A child of the 80's...

Growing up in the 80’s…

Collecting cardboard, travelling around on roller boots and laughing out loud at Tiswas - oh the exciting life of an 80's kid!

It was certainly an experience growing up in the 1980s - the time of shell suits, big hair and even bigger mobile phones.

Breakdancing with your ‘crew’ and challenging others on a big piece of cardboard, entertaining whole villages (I was in a marching band and yes, we went to band camp, but what happened at band camp stayed at band camp!

The boys were doing tricks on BMX bikes, the girls showing off on roller boots, my first taste of alcohol was white lightning or maybe 20/20 and I was completely addicted to Neighbours, Home and Away and later Friends…

Getting older definitely makes you a little more nostalgic, so I thought I’d look back at what made my childhood so great and hopefully bring back some childhood memories for you along the way.

So….

Musically, for me it all started with Wham then swiftly moved onto Bros. I even had the grolsh tops in my shoes – I dreamt about what would happen If I ever bumped into Luke (as he would often visit my council estate!) and plan our dream wedding and think of names for our kids – Ferrari…??

I have lived through the pain of jelly shoes, the blisters of which are like the most unimaginable pain known to woman but they were just sooo pretty, (before I experienced child birth obviously).

We spent EVERY Sunday night glued to a tape recorder listening to the top 40 and trying our damnedest to not get Mayo talking over the start and end of our favourite tunes. Show your kids a picture of a cassette and ask them what is it…post your replies on here.

I would often sneak into one of my older brothers bedrooms (I had 4 of them – brothers not bedrooms) and was definitely barred from entering any of their rooms but they had record players AND records so I would sneak in (remove Led Zeppelin/Thin Lizzy/ACDC) off the record player to listen to some real music - usually Bon Jovi.

Then the best moment of my life came (not getting married or giving birth hell no…) the moment when I got a second-hand Walkman of my own – OMG I cannot even begin to explain how this changed my life (it really didn’t but it made walking to friends’ houses much more fun). I could now listen to Madonna on the go – who would have thought it eh?

I also spent hours learning the rap and knew every word to the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme tune so come Saturday I could rap along as a treat as I’d been forced to watch big daddy and giant haystacks pretend to wrestle on a Saturday afternoon.

We also eventually got our hands on a new computer – not just any computer but a commodore 64 and I thought it would be really really funny (and it was) to programme it to repeat the line “Martin is a bummer” to annoy my brother (which it did and would result in a whole day’s worth of dead legs). #worthit

I also remember people actually booking holidays using teletext way before the tinternet thingy came about – ahead of our time we were.

Reading wise I was a classic reader even back then with a regular copy of the Beano/Dandy and Jackie delivered every Sunday by an actual real-life paper boy. (Never a girl??)

The evenings, weekends and particularly summer holidays were spent playing tic around the whole estate and would last hours, we would know when it was time to go home cause we were hungry.

As we got older Saturday nights were all about ‘Skating’ although no actual skating ever took place. We basically got dressed up, drank too much white lightening from ‘Edies’ (Offy where the old lady couldn’t see well enough to know how old we were). Then spent 3 hours walking around in a big circle whilst a few people danced in the middle of a leisure centre hall. It was the best night night ever!

We definitely had more freedom, maybe more fun and definitely no fashion sense – I certainly loved growing up as a child of the 80’s – did you?