SMP cards in maths. Cycling Proficiency test.

We had a cabinet in our hallway solely to store the yellow pages and phone books.

No hummus Oh yes there was! One of my flatmates went vegan and lived on the bloody stuff!

I remember spending most of the 80s as a teen wishing I lived in the 60s. You were either a Durannie or a Spandau Ballet fan. The Smiths came along and saved me.

Little bowls of pot pouri everywhere in my mum and dad's house and the shop Athena was popular. And posters of Pierot.

Red and black striped wallpaper and matching duvet sets.

People having massive stereo systems and messing with the dials and balancing them out all the time.
Sending your friends mix tapes in the post!

Living on a full student grant with no debts.
Ringing your family once week on a pay phone.

I remember when Filofaxes came out and them being a real craze. Same with ra ra skirts, then puffball skirts and massive wide black elastic belts that fastened on hinges and pulled you in at the waist, usually worn with a body so you had to keep popping prestuds and hinges every time you went to the loo.

Also when Frankie Said ... T shirts and Deeley Boppers on your head became a thing and everyone in Wales on holiday in whatever year it was wearing them.

Everywhere hair spray and mousse and perms.

Boys had awful hair, cut over ears and longish and wore Miami vice/ Durannie type jackets rolled up at sleeve and very thin Ties if they went to nightclubs, which always shut at 2am and used lots of smoke machines. Inevitably they'd put slow dances on at the end. Usually Phyllis Nelson's Move Closer.

Big thing about plants. Everyone had indoor plants. A Yukka plant was the popular choice.

Smoking in the pub like a trooper. Everyone smoking and no gyms.

I think there was less pressure. No one was interested in having big tits or big lips or BOTOX or documenting every inch of their lives on social media or being tagged everywhere you go.

So essentially freedom and privacy. Not as intense as my daughter's generation. So in that sense I'm grateful for that.

Princess Diana, Big Hair, Ronald Reagan.
YMCA, Moon Unit Zappa, ShuddupaYouFace, DuranDuran, Sting, Madonna.
Anchor Man 2 movie has a lot of great period touches for the 1980s. I got hyper excited at the Garfield book.
Recurring fear of nuclear war. Naked Gun has a lot of good period cultural references.

(California) My schools were full of out & proud gay kids.

English DH is astonished to learn I was taught to touch type in a regular school class (but no cooking, textiles or DT classes). I was just a bit too young to get drivers' education provided in school, too.

I was in programming summer school in 1983 (but computers were not common in schools yet).

Textbooks for every subject; we made so we could decorate them & return the actual book in good condition.

In class you took notes about what was told to you or written on chalkboard; no one gave you a printed out version of the powerpoint presentation to annotate.

Uni: 3 x Sliding up/down chalkboards written on rampantly during lectures; my nearest Uni still has such sliding boards in largest lecture theatres.

I do think that your age at the time is a key factor. Someone upthread said the eighties were smelly and smokey, but that is how I remember the fifties. My memory of being afraid of nuclear war are from the fifties and the early sixties. The sixties for me were about leaving home and going to university, plus fashion, films and music, the seventies about life with a young family and starting my career and the eighties were when our careers took off, we had more money and travelled a lot.
It is always interesting to read about people's experience and memories, but there is a danger about extrapolating from the personal to the universal. 😊

Omg yes computer games on floppy disks that took forever to load! We had an Atari
My mum thought spaghetti bolognese was exciting and did a bad mock Italian accent when she made it, 10yo me -

The music was obviously fabulous but also you could be an individual & have your own look. Teens weren't identikits like they are now.

Ellmau oh yes! The Net Book Agreement! I had forgotten about that!

Do you remember mail-order book clubs? I used to belong to one. You got an initial batch of books as an introductory offer, then one book each month. You could opt for the recommended book of the month or change to an alternative. It was the way that many people bought books in the '80s.

Born 83 so remember the mid to late 80s. One of my first memories is that my parents bought a new colour TV to watch the 1988 olympics on. I was almost 5 and was enthralled. I think prior to that we’d only had black and white and I hadn’t given in a second glance. But the olympics - I would sit within inches of the (admittedly small!) screen and be told I’d get square eyes!

Rampant TV advertising towards the end of the decade especially to children. Not sure whether this is just the same as now but the toys.

Remember thinking like fast food looked like the best thing EVER and it being a massive treat to go to wimpy (my mother refusing to entertain any other fast food establishment but Wimpy had “proper plates and cutlery”

Also remember my dad’s record player and jumping around the room and it skipping.

Garish fashions in the late 80s, much like the early 90s. Littlewoods, Woolworths and C&A. Also catalogues but my memories of those probably more 90s. Supermarkets like Gateway (later bought by Safeway?) giving out stamps that you had to stick into savings books - early loyalty cards I guess.

Lots more “hand me downs” from family and close friends - both clothes and toys.

I remember being aware of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and asking lots of “why / how” questions.

My memories are fond but that’s probably because I was only 7 when the decade ended!

I was a student in a Northern university in the early 80s. In those days we were given free tuition and grants were available. It was a fabulous time but in the North, we were very definitely living in a bubble as there were economic troubles all around us. In true student style, we experienced reality by listening to the Smiths and subversive anti government music.
When I graduated, there were only jobs in London so I "got on my bike" and went down there. It was totally different but I cant say whether it was times changing or the London effect. I lived in the City of London and it absolutely buzzed. There really was "loadsa money" about, lots of hard work and fast living. Very extravagant lifestyles and everything excessive. Yuppies everywhere. In the meantime Ken Livingstone was on the South Bank leading the campaigns for equality and gay rights. Lots of free concerts and events.
We did wear some fantastic costumes with massive shoulders. It was all a whirlwind which required a lot of energy. We coped fantastically well without any mobile phones but less well at work with one "terminal" and word processor between us. And yes the smoke everywhere - buses, cinema, restaurants , next desk....
It was the best of times in London but the rest of the country???? Not so sure

I also remember taping the charts on a Sunday night with one of these and a wee microphone. You'd have to press play and record at the same time and try not to get the DJ talking over the end of the song which was completely impossible.

My sister and I used to sit in the dining room in front of the stereo, which was fucking huge, shushing mum and dad so they didn't spoil it. We'd get so mad at my dad as he'd occasionally burst into the room pretending to be Boy George and we'd yell at him to get out. My sister found one of these tapes a couple of years ago and we laughed til we cried when we heard it. It was so lovely to hear my dad's voice again now that he's been gone for ten years. Even if we were yelling at him and he was pissing himself laughing at us. 😂 This thread is making me have some lovely memories.

The bad stuff was the unemployment, the fear of nuclear war (we lived near a USAF base so had fighter jets screaming overhead), the National Front trying to recruit school kids and AIDS. I had a friend who was disabled and his life was a bloody struggle. Looking back on it he was a bit of a trail blazer because be wouldn't take no for an answer, got a proper well-paid job, etc.

The good stuff included the freedom children and young teens had - our mothers (who mostly worked part time) would let us loose after breakfast in the summer holidays and not expect to see us again till lunchtime. My mother was considered an adventurous cook as she made curry. If I turned into our street and could smell it, I knew it was for us.

I remember the excitement of seeing my first microwave and playing early computer games.

Being less excited about changing terry nappies when looking after other people's kids.

And I thought Princess Diana was great for the sole reason that she was tall and wore flat shoes so as not to tower over Charles, and so made flat shoes trendy. This was fab for me as I hated heels.

Oh yeah, the terrifying AIDS PSA ad with the volcano and graveyard!
And yes smoking being cool, then not - by the very end of the 80s the anti-smoking campaigns. My dad not only smoked heavily but actually worked in advertising cigarettes Sisters and I used to lecture him and hide his fags bc smoking was baaaad although that was maybe more early 90s.

In the 80s I trained as a hairdresser through a YTS scheme earning £29.50 weekly in the first year and £35 weekly in the second year.
Terrible really.
I used to listen to records every single day. There was a time when my dad was unemployed for 6 months and we really struggled as a family. We always had home cooked meals- liver & bacon, toad in the hole etc. Never had McDonald's but did have fish and chips from chippy every Friday night and shellfish from pub shellfish stall most Sundays. I never went abroad until I was 18 for first time with my friends in 1990.

Thatcher and the miners’ strike which destroyed whole communities. There was nothing put in place to help and she come down on them with an iron fist. She took milk away from school children and we thought she would never go.

There were no mobile phones so no way of checking if family were okay.
If you wanted to change something like an insurance policy you had to wait for them to ring you back.
If you went for a job you had a straight forward interview which didn’t involve jumping through hoops. You applied directly in writing or even in person.

I also remember all the stuff you can get in poundshop/the Works now being really expensive and only available from WH Smith. Drawing paper, pencils, felt tips, poster paint, pencil cases, paint brushes, etc. All that lot would have cost you £30 not £3

Razzle Dazzle and Chelsea Girl

My first real interactive computer game (apart from Pong type consoles) was called The Hobbit.
It was entirely text based.
You had to get out of certain situations by writing things like "dig a hole". The computer would come back with "you dig a hole". It was very frustrating.
If you took too long it would keep writing "Time passes, you wait".
That phrase still pops into my mind even now when I am waiting for something .

I agree there was far less pressure at secondary school.in the 80,s and they didn't really discuss exams until fourth year( year 10) but it's swings and roundabouts in my school if you didn't work the teachers didn't really care ,also they didn't care much about the lower sets ,whereas at my sons school ( he's just coming to the end of year7 ) we get a progress report at the end of every half term ,he's always struggled academically and is in lower sets but the teachers seem to put in the effort so that kids can achieve to the best of their abilities.

The music was obviously fabulous but also you could be an individual & have your own look. Teens weren't identikits like they are now.

Absolutely. I remember my History A Level class in 1985.
We had a punk, several Goths, me going through my Afflecks Palace/ Smiths phase, (so wearing my dad's shirt from the 60s and an old brown suede jacket of my gran's ) and a few Casuals in farrah trousers and Pringle sweaters.
And the History teacher saying "Good morning class! And what have we all come as today?"

Could be boring. No computers or social media so much harder to make friends and the fashion was hideous. But then I could get a house for £15,000. I much prefer life now. Work was an endless round of groping and discrimination and you needed your husbands Co signature for expensive purchases.