The 70's and 80's in Ireland

Feck lads.....13 pages since yesterday....cant read it all, but my tuppence worth (as a guy who lived his formative years in the 80s)....

Music BRILL

Movies BRILL

Clothes RUBBISH !!

JupiterKid wrote: »

I loved McDonalds as a kid. It was a real treat. Now some families practically raise their children on fast food and that -
combined with little outdoor play - is a major reason why we have a childhood obesity problem.

I remember some friend of my mam's from when they lived in Belfast in the 60s as young women coming to visit from the States with her son in the mid 80s - she was a very stylish MILF and he was a tall, tanned good looking 16 year old lad with perfect teeth and my big sister had a crush on him (she'd be morto now at that lol:D) - they lived in Cleveland, Ohio. I remember him telling me that his city had 25 McDonalds when Dublin had only about 4 or 5 at the time. I couldn't get my head around that!! 25 MaccyDs in one city alone - it seemed amazing to a 10 year old lad in 1985.

I also remember my Dad going to New York on a business trip in circa 1984 and he came back with walkmans for my two older sisters and myself. They were super cool! Massive chunky Sanyo things but my mates were mad jealous. I still have mine after 34 years and I bet if I put batteries in it - it would still work.

Anyone remember Soda Stream?:o

I remember it well. We had it in our house.

I only really remember the mid/late 80's.

The Good
So many concerts from the age of 13. Metallica were even good back then.
ZX Spectrum or C64 for the posher kids. VHS.
Playing in the streets. Kerbs, heads and volleys. Disappearing for hours on end on your bike with friends.
There was a real sense of togetherness. We were a very proud but troubled nation.

The Bad
The smog before the introduction of smokeless coal. It was like a Dickens novel some nights.
Parts of Dublin city centre were completely derelict. People give out about Temple Bar now. It was an absolute dump in 1988.
Food was pretty terrible for most.

The Ugly
Unemployment, poverty, fighting, joyriders, glue sniffers, heroin.

not getting beat over the head with endless rules and regulations form the nanny state we live in now..

Dakota Dan wrote: »

No toilets on the 80’s? It might come as a surprise to you but most houses has toilets in the 60’s. No central heating in the 70’s though so it was a hot water bottle to heat the bed with chilblains as a result and huddle around the stove to get some heat before it disappeared through the uninsulated walls and roof. People survived it and hardly any complaining or sense of entitlement like people have nowadays.

I think a lot of new houses had toilets but I know lots of rural farm houses and they simply didn't have toilets or install them right away.
I know a few people and the district nurse basically made people get them when they got older in the 2000's.

News beginning with...

The body of a man has been found in the Shankill rd area of East Belfast..

dr.fuzzenstein wrote: »

They're all the rage again. Just for water mind you, no one in their right mind would use those disgusting syrups, even though they're still available and with new "organic" flavours now.
Had a few over the last few years. The amount of fücking rubbish from plastic water bottles is one thing I absolutely don't miss.

On topic:
Bottles of water, soft drinks and beer in crates that where reusable and you paid a deposit on.
Why the absolute fcuk does everything have to be throwaway plastic bottles these days?

Sometimes we seem to be going backward, very little plastic back then either meat was straight from the butcher and wrapped in brown paper. I never saw bottles of water back then, that craze didn’t start until the late 80’s.

freddie1970 wrote: »

i remember the food being brutal ...i know hate the smell of bacon and cabbage

Nothing wrong with the food as it was a lot closer to organic than the sh1te that’s around today. But having bacon and cabbage 6 days a week and chicken on Sunday wasn’t much fun.

topper75 wrote: »

An Irish CB ran the rate for the punt. It was a currency/rate for OUR economy, not for a depressed German banking sector or a roaring Parisian property market. It was ours. By us, for us.

Yet the economy was always sh1t... funny that. Inflation was 15%, interest rates if you could even get a mortgage (needed to be saving regularly for years, that's why people stayed engaged for years) were 20%, sounds good if you were lucky enough to have savings but a devaluation could slash their value overnight and whack up the price of fuel and all imported goods. Between that and the high inflation the value of wages fell rapidly so there were constant strikes. Great days, who needs a solid currency like the euro :rolleyes:

hot buttered scones wrote: »

We had a lock on our phone - 3 teenagers in the house and me dad going through every call on the phone bill saw to that. Electrical appliances being bought from the ESB shop and paid in installments on the bill. Most people I knew rented their TVs.

There were no itemised bills in the 70s or 80s. They came along well enough into the 90s IIRC and for the first few years you had to pay extra! So you just got a bill saying X number of units, it didn't even break down between local calls, trunk calls or international. People would be terrified of getting a big phone bill. On our road there were 300 houses and I'd say less than ten of them had a phone. There always used to be people calling in to use our phone and we had a coinbox beside it they'd put 20p into. The public phones would either be vandalised or have a queue. Many of our neighbours (N.B. this was in Dublin city) were on a waiting list for a phone for ten years by the time they put in more lines in the late 80s and they could finally get a phone. Every few months my aunt used to come over to our house to ring her sister in England, she used to get the call put through through the operator (could have dialled direct) so the operator could tell her at the end how much it cost and she'd give my mother the money. A 30-40 minute call used to cost a few pounds.

After my dad died in 1985 my mother was able to get her job back (had to resign when she got married) and there was no tax allowance for widows or widowers in those days so she was taxed as a single person. 65% income tax on a modest enough income, with levies and PRSI on top of that and two teenagers to feed and put through school. Luckily we'd bought the house a few years earlier off the corporation, my mother inherited a bit of money and paid off the balance of the mortgage, it was £500 or something. I remember my mother going around to the rent office (it was a house a couple of streets away) every week paying the corporation mortgage, it was something like £4, if you were just renting it was £2.

I remember the old Lady Lavery pound notes (we used to call her Lady Lavatory ) but you felt rich if you had 50p. Even a 10p (the old big ones, same as the old two shilling coin) felt like a proper bit of money, they had a hefty enough weight to them. The line in Rat Trap "He reaches in his pocket, he finds 50p" had real meaning because finding a 50p was a big enough deal, bag of chips and a bus fare home and a bit left.





Highlight of the week in the 80s was Sunday afternoons watching MT USA on the black and white portable (weren't allowed watch it on the "big" 20" rented colour TV)

Unemployment hit 20 percent in the 80s. The dole was so small it was hardly worth collecting it. You definitely wouldn't be seen in a pub if you were on the dole. You just couldn't afford it. You actually had to queue up weekly to collect the dole. Not unlike the dole scene in the commitments. Apprenticeship wages were tiny. You definitely wouldn't be buying a car with spoiler & alloys.

The 80s were bad times but for the most part we were happy enough because we'd never seen boom times. The crash in the 0s was worse in that we had boom times & when it was taken away we missed it.

Oh yeah we had naff hairstyle

Chomp & Wham Bars

TheRiverman wrote: »

Being hot and and horny on Saturday nights in 1975/76 in my father's Morris Minor that he was brave and trustworthy enough to give me.

Was this you and yer mates?

Ursus Horribilis wrote: »

Where on earth did you grow up??

I'm from the countryside and at worst, people had an outdoor toilet. I can only think of one house where they had no toilet and it was owned by a fella who was a bit useless anyway.

Plenty of places, usually owned by old bachelor farmers had no toilets. Go to the usual ditch and bring newspaper...

The wooden spoon!!