Cut backs in the Eighties - the 70s & 80s nostalgia thread.

I look at this MTV CocaCola/XFactor generation with their mp3 players big brother reality shows with a mixed feeling of envy and growing concern. They will get the biggest wake-up call if it ever gets to not only the levels I witnessed but they will think its the end of the world if it extends to our parents level. Reality will hit them like a freight train and it wont be like no big brother show they have ever seen before.
In the eighties I had to ask for a slice of bread. We never had a breakfast. We all waited for my dad to make the dinner, we sat around and waited for it to be made, we didn't need to be called in. No food ever went into the bin. We used to wrestle each other for the heel of the bread as there was more eating in it, these days every one throws out the heel. All my clothes were hand-me-downs. My shoes always leaked and when I walked to Christian brother school they squelched in the rain. I would develop trenchfoot by the time I got there. My toes shrivelled like prunes. I always tried to get in early but didn't, it was too cold to get out of bed. At school I dry my hole ridden odd socks on the radiators that sometime worked. When they got dry they were nice and warm and hard like cardboard. As soon as I got in I could not wait for the milk and buns which we got at 11am. I was so hungry all the time. I dont think I have ever been that hungry before.
But something tells me that I'm well prepared for whatever comes as I had been privatised to be underprivileged. I witnessed tough times as I was there but nowhere near what my folks went through. My only fear is that it doesn't stoop to that level! For me, now, this is no recession. It hasn't even come close.
 
zen said:
My shoes always leaked and when I walked to Christian brother school they squelched in the rain.
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Frank McCourt, is that you? Have you risen from the grave? Anyway, this is Ireland, it was never too cold to get out of bed. I remember walking through the big show (1982?) in the early hours of the morning to school and waiting around outside for almost a hour for a teacher to arrive. Who sent us home! Ice on the inside of the windows was a regular occurrence and yes the yellow current buns and small glass milk bottles were nice. But things were never that bad, were they!
 
We bought our house in the 80's - interest rate 14% & bridging 19%! Luckily we were only on that for 2 months - talk about rip-off. My husbands take home pay was £95 a week & he got his overtime etc. every 4 weeks (the big week) that was usually around £200 including his regular pay. Out of that we paid the mort. esb, heating etc. we didn't even have a phone! & if there was any money left we had a night out. To be honest it wasn't the most enjoyable time of our lives & I hope it doesn't go back to working & having nothing to show for it. It gives me the shivers to think we could be going back to those times.
 
LOL TLC Frankie McCourt, hahaha

Unfortunately for me they were that bad. I was brought up in inner city flats during the 70s-80s.. And boy god, I did not exagerate. Sewers spewed with used toilet paper and faeces as there were strikes and no one would clean up. All the residents had to clean up themselves, I remember getting involved and it was normal for me back then because thats all I knew. The place was hell on earth back then. As I said, this is nothing.
 
I grew up and went to Primary School in the 80's. We didn't have much but were almost the middle class of the time.

- I remember the house was cold and draughty. Frost on the inside of windows - now there's a memory!
- Schoolbooks and Clothes were hand-me-downs and both could be riped or marked!
- We always had plenty of food but it was very (very) plain. We got sweets on a Friday.
- There was no holidays only a few days during the summer at cousins.
- Our car was too small for the whole family to go anywhere at the same time and it was covered in rust.
- We had 2 channels on TV which we were only allowed watch at very set times.

There's loads more but everyone was the same so it didn't matter.

I don't think that we are going back to these times but the general public do not appreciate how easy we have it at the moment!! Every proposed cut or rumour is greeted as if it will send us back to the caves.

It is ridiculous. Local estates where the majority of people are unemployed (both by choice and through redundancy) are covered in satelitte dishes. Anyone with sky can do without at least €30 per month of their income.
 
At the end of the eighties, and in the early nineties, we had an extraordiny high level of debt/GDP ratio, very much higher than we have now, and even higher than we are likely to see in the next few years - and we got it down during the nineties and early noughties as the tiger woke up. We also had high unemployment, and most particularly, we had massive emigration of graduates, and we got those problems sorted through the nineties and early noughties.

I know. I was there through depressions of the fifties, sixties, the seventies, the eighties and survived them all.

So there is hope for us. We need a "can do" approach. We need to maintain some trust and optimism. We need younger people with attitude at the helm - in politics, in civil service, in industry, in banks
 
zen said:
My only fear is that it doesn't stoop to that level! For me, now, this is no recession. It hasn't even come close.
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Zen - I doubt you will ever go back to those days and you truely did have a dreadful time. Although there is huge personal debt this time round there is no real poverty such as what you have described. I wasn't here during those awful years but watching 'reeling back the years' is enough to say that the 80's was not a nice period for an awful lot of people. I remember young lads going over on the boat from Rosslare and they used to swipe the plate, knife and fork they were using from the canteen so they would have them for their rooms in London.
 
I went from small child to teenager in the 80s.

I can well remember some of our family dinners:
Friday - egg, beans and chips - couldnt afford meat everyday (or fish on a friday).
Tuesday - an 'organ' dinner - kidney, liver etc - again it was cost related.
Saturday - a stew of some description that usually had a few leftovers from earlier dinners thrown in.

Hand me downs were normal - I only had an older sibling of the opposite sex so I was a bit unfortunate that way!!

We had relations in america that used to send us kids presents at xmas - god the fascination with these amazing 'american' toys that were WAY fancier than anything you could get in Ireland.

We had no central heating and there was only a coal fire in the sitting room so the kitchen would be warm from cooking, the sitting room would be warm from the fire and the rest of the house was baltic, bedtime was long PJs, a hat, a hot water bottle and a pile of blankets so heavy you couldnt turn over in your sleep.

We had no phone - and it wasnt a bit unusual.
 
Same as! And an auld banger with no radio so road trips always involved lengthy decades of the rosary. We got a colour TV towards the end of the eighties though. That was a thrill!
 
shnaek said:
And an auld banger with no radio so road trips always involved lengthy decades of the rosary.
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Our time passer in the auld banger was 'count the number of cars of a particular colour'.

Or we'd bring the amazing american gifts and play with them in the car

I remember my father doing some favour for a friend of his (might have been helping him build a shed or something) and as payment yer man (who worked for Tayto or somewhere equally fantastic) gave my father a potato sack of bags of crisps near their sell by date. Ye gods such riches!!!! Myself and my brother poured them all out on the sitting room floor (along with a good chunk of potato dust) and divided them amongst ourselves and had treats for weeks on end.
 
Our old banger had rusted holes on each side of the back seat floor. Cardboard covered them up most of the time except when you went through a puddle and the water sprayed in pushing the cardboard out of the way and drenched our legs.
 
Thrifty said:
Our old banger had rusted holes on each side of the back seat floor. Cardboard covered them up most of the time except when you went through a puddle and the water sprayed in pushing the cardboard out of the way and drenched our legs.
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Did ye buy it from the Flintstones?
 
Although things were bad my kids used to take over my sitting room every sunday afternoon and watch MT USA hosted by the Late Vincent Hanley. Some really nice tunes were played and it saved me from bringing them for Sunday drives cos petrol was too dear. Any time I hear desert Moon by Denis de Young it brings me back.......

Gosh how times fly & funny how things come full circle.
 
Towger said:
I loved watching the road through the rust holes in the floor.
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You must be somewhat related to me I remember the first car my parents ever bought... it was the early nineties (I was maybe 5 or 6 at the time) and it was a tiny little blue thing... God, the pride on their faces!! I can still remember the hole in the floor of the passenger seat!! we used to fight over who would get to sit in the front to watch the road, but it was great fun for us, we thought it was dead cool at the time!
 
this (in a perverse way) is one of the most uplifting threads I have seen lately!! to add a few of my early eighties memories!!
-mum buying a big bar of cadburys on Friday night, 3 squares each our treat for the night!
-recycling my mums 50s and 60s clothes for my own 'style' at local discos
-MT USA (will never forget when they showed all 12 mins of Michael Jackons thriller)
-yellow pack food(in fairness yellow pack were bad!!)
-boarders at school stealing day pupils sandwiches
-helping on the bog and getting paid 10 and then getting a £10 red plastic radio in the pound shop in dublin and being thrilled with it!!

Thank you OP for starting this thread, in dark times it serves as a reminder that we have come through tough times and will again.
 
Thursdays was my favorite day as our parents went for the big shop which included, the farmers journal, Connaught tribune and the best of it Kit Kats.

We had to share, so I shared with my sister and our Dad use to ask us' did we want a biscuit or a bar' (we always said a bar). We ate our treat while watching All creatures great and small.

Funny thing is I don't like kit kats anymore but if I ever see ACGAM I'll watch it. I had a major crush on Christian.

I do like this thread, it reminds me of my parents telling me how hard they had it, whereas we didn't know we were born, what with the kits kats and everything. Always said I wouldn't do the 'we walked to school across the fields in our bare feet' but here I am.
 
Derry said:
Although things were bad my kids used to take over my sitting room every sunday afternoon and watch MT USA hosted by the Late Vincent Hanley.
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God I remember the jingle from it "Music Television USA - Music Never Looked Better"!!

I used to count my savings in the sitting room on a sunday while watching it. I had a metal tin moneybox that I saved 50 and 10 pence pieces in and a glass jar for 5, 2 and 1 pence pieces (clearly I got the savings bug early ).

Anyone remember the garages used to do loyalty gifts like casio digital watches? Our dad drove a taxi for a while so we were the lucky ones who only had to wait weeks for the watch - not months.
 
dmos87 said:
You must be somewhat related to me I remember the first car my parents ever bought... it was the early nineties
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It was a bit before the 90's !. It was my mums first car (two car family, Posh!). It was a 'x' hand Fiat 850?, the engine was in the back and was air cooled. It did not like hills and required a good spray on the sparks/distributor to start in the winter.

I remember the Texaco radio watch, it took about two years of stamps to get it! A Radio on a Watch!!!, high tech...
 
does anyone remember the green shields stamps?? that you saved up and bought things out of the shop in Mary Street in Dublin..
 
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