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?

I started my mental health nurse training in the early 90,s slightly later than your friends sister,s experience JennyManara ,I actually think mental health provision was much better than then now, there were far more beds for a start we had day hospitals for out.patients , ( and some in pstients) a lot of the old wards in the trust I worked in had closed down and purpose built buildings were used Occupational therapists visited the wards every day , patients that were. Well enough went to the day hospital to do activities and those that wernt did stuff on the wards,there were far more staff it was still far from perfect but much better than today, they started closing down wards and day hospitals from the late 90,s in my trust .

Yes fresh sandwiches! They were not yet a concept in lots of Britain, but were in big cities. Think of subway but in a posh expensive deli setting. I rarely bought them as I did not have enough money, but remember sometimes getting a tuna and mayonnaise sandwich from a deli in London. There were often queues there even though it was so expensive.

@x2boys Yes agree there were far more beds. But the at home services were poorer. There was a day centre opened where I lived for those who were institutionalised in the mental hospitals and were moved out of there.
But if you were not in a hospital, for many there was nothing except monthly visit to psychiatrist and GP. I have cared for many years for a relative with schizophrenia, so I am basing my view on the care they got. They get more now. But I know it may have been different in different places.
I also know the wards in the mental hospitals varied a lot. Another relative suffered PND and was in a ward for that. I have been told that was such a lovely ward and the staff were so great, that she did not want to come home.

Other things which I suppose are a bit mad when I think back; clothes came from the local market or were ordered from the catalogue. Provident Loans - and inevitably hiding from the Provident woman when she came to collect the weekly payment, Findus Crispy Pancakes and jam sandwiches being a staple of our diet, the fizzy drinks van (van which came around the streets selling only barrs fizzy drinks in a range of flavours such a pineapple, lime, American cream soda etc), equally the rag man who would come around for your old clothes and exchange them for something like pegs or cleaning cloths

I was 10 in 1980. The 80s is my favourite era. Loved and still do love the music, especially all the great Liverpool bands from my home city. I think a lot of them were inspired by the tough times we had under Mrs T.
Lots of electric blue eyeliner, people selling socialist worker on Church st,

the miners strike, live aid, leg warmers , getting a microwave and new supermarkets being built.
Also remember my dad (who working in developing telecommunications) telling me one day people would have phones they could fit in their pocket. Seemed an odd idea at the time.

And the History teacher saying "Good morning class! And what have we all come as today?"

I remember my dad waiting for me outside HMV when I was about 14 and I was talking to a lad from school who was a very sophisticated 15 and had his Phil Oakey hairstyle and his dad's coat on. When I got in the car my middle aged dad said to me 'that fella looks older than I do'.

My posts make it sound all so fabulous. Which of course it wasn't, there was some scary shit going on as well. We lived in a 'naice' are in Glasgow and I think I was quite naive and protected from some of the social issues that lots of communities were faced with. When I sent out to work myself I realised that although we didn't have a lot of money, I was really quite privileged in comparison. Fortunately my parents were always pay it forward people (before that became a 'thing' to tell people that you did) and they instilled that in both me and my sister.

If you had a baby you stayed in hospital for at least 3 days up to a week for a Cesarean. Few things were done by day surgery as keyhole surgery was new in 1989 - I remember someone I worked with being offered this new technique. So recovery times for surgery were longer.

*went

I do agree that care in the community was a disaster for many people Jenny , I know in my trust that long term mental health patients were moved to purpose built places ,mental health has always been known as the Cinderella service of the NHS ,don't get me wrong I don't think services were perfect in the early 90,s far from it ,but it's dire now ,.

I agree that there lots of political protests. I got active for a few years and my main memory of those years is spending lots of weekends going to various marches and protests and then in the after party watching people like Billy Bragg playing. Usually in grotty student unions that did very cheap beer. No cocktails for students then.
I think it was the late 80s that saw the rise of wine bars? They were trendy and very expensive. I went to the cheap places.

I used to hate how everywhere you went socially would be full of people smoking. I used to come home from a night out and put my clothes straight in the washing basket as they stunk so much of cigarette smoke.

I didn't realise how grimy London was, and how grimly so many British people lived in 1980 til I got a job as a chambermaid in a Bavarian hotel.

West Germany was clean, prosperous, comfortable in comparison.

I graduated as a HCP in the early 80s, straight into unemployment. My eventual first NHS job was shockingly badly paid, in London, but we all aspired to look like Sloan Rangers!

Personally I believe Brexit has come about because of Maggie's demonisation and decimation of the working class North during the '80s.

@x2boys Yes you may be right. I was just thinking how for lower level things I can access free short term counselling on the NHS, which I could not back then.
But I know my DP worked for a bit in a mental health day centre and that was closed. He sees sometimes people who used to go there wandering round our local shopping centre. When he speaks to them they really are just wandering around with nothing to do.

Apart from the internet and computers it wasn't that different tbh. Different fashions, lots less choice of make up, hair and skin products, pubs and clubs open shorter hours, fewer tv channels etc but not that much has changed I think.

I grew up in a peripheral housing estate in Glasgow in the 80s, where there was a lot of poverty, unemployment, alcoholism, and gang violence. When I think of the 80's, I think of broken glass, the smell of piss in closes, and the men waiting outside the post office for their Giro so they could straight in to the off-license. But I also think of freedom, and hot summers where it feels like you barely saw an adult, playing balls against the close wall. Going to random women's doors and asking them if you could take their baby for a walk (and they'd let you), asking older neighbours if they needed any messages (shopping) because they'd give you 10p for going. If they didn't give you cash, they might give you empty ginger bottles (which you would exchange for 10p). I remember going on holiday to a caravan a 30 minute drive from my house, where I'd meet people from exotic and far-flung destinations like Bridgeton or Easterhouse, and I'd spend the next year or so writing them letters and sending them actual photographs. We didn't have money for cinema trips... Going to the pictures was a birthday treat once every few years. Instead we rented videos from the aforementioned off license. Nothing from the top shelf, but he wouldn't bat an eye at 8 year old me taking out Nightmare in Elm Street. Or buying 20 Embassy tips for my Nan and 20 Club King size for my Dad.

Despite the poverty, violence etc where I lived still felt like a community. There was a sense of not shitting on your own doorstep so we could leave windows and doors open. But as the 80's went on and heroin usage increased all of that changed. The old drunk men at the post office would be placated with a spare bit of change or a piece and jam, but the new breed of addict was more violent and desperate.

This has been like therapy.

I was at school throughout the 80s, so only experienced summer jobs and was only aware of unemployment and inflation from the news - my parents had jobs which were largely recession proof (but seasonal work for teenagers as young as 14 was very easy to come by, which isn't the case now. I worked full time every school summer holiday in cafes and shops attached to the tourist trade which always hired teens in summer).

I earned £1.09 per hour in my first summer job though

We had freedom to roam about on bikes all day at weekends and in the holidays but as someone else says Sundays were deadly. I remember Sundays as a dreaded, dreary day - compulsory 9:30 church and fighting with my parents when I got my thought in order and was sure I didn't believe - they were so furious and ashamed that I stayed in my seat and wouldn't go up to receive communion. In the afternoon we had to sit together in the living room through antiques roadshow and songs of praise - not only because we only had one TV but because my mother insisted on the family being together. After that there's often be a "family" series on we'd watch together, which I enjoyed as a child but resented as a teen - I remember The Borrowers and The Railway Children.

There was no children's programming on round the clock like now - we watched cartoons and blue Peter but watching TV all day wasn't an option. We weren't allowed to watch Top of The Pops, my mum thought it was "awful" "vile" and "horrid" (some of her favourite words).

We recorded songs of the radio on cassette tapes, trying to press record and stop at the optimum moment.

My best friend lived Adam Ant and Micheal Jackson - obviously we had no idea who they'd be revealed to be.

My parents were genuinely very concerned about what the neighborurs thought and my mother in particular lived her life as though there was a judgemental church lady marking her on a checklist of requirements to cook roasts, attend church, follow rituals her mother had followed without questioning why or allowing anyone else to, write and rewrite long detailed "newsy" thank you letters until the handwriting and spelling was no longer likely to shame her, she sent and received long very competitive bragging "Christmas letters" to and from her old school friends and cousins, she felt compelled to do things "properly" even when everyone would have been happier to relax a bit. She came home from work and cooked dinner with her coat on. My dad was a high earner but did nothing domestically.

We watched Jim'll fix it with Jimmy saville on TV [not envy] it was my sister's favourite programme.

I didn't wear make up and none of my friends did either. I did wear cordaroy nickabockers as a child in the early 80s, and gigantic colourful jumpers and tight black or stonewashed jeans as a teen. I also had a bright yellow jumpsuit and a perm!

Ha ha @RolyWatts I met a holiday friend when I was about 9 when we were in Minorca I think, from Tring in Hertfordshire and we wrote for a couple of years, I have never been to Tring or indeed Herfordshire but I still remember her address 😂

And I do remember being very very worried about nuclear war and the "five minute warning". Latterly, I remember being terrified of AIDS and would shudder if I walked past a used syringe in the street.

I also remember that we had a lot of visitors who came to our house weekly for years who were actually debt collectors. We knew them all by name and they would always have a cuppa and a biscuit and a chat. There was the Provvy women (provident cheque), the man from Pru (insurance man), Tony, the catalogue man and finally our local friendly (he was) loan shark. We also lived for the days when the gas or electricity man would empty the meters and we would get a rebate - usually about a fiver in 50p pieces. Also walking to the housing office to pay the rent. Cash... It was all about the cash. How many people must have been employed thanks to actual hard cash.

Good reading this. I remember most of it. Shops closing for 1/2 day on a Wednesday. Nothing open on a Sunday. Happy days.

The Falklands war meant that, when I was 16, all my male friends were worried about being called up. It was something else I protested about

Interesting. I don't recall anybody being worried about being called up. I know I wasn't. I do remember people trying to join up though.

You had to have a dog licence if you had a dog.

I left home in 1980 and moved into a rented furnished one bed flat. The rent was £30 a week, but I earned £80 a week (which was a good wage then), so money was a bit tight, especially as I had a car and a horse to pay for.
I moved out of there in 1983 and had bought and sold 3 properties by the end of the decade. My chief memories of the 80s are of working hard, partying hard and always being broke. I was single but was always falling in and out of love with mostly unsuitable men.
I remember being thrilled to get a Walkman, god, I loved that thing. I had big hair (permed), tried to keep up with fashion and smoked like a chimney. I never had time to be bored. I couldn't live at that pace now.
Oh, and the music was brilliant. When I hear it now it takes me right back. Happy days.

I turned 18 in 1980, my life was great, lived in the UK in a part where there was almost full employment. Got a well paying job straight from school, one you need a degree for now, went abroad for the first time in 1981, my parents hadn’t been able to afford it when we were kids.
Worked an evening job as well, for fun and extra money, worked in a steak house popular menu was prawn cocktail starter, steak and chips, then Black Forest gateau. Most people only drank wine when out and not at home, Blue Nun was a favourite where I worked.
Saved enough to buy a tiny flat, you got 95 or even 100 per cent mortgages as a first time buyer back then.
Went out to Disco’s all the time, when I wasn’t working, made one drink last all night, you could safely leave drinks on the table.
I loved the 80’s, had my first child in 1989.

I was four when the 80's started, so was very much a child of the 80's then (I guess) 'came if age' in the 90's.
I had a very Enid Blytonesque childhood. My mum was a SAHP, always had home cooked meals and home made cakes. My life seemed to be very like those Facebook posts you see about 'drinking from the garden hose' 'fishing for minnows' etc. However I'm sure it wasn't all like this even for me, but I only seem to remember that sort of thing which is probably helped by soppy Facebook posts telling all the young people how much better it was in the old days.

However, one thing I do remember a bit in the 80's (due to tomorrow's World maybe?) and certainly in the 90's, was the excitement about being so close to the end of the century. People seemed to have had real hope about how good life was going to get. Once the millennium happened and everyone realised it was a bit of a damp squib, there seemed to be a lot of depression in the early 00's, and (it seems to me) was when the massive increase in mental health issues started.

The Aids adverts were terrifying all the Tombstones and "Don't die of ignorance " I left school in 1990 and wasent even thinking about having sex with anyone until a couple of years later but the adverts struck fear into people .

Some of the things on this thread are true today where I live now certainly shops are all closed all day on Sundays and smaller shops are closed on Wednesday afternoon and shut at lunchtime on Saturday. Restaurants and take aways are almost universally closed on Mondays.