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 was 16 in 1990 and in Manchester at the height of the 'Madchester' era. It was a great time, illegal raves, very dodgy rave clubs (also around the time Manchester earned the nickname 'Gunchester'). Planning which club/rave you were going to that weekend was the highlight of the week. Piling into someone's souped-up Fiesta XR2i or Escort and heading off to who knows where...

Big perms, Kicker boots, tie-dye anything, baggy clothes. Think blue mascara was out of fashion by then? I wore bottle green dungarees & red Kickers, Joe Bloggs T-shirt to a rave once and thought I was the bees knees.

Still listen to all the (now oldskool) tunes from then and in my head, just for a while, I'm 16 again.

I remember buying three half pints of lager for 99p on nights out when I first started work

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.

There were huge recruitment drives where I lived. At one point a shop front was taken over to serve as recruitment center. But it was a poor area and lads didn't have any other opportunities (thanks to the tories destroying our ship building) so boys joined up to become cannon fodder. Then got shat back out the other side with no qualifications, jobs and with pretty serious mental health issues.

Sexual harassment was rife
Even in the late 90s I recall being touched by random men and just moving away because that’s all you could do. My mum said it was the same in earlier decades. I reckon it was 2000s before women actually felt able to call a guy out on his behaviour and be backed up by others if she slapped him and yelled, and for the guy to actually realise what he’d done was wrong and not just accuse the woman of being ridiculous because she should be flattered.

AIDS was a huge worry
I was at primary school and was terrified I had AIDS because a classmate had put his hand under my skirt and touched my bum. The media was sensationalist and there was very little understanding of how it was transmitted, other than “you get it from sex”.

@RolyWatts I was going out with a lad whose mum lived in an estate in Glasgow like that. It was rough. I remember we took his little niece down to the shops with some pocket money. There was a little greengrocers and he suggested she bought a piece of fruit instead of sweets with her pocket money, and she did.
Also the 80s saw the rise of street homeless. In the 70s the only street homeless I remember were old looking men who were obviosuly alcoholics. But the 80s you started getting young people who were street homeless.

I had forgotten visiting another friend who had been chucked out by his parents and slept rough for a few weeks. He was put up by the council in this shared house. He had to share a bedroom with this older man. Him at about 19 and this man in his fifties in a twin bedroom in a shared house. Grim.

I liked the 80s as I was a toddler. I had some brilliant outfits in photos.

I remember going to visit DM at work. She worked in a council office and they had a shiny new PC on one if the desks but only one lady knew how to use it. DM had a typewriter.

A 14" colour TV that cost us £240, we thought it was the dogs bollocks because it had teletext and a digital clock.
A VCR that 'fell off the back of a lorry'. Quite a few of our things did, come to think of it.
Watching a film during my nursing training about a new disease that mainly affected gay men. Being terrified of getting neddlestick injuries.
Watching Live Aid live on TV. Can't remember much of it apart from Queen and David Bowie.
If you wanted to watch something you had to watch when it was on, unless you were lucky enough to have a VCR, and even then you could only record if no one was watching the other side. There was no concept that anything like youtube would ever exist.

I was also 16 in 1990 Mumsy and lived in Greater Manchester I was more into rock and indie music though ,so it was all Afflecks Palace and the Corn exchange for clothes , I was probably a bit too young to go out on a night out in Manchester ,but when I did it was to Rock world ,and the Ritz ( on a Monday and Wednesday ) those were the days!

Not a lot of fun growing up on a farm with religious parents in rural NI through the troubles tbh .

Not a lot of money for anything that wasn’t food and basic clothing. House was old and cold with exception of the kitchen which had a stove .

Education was good ( no tuition fees and full grants ) and I went to a local grammar school , that was my way out .
We spent our childhood on the farm , playing or helping out , gathering potatoes every year for weeks on end and then going to do the same at neighbouring farms , grandparents farm , uncles farms . I’m surprised I still eat them.
Every Sunday we visited grandparents .

My friends and I were saying this last week. We are still terrified of HIV. When I was pregnant and had to do a test, I had anxiety until I got the result. Even the second and third time!

It’s implanted in our consciousness now.

If you were poor, you were suddenly seen as being morally deficient, lazy and undeserving. You'd be bullied at school for being the Poor Kid if you didn't have bright blue shoes. And if your parent still believed that one bath a week was plenty for anybody and showers were a fancy foreign concept that only the profligate had in their homes, never mind using them daily, you felt physically and emotionally awful every day of your life.

Physical Bullying was seen as kids sorting it out for themselves. Psychological bullying didn't exist.
Getting bashed around by parents was only looked into if they used a weapon that left marks. Anything that didn't leave visible signs was fine.
Getting physically molested was 'boys being boys' and 'well, what do you expect from men?'.

Girls were expected to do Child Development or Typing (on typewriters) and Home Economics - the idea that you might want to take graphics, physics and not get married at 19 was seen as weird if you didn't live in a large house, had two parents and a car.

Having friends of different ethnicities made walking down the road a dangerous past time. You would have 'N Lover' 'P Lover', etc, screamed at you from vans (it made a change from the usual sexual catcalling if you were white and aged 11+). Moreover, you had to immediately change your direction of travel, because there was a good chance that the vans would stop and men would get out to continue their rage at you and your friends. The best (and worst) case scenario was having to run for it and coming round a corner to find the SPG there, as they weren't adverse to having a go at you, either. On one occasion the heavens sychronised perfectly and the bastards from the van came round the corner after us, we peeled off to the left down an alleyway and left them to the SPG.

National Front graffiti was scrawled over most fences.

If Millwall or Brighton were playing the local team, you didn't leave the house and would sometimes find terrified 14-16 year old boys hiding behind your privet hedge where they'd mistimed their finish of their Saturday job.

If you were old enough, you could walk down the shops on the way home from school, look for the Job Vacancies posters, walk in and get a Saturday job without any lengthy application process, no needing a passport to prove who you were/that you weren't foreign, no hoping you'd typed the right answers for a computer to pick your application. You'd then get somewhere around £1.32 an hour by 1989 - and if you were lucky, a job where having your arse grabbed by the men didn't happen.

15 year old girls with babies weren't unusual, but they were kicked out of school as soon as their pregnancies were discovered. The men in their 20s and 30s who usually fathered them weren't looked down on as much, it was more 'well done, couldn't you have waited to knock her up until her 16th, though?'. If the father of the baby turned out to be black, though, it was common for the girl to be housed by the council on her 16th birthday/in care until that date because 'Dad will kick it out of me' was a very real danger.

The safest options for being a teenager were to either be middleclass or go and see your friends in the more diverse areas, rather than risk them coming to yours. This meant I learned to cook from friends' mums, listened to far better music than the bland electro synth shite that was on telly and was able to cook Caribbean, Indian and Pakistani food long before I ever cooked anything English. Finding ingredients in supermarkets was near impossible, but got introduced to the amazing choices in independent grocers/greengrocers instead. And the phenomenon of somebody's Auntie piercing your nose with a needle, thread to keep it open and a frozen chip stuffed up your nostril - plus hiding your face behind your hair when you got home so you didn't get a battering for doing something that was 'For Punks and P*kis'.

However, if you were out, you were out. Nobody could hassle you, nobody could demand to know where you are, bombard you with messages because you didn't answer immediately, no tracking you, no photos of you - you were free.

I asked my mum and she thinks life was easier in the 80s and earlier decades because there were less options. I’ve grown up expecting to be able to watch tv every day, play computer games, and later being able to surf the internet, use social media and stream movies every night. So I find it immensely frustrating to have a toddler and not be able to do those things. Ditto going to the gym or jogging etc - I’m frustrated that I’m stuck with a toddler and can’t go, whereas my mum’s generation had never done it so didn’t miss it. She’s always telling me off for constantly having a phone in my hand.

What was the mail order music cassette/vinyl company called? Britannia? I signed up and got a catalogue every month and iirc it was opt out. If you didn't send your form back quick enough declining the monthly selection you got an album and a bill?

I was a child in the 80s and what I remember the most is the freedom we had. At my DDs age (10), we were allowed to ‘play out’ all day as long as our parents had a rough idea of where we were.

We took the bus or train to the cinema or swimming with our friends, went to the park every day in the summer - whole gangs of kids with no adult supervision - and we had massive games of ‘run outs’ and hide and seek all over the big housing estates nearby.

People were friendlier, too (this was inner London) and there was definitely more of a sense of community.

And there were far more resources for families. Even with the backdrop of Thatcher and massive cuts to public services, we had a proper, staffed community centre in our area that was a hub of free or cheap activity. After school club was free (you just had to bring 20p for crisps and squash). The local park had gardeners, litter pickers and a playground attendant.

Also, practically everyone we knew lived in council housing. Not just the poorer or more disadvantaged people. Working married couples and middle class families. It was the norm. There was no stigma attached to social housing.

I agree that community centres were still well funded. Late 80s is when park keepers started to go thanks to compulsory competitive tendering. Council services had to be tendered out and private companies often won by paying staff less. Park keepers used to be great as they would stop bad behaviour and made parks feel very safe.

No internet or mobile phones, obviously. Other than that? not so very different. Teenagers still liked music, fashion and make up that their parents hated. School was a bit less pressured, at least until you got to exam years. Cars were crap. Full grants for higher education, that was a marvellous thing. All the old people had lived through the war and wore their medals on remembrance day. Old ladies all wore hats to church. What has changed most I think is in those days, it seemed like the world was getting better all the time. Our parents and grandparents woukd tell us how much worse things were when they were young. I don't think there is anyone feels that now, everything is getting worse all the time.

Music was fabulous. You went on holiday/ guide camp whatever and sent a postcard. You wrote letters.
Entertainment was hanging round shops / the cinema/ the swimming pool or lido. You were bored a fair bit of the time.

Watched tv when it was on unless you were lucky enough to know someone who owned a video player!
But there was lots of homophobia, more sexism, most ppl went to school with v fixed limits on them - eg leave at 16 and work for a bank, become a nurse, there was v little encouragement to aim above that.
I remember a friend of mine saying that within 10 years we'd all know someone who had died of AIDS...

There was no DBS check to work with kids. So the exposure of sexual abuse scandals in the past in children's homes does not surprise me sadly.

Yes! @

We had a playground attendant who was a proper battle axe and would scare the life out of us when she screeched ‘no going forwards down the slide!’

@jennymanara

The leery uncle I had would not be tolerated today . He still gives me the creeps , I haven’t t seen him in almost 20 years and refuse to visit .The groping was rife.

TV was dreadful - Benny Hill , last of the summer wine , allo allo , open all hours . Women were objectified.
I hated the eighties mostly because I was trapped.
The nineties were my decade - university, going out, alcohol , living abroad for a year while at university, going out with a variety of nationalities ( I was fascinated with different languages and cultures and travelling ) , freedom .

Yes to community resources. We had free summer playschemes. Turn up, fill out a form and take your playpiece money and you'd be there all summer. They used to do trips too. Although child safeguarding was less of a priority and there were no such things as police checks. But when I look at how much I have spent for clubs and child care this summer it is staggering.

Does anyone remember the EU food vans? I have hazy memories of being given free butter??? Did I dream this?

But lots of funding for community projects/employment schemes in very poor areas we're funded by Europe.

Oh and if you hated school you could stop going in 5th year and no one would chase you up.

Lots of 16 yr olds signed on for the summer holidays after 5th year, even if they had plans for work or further study (and this happened into the 90s, actually).

I was pissed off that my parents wouldn’t let me (Irish working class...a shame on the family etc).