The 70's and 80's in Ireland

Anything Goes
Pajo's Junkbox

JupiterKid wrote: »

Oh, and yes there were traffic jams in the 80s - just not in the places there are now. The road network was third world and there were practically no bypasses or motorways and very little dual carriageway so many towns on a journey to, say, Cork or Galway were awful bottlenecks. There were an awful lot more road deaths too, despite traffic levels being much lower.

A lot of people here seem to view the 80s and 70s with rose tinted specs.

If anyone wants to see the positive effect of drink driving becoming gradually socially more unacceptable, they only have to look at the figures for road deaths.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_road_traffic_accidents_deaths_in_Republic_of_Ireland_by_year

I remember the clandestine home hair dyeing sessions that my fiftysomething aunt and her friends used to have in the 1970s. All done with maximum secrecy and under the cover of darkness, as they didn't want their husbands to know that they were wasting time on anything as frivolous as their appearances.

By the time I was 21 in 1993 my mother-born in the early 30s-was of the opinion that it was time for me to stop growing and highlighting my hair. One of the last thing she said to me before her death in 2010 was to tell me to never cut it and make sure that the hairdresser made it blonder the next time.

Professional colour does good things to middle aged hair. I experimented with growing mine out over the last couple of years and was left with flat frizzy ageing hair. Got the highlights back in and it has taken a decade off me.

Teyla Emmagan wrote: »

It was great, we were happy. We were bought 'clothes that would last' and wore them till they were grown out of. That's one thing I remember actually, not having very many clothes. Like enough clothes obviously but not a choice of outfits by any means. Certainly no changing 3 times a day or anything. Everything was utilitarian. All our good shoes were from Clarks. One pair a year, bought in September.

And the bl##dy hand knitted wooly jumpers. And wooly mittens. And tights that were forever hanging down around my knees. Also polyester nighties that you couldn't stand too near the Sears heater in. And the strictly enforced 'no pants in bed' rule. And duffle coats. Lots of check patterns and dungarees and shirts. No t shirts. Jeans from Dunnes. My mother liked to dress myself and my sister in the same outfits so as the youngest she had to wear everything for twice as long. I will never forget those purple velure knickerbockers.

Nothing was disposable though, which was good. None of this wear something for a few weeks and throw it away nonsense. Thankfully there aren't many photos.

I remember patches on the knees of my jean/trousers and on the elbows of my jumpers. And hand knit wooly jumpers with a button on the shoulder so you could get your head through them. We got Clarks shoes too, for school. All the school uniform stuff was bought two sizes too big so they'd last a few years.

Jimmy. wrote: »

The pull out method was all the rage.

I remember an article on the Sunday World probably in the eighties about how youngsters were making home made condoms from cling film and the health dangers it posed.

In the Sunday World so it must have been true.

Sycamore Tree wrote: »

That's for sure. You could turn up when you pleased, do the bare minimum, steal a few supplies and run to the unions if anyone challenged you
Legendary stories about sick leave, tea breaks and card sessions.

And coming in drunk and even drinking on the job was a thing.

decky1 wrote: »

Late 70's +all 80's were great in our town , not a care in the world,live music in all pubs every night at weekend seem to have loads of money,pint was about 25 pence when i started drinking 1978, always great crack to be had, they say times are better now , walk down our town now it's gone backwards, shops closed everywhere, no cinema, maybe 2 pubs in town now have live music at weekends . when my father was young there were 2 cinema's 3 dance halls, no way are things better now.

I hear what you are saying however people are spending their money differently now.

Cinema is now Netflix
Dancehall is now Tinder
Pub is now a bag of cans
Shops is now amazon

I'm a wee big younger than yourself, born in '84 but I remember Dad renting a VCR, getting the phone in etc. I think as others have said we all look back with rose tinted glasses at the time of our youths.

freddie1970 wrote: »

Radio Luxemburg

Does anyone remember the evangelical Christian station that used to broadcast on the same frequency before the Radio Luxembourg English service would start in the evenings?

The great thing about winter if you lived in two channel TV land in the west of Ireland was that at least you could get better medium wave reception of the UK Radio stations in the darkness. In addition, I remember listening to Radio Sweden, Radio Moscow and a host of other eastern European stations that used to broadcast for an hour or two in English around the time of the fall of the Berlin wall.

In the 80,s there was no web,no social media, people did not take selfie,s
.smartphones did not exist.No one got insulted on twitter.
Most people had 3 or 4 tv channels, using an aerial to get bbc and itv.
People did not worry about global warming.
There was pirate radio in dublin.
If you had a job it was easy to buy a house.
The local Video rental shop was the closest thing to netflix.
Everyone watched certain programs like the late late show, top of the pops.Now on sky tv theres 100,s of channels, plus streaming tv channels on the web.
Yes if you got a job in the civil service you had it for life.
There was only a few tv shows that played music videos,before mtv came along .It seems to me to have been a more innocent and young people
were optimistic.Many young people went to england or america to work .
If you had a big colour tv and a vcr vhs video recorder and a nes games console you were well off.
Now people want to buy certain brands and women buy handbags for 100,s of euro.
It seems now that theres more of a gap between rich and the poor.

One could buy a house or alternatively one could rent one. Dublin was extremely violent especially for gig goers. The baaiis drove opel katettes.

This thread has certainly brought back some memories, when I tell my kids of the differences between then & now it's like I was in a parallel universe, found this on the web; I remember having to watch this ****e in school which was unusual because it was a mixed school & our religion teacher was (allegedly) a former nun who 'got up the family way' or so the story went.

https://youtu.be/cxgXWHo9jvI

The Crowman wrote: »

That was the one with the scary middle aged woman who gives out hell to her young daughter and then turns to the camera and says "kids, wouldn't ye die if anything happened to them"? I'd say it worked too, she used to scare the bejasus out of me.

She was the Whirlegig Witch in Fortycoats & Co

Differences with the 80s might seem great, but if you take the Back to the Future approach and compare the 80s with 30 years before the difference was much greater.

In the mid 1980s I only lived in a house with a landline phone, but you could still contact people easily enough. There was a washing machine, colour TV and most other gadgets people use and I had my first car and went around Ireland in it. I went on two Interrails and many people went to Spain for their holidays, although not as many as now. I had a degree. Life was not quite as convenient as now, but people's horizons were broadly the same.

Thirty years before in the mid 1950s, that house (subsequently reconstructed) had no electricity or water, most people cycled although my Dad had a car then, there wasn't a phone nearby. People's horizons were entirely different.

I grew up in the 70s and 80s in Dublin council estates or "Corpo" estates as they were known because they were built by what was then Dublin Corporation. The Dublin County Council estates were apparently "posher". My father was a lorry driver and always worked but was taxed to the hilt. High taxation lead to rampant cases of people working for a small cash in hand sum topped up by the dole. Employers were actively engaging in it. Our neighbours who did this always had more than we had. I was 8 when we got our first car and it was only as a result of the Credit Union. It took years for my father to build up enough savings. Before that it was buses and trains.

I often laugh at my wife during the winter when she complains about the cold while simply hitting a button for the central heating. She had a slightly posher upbringing than me.:D I didn't live in a house with central heating until I was 17 and even then you had to have the fire lighting. That was the first house my parents bought in the late 80s. A 27K mortgage with a 300 pound a month repayment. Savage interest rates. It was the early 90s before they could convert to oil fired central heating. But growing up, I was never cold in Winter. The fire was always burning when I came home from school and a hot water bottle in my bed at night. My childhood memories are happy ones. The food was boring, but we always had enough of it. Playing outdoors till all hours all year long. The different "seasons" when Conkers and Marbles were the done thing. The Friday evening treat when the weekly shop was done after waiting on my Father to come home with his wage packet. He'd also bring home the Beano and the Dandy comics. Christmas didn't start in September. It started in December and the build up was short and intense making it so much more enjoyable.

As a teenager in the 80s the music was epic and accessing it was an adventure in itself. The opening of HMV and the Virgin Megastore in Dublin lead to many Saturdays browsing for hours while also listening to great tunes, despite not having a penny in your pocket to spend. The city centre cinemas that despite being subdivided in the 70s still retained an element of the old days. Curtains across the screens that opened as the movie started. Ushers with torches. The last remaining cinema screen from my 70s and 80s childhood, the Savoy One, is now gone. But I was so glad that I managed to bring my young daughter to it and share my memories of Star Wars (1977) and Star Wars (2015).

I suppose I can't leave things until I mention Religion, sex and booze. In the 70s I was a God fearing child taught by Nuns and Brothers. Corporal punishment was still legal and many a caning I got. You learned all the tricks to try and prevent the pain like sitting on your hands until called in for the slap. But even before Corporal punishment was banned, many schools were already moving away from it as policy, but I do remember a few asshole teachers getting physical in Secondary school in the 80s. I was 13 when I decided that I didn't believe in God and started skipping Mass. I'd learned the facts of life aged 9 via a book called "Where do I come from." I remember my parents sitting down with me after reading the book to ask if I'd any questions. During the conversation my Father muttered, "He knows more than me".:D Lost my virginity aged 15. It was aided by a friend selling condoms in school that he had nicked from his parents. Because I'd read that little book from Easons, I knew a girl could get pregnant despite doing it for the first time, standing up or me whipping my todger out before the business end.:D As for booze? Cheap enough compared to earnings. I had a part time job from the age of 14 up to full employment after college. Drinking in fields was in but getting served in pubs was fairly easy.

I'm delighted to have grown up back then. It wasn't perfect, but it had so many things that I wished my daughter could experience now.

sunbeam wrote: »

Does anyone remember the evangelical Christian station that used to broadcast on the same frequency before the Radio Luxembourg English service would start in the evenings?

The great thing about winter if you lived in two channel TV land in the west of Ireland was that at least you could get better medium wave reception of the UK Radio stations in the darkness. In addition, I remember listening to Radio Sweden, Radio Moscow and a host of other eastern European stations that used to broadcast for an hour or two in English around the time of the fall of the Berlin wall.

I don't think there were religious broadcasts from Luxembourg, it was all pop music by then. There was another high power transmitter in Monte Carlo which sold air time to among others Trans World Radio, a religious station. It was on 1467 kHz very close to Luxembourg on 1440.

Those other stations were also on medium wave, but had a much greater presence on shortwave. That is a thing of the past now. At the height of the Cold War, Radio Free Europe was broadcasting to the East, from massively powerful transmitters. And the Soviet Union was using even higher power to try to jam them, and the BBC and other stations. They were reputed to be spending around $100 million a year back then to stop people listening to news and pop music from the free world.

The Crowman wrote: »

The fella on the right, who was known in the 80's for being the first black presenter on Irish tv, long before he became better known for being a complete headbanger. On the left Flo McSweeney, the subject of many a teenage lads fantasy in 80's Ireland.

Isn't that the fella who wants to be President, it looks like him anyway.

NewbridgeIR wrote: »

Outdoor toilets in primary schools.
If you wanted to use a cubicle you had to obtain the key in advance.
This was held on a rotation basis in different classrooms so you'd have to call around to that particular classroom and say "Can I have the key of the toilets?". Which meant that everyone knew you were going for a sh*t.

I'd bake it until I got home to save the embarrassment.

Purple Mountain wrote: »

Kevin Sharkey?

That's the lad alright. Presented a Music TV show with Flo from a building across from Christ Church. Was it called Megamix?