Remember when...

Graces7 · 22-02-2023 12:44pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120100331#Comment_120100331

Actually... I don;t even have a wristwatch and I have never sent a text ever. Letters yes and emails too. Social media? Does boards ie count!

Tell me how · 22-02-2023 2:01pm

...you used to hitch anywhere and everywhere.

Areas on key roads out of towns were clear hitching spots with worn patches of grass or walls from years of people hanging around waiting for a lift.

There was a protocol involved, if you arrived on that road to hitch in a particular direction and there were already people hitching, it was expected that you'd walk 50 yards beyond the people who were already hitching and set up there. Sometimes people wouldn't do this but would turn and start hitching knowing there were people there before them and they were roundly cursed if they succeeded in getting a lift immediately.

Sometimes you'd meet a sound driver who'd travel up a by road for a mile or so to drop you off but usually they'd drop you at the cross and you'd carry on on your own journey on foot. Was annoying when the local tortoise driver who thought 30mph or above was for closed circuit race tracks and despite you trying to tie your shoelace or something so they'd go past, they'd recognize you and stop.

Met some characters and had some interesting experiences in my own hitching career; was in a car that crashed in to the back of a school bus, just tipped it and broke its own headlight actually and the bus just started off and continued on its own journey without the driver even getting out. When I started driving, I returned the favor myself for years pretty much until the practice died out for the most part. Also met some characters from this perspective. Met a lad who tried to talk me in to giving him money so that he could get a bus home to see his sick father another time.

Was hitching in Christmas of 96 when there was bad ice and within the space of about 15 minutes, two cars heading west came over the bridge (which was on a slight bend), slipped and hit the wall of a house across the street and me and my brother still hitched east and got in to a car having no idea of how careful or otherwise the driver was going to be.

Very different times, you'd have arranged to meet someone or go to work or whatever and you'd be factoring in to your journey getting to your hitching point, getting a lift and where you were likely to be dropped off. All without mobile to update on your arrival. I was meeting a girl to go to the cinema once and couldn't get a lift despite cars being on the road, eventually a lad about 5 years older than me who I knew from playing football came along and he stopped. When I told him I was meeting a girl and was going to be late he said he'd do what he could to get me there. He drove like a maniac and went out of his way to drop me off at the cinema and spent the entire journey telling me how to make my moves.

Cluedo Monopoly · 22-02-2023 2:09pm

I remember when I bought a watch that had a clock face AND a small digital screen underneath it. I thought I was James Bond!! (From Dr. No era)

I don't think I turned on the chime because that would be showing off.

Graces7 · 25-02-2023 3:01pm

Remember when there was no such thing as TV... When we had the Coronation in 1953 anyone of the few who had a TV opened their houses to their neighbours.

Black and white of course.

The main pop music programme was Radio Luxembourg on Sunday evening

In the evenings we played board games eg Ludo, Chinese Chequers, Monopoly by the coal fire. Few had central heating. The fire was the centre of the home,

Hot water bottles; no electric blankets or duvets,

niallpatrick · 25-02-2023 4:19pm

Parents working their asses off to buy pressies for their kids on 'tick', cherishing those games and toys using them playing with them until they either burned out or fell apart. Did the 26 ESB have electric Ireland shops? we had 6 counties shop electric shops where you had a tick book and electric stamps to pay off what was owed. If the electronic good was faulty no quibbles they replaced the item there and then.

Kids now if it breaks it's probably been rage quitted or thrown smashed mislaid loaned out and never got it back, everythings disposable now including the parents responsibilities to the community when they let their kids out to cause trouble. Ehh up back in my day pish a neighbour off he or she gave you a bollocking told you to f-off and that was it over n done with, if yer ma got notification she'd send you back out to apologise.

Our playing field was a make shift patch of gravel on waste ground (provided by the council) a GAA post with no nets and a sand pit full of broken glass and dog sht. Same locality now has state of the art 3g pitches GAA posts with real nets on 3 sites so how the hell are kids now bored and think it's their right to cause trouble? **** parents which brings me to kids having to do work back in my day. No driveways you were told to turn the garden over and sod it out, as one did the spoilt rich kids from down the street were duly mucked! passing by which turned into a muck slinging war and another neighbour was caught in the cross fire muck all over her garden. I was told to clean it up by her which I did the rich kids were made to clean down the path under protest from them and their parents. 35/38 years later that neighbour is now an OAP and loves my family she always did. Whatever she wants done, gardening driveway de-weeded I can't and won't charge her. Remember when respect meant something? Try that with kids nowadays they'd come back at night and bust your windows and the parents would probably hand them the bricks.

Purple Mountain · 25-02-2023 4:41pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120121994#Comment_120121994

I swopped bedrooms with my parents. There was a landline in the room.

I used to think I was so cool with a phone I could use from my bed as a teenager.

Loafing Oaf · 25-02-2023 5:12pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120287015#Comment_120287015

...

Count Dracula · 26-02-2023 1:10am

McDonalds was new wave and a taste of the future.

Gurkens were warm you see?

Graces7 · 01-03-2023 8:47am

..when there was only one TV Channel, BBC and ir closed at ten at night.. ( no videos etc of course)

iamstop · 14-04-2023 2:17pm

Remember when you could tell you were going to get a mobile phone call a few seconds before it would ring because your stereo would make that strange electronic clicking sound?

You don't hear that anymore.

Dramatik · 15-04-2023 5:13pm

Credit card imprinter machines.

You put the card in the machine with some carbon paper on top and pull the handle back and forth to make a copy of the customers details.

Interestingly enough, those of you that still have physical cards, you will see that all of your information is raised up off the face of the card, which would allow the carbon paper to make a copy of the details.

Cha chunk

Morris Garren · 15-04-2023 9:11pm

Remember when the Grand National was a once-a-year horseracing TV highlight on the old BBC that wasn't disrupted by pink-haired dock-martin-and-fluffy-jacket-wearing folk who tried to glue themselves to the fences and cause mayhem? What, apart from getting their smug middle class faces in the media, are they achieving? I know the IRA tried to blow the entire thing up one year, which was way worse. But 500 million people still tune into the race worldwide. I say 'glue-and-be-damned' and let the race continue. And the irony of horse cruelty campaigners with a stash of glue 'on hand' -- headbangers the lot of them

Badly Drunk Boy · 16-04-2023 12:47am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120482398#Comment_120482398

Well, there was Emily Davison, the English suffragette who threw herself in front of the King's horse in the Epsom Derby in 1913. That was over 100 years ago. Not the Grand National, but still. (Women still got equal suffrage in Ireland before they did in England.)

Ubbquittious · 16-04-2023 1:06am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120477338#Comment_120477338

I remember there was a pirate radio that had a mobile phone people could ring in on. It was too close to the transmitter so if you called or texted you'd hear their phone making the sound on your radio.

After a while people copped it and started calling up and quickly hanging up before it even rang just to get it to make the sound

AndrewJRenko · 16-04-2023 1:27am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120099637#Comment_120099637

And the Spawell consisted of a pitch and putt club with two portacabins.

AndrewJRenko · 16-04-2023 1:36am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120109650#Comment_120109650

And the Christmas evening movie was a blockbuster that was in the cinema five years ago and hadn’t been heard of since.

outside the rain · 16-04-2023 2:25am

When people seemed nice op? Oh no I completely forget that.

Count Dracula · 16-04-2023 11:00am

Heading to town on Saturday night to meet with people was an event that involved cognitive cooperation. You would meet on main street at such and such a time - and you had to be there or you missed it? There was no texting as you nipped into the shower or asking who was there. You turned up and saw how it panned out. It was a commitment to your posse.

Straight to the nearest boozer, if you weren't already wrecking heads there already. Ooohh the delight at seeing Mary- Jane... in her glad rags with her belly button showing and phuck me eye liner on full show, oh phucking yes yes yes baby. That 2-3 pint giddy feeling and catching up with scandal, heresay, untruths and other important schtufffff.

Now everyone arrives willy nilly as if it is an interruption on their important schedule? There are more group selfies than jokes or craic, everyone looking around like spare pricks, blandly checking their phones and watching videos of other nobodies spouting into their cameras or some other crap.....

No wonder the pubs are empty. Between schmoking bans and mobile phone dross and social engineering and the worst of the worst..... gym goers ..... just stay in the gym please, you look much better in there, sweating away, listening to crap commercial techno bump bump, whilst eyeing yourself up in the mirror. Don't stop till you get enough you gormless, vain, dragged up sociopathic pariahs? Don't look back either, thankyou?

Give me a size 14 Bacardi n coke scwhilling freckled bombshell, with a decent pair of tits who reads books any day of the week. I don't give 2 phucks what you are watching on Netflix either, why don't you just stay at home to phuck and watch the whole phucking thing you oxygen tea leaf? I would rather watch Glenroe re-runs, eating ham and Tomato sangers, packs of Tayto and a quarter of Apple Drops.... than have to watch 5 minutes of whatever re-hashed American drivel you were told to " have a look at , its amazing " by some other numbskull you are acquainted with, sipping on your woeful Pale Ale - which you don't even really like? Speckled Hen is far nicer btw, or a nice bottle of MaCardles, dash a lime.

Can't even buy the Viz any more?

People wouldn't spend 15 euro on a musical record, CD or album of their choice.... no problem spending it on a coffee and a Pan au chocolate though? That music won't be giving you latent Diabetes either, you cheapskate, uninitiated, self entitled, bland, permanently outraged , gormless , overpaid and under loved MuPPets? Bet you don't even know who Gonzo or Rawlf the dog actually are, without googling their beautiful names?

Yurt2 · 16-04-2023 12:08pm

Well...that's certainly...a set of opinions...

NewbridgeIR · 16-04-2023 12:14pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120483065#Comment_120483065

The Towering Inferno on RTE, Christmas Day 1980.

iamstop · 17-04-2023 4:34pm

Watership Down was also an Xmas mainstay.

yourdeadwright · 17-04-2023 5:14pm

20 pound was enough for a taxi , pints & a chipper on the way home,

In Dublin City you'd meet some bird get lucky & never see or hear from her again, no mobiles ., no social media, just one & done,

You'd have to meet your mates at a certain time & if your held up for some reason the night would just be completely random ,

You'd have no idea where you'd end up on a night out, no ringing to see where the party was, ud' just end up in some strangers house the other side of the city ,

iamstop · 17-04-2023 5:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120488403#Comment_120488403

Wow, I nearly forgot the 'back to some randomers gaff' situations. Ha. Some good and memorable times were had but also some crazy walks of shame the next morning. The mid week ones were the strangest, when I was unemployed. You'd be trying to get home, still buzzed, going counter flow to the work traffic.