Good clothes being robbed off the washing line!
This is brilliant example and basically describes all my family holidays in the 80s
That CIE locomotive broke down at Manulla junction , the one that is to take you from there to Ballina. A second locomotive will haul all the passengers in a single coach along with the broken down loco. Every minute or so there is a loud bang from the very overloaded Deisel engine of the single loco also hauling the dead one. This trip will go through the night to Foxford, at a pace of 25 mph. At that point, passengers for Ballina train station are put on a clapped out Mercedes minibus. Some days later, intending passengers for the train at Ballina train station are put on the same clapped out minibus. An very angry senior citizen gives out to the driver as if this will magically change things. I believe we were brought to Ballyhaunis to pick up th train to Dublin.
April 1989.
Driving back from NI with a "smuggled" 14 inch TV in the car and praying that Mr Customs wouldn't jump out from behind a bush to nab you as you crossed the border.
I loved the nineties, life was simpler then.
at least ye had a bin collection.
Back in the 80s or early 90s we brought the rubbish to the dump, and of course never on a special spin but when we were on the way to visit the relatives so as kids you had stinking weeks old rubbish inches behind your head in the boot.
And as the last post mentioned, meeting up with someone was a matter of staying in a place for ages till they turned up, and as a backup you'd have an arrangement to leave a message with your folks or their folks that you could ring with a 20p from a payphone if needs be.
Thats of course for those who had phones, and it wasnt that uncommon for houses to not have a phone.
Dad driving up North on business in his Mk1 Ford Escort and queuing at the border to have his car reg reported by a British Soldier into his radio and then waved on.
No power cuts? Obviously you were not there!
ah that’s an easy one to sort - get the retailer to issue you with a “shop soiled” receipt for an amount under the limit (I think that might have been £120 or so if memory serves?
I forgot about going to the dump. We would drive up to the dump at night with the car lights off as we got closer. Then we would turn off the car and wait quietly for 5 mins. Then full beams and gasp at the number of rats moving in the rubbish. The dump was literally alive. Amazing but scary too! You'd dare not open the car door.
No sense of community
The Gardai telling you not to have that fifth pint… 4 was ok… 5 was bad!
Having to go to Aertel to get footie results and the inevitable waiting.
Dinners being kept warm on a pot of boiling water and ending up as mush.
Smoking on a plane/ train / bus.
Loading PC games via tape (ughhhh the torment).
That noise that came from a PC when you used the internet via phone connection.
The crap internet.
Encyclopedias
The phone book / yellow pages
The [insert washing powder brand] doorstep challenge
Getting stopped and searched going into large department stores in Belfast by armed RUC officers.
Petrol robbed from car petrol tanks at night throughout the petrol shortage
That's an urban myth fortunately - it's a Mitchell and Webb joke
https://www.thejournal.ie/factcheck-1972-drink-driving-poster-3725712-Nov2017/
Shop lifting… way too many security cameras nowadays
I used the 1999-2000 years as an example, but yes that practice was long gone by then. But i still remember a man who bought his new car in Oct-Nov and was for-regging it hoping to make Jan of the new year. But about the 3rd week into Dec, the Guards made him register it! But even now, it's possible to buy in late autumn, and delay registering until the new year, as long as iit'snot on the road.
Sudden closures of multinational companies like Ferenka in Limerick and of course the PMPA cue the pasty flabbergasted face of the PMPA CEO on the front of a main Irish newspaper. Loads of car owners had to scramble for new insurance.
Parish envelopes.
Edit to add my parents stopped giving them money after Eamon Casey as they'd given money when we had very little while Eamon Casey was funding his kids expensive education in the US.
Whilst both you and they were smoking on the upstairs of the bus.
Being the human remote control. We had 7 buttons on our old (first) tv in the 80s as far as I remember and had that tv for many years. You'd be told to 'see what's on'.
Press button 1 on the front of the tv, wait for a few seconds til you were told to go on, press 2. Rinse and repeat through however many channels we had at the time while also trying not to stand in the way of the screen so your parents could see what was on. I still remember what was on each:
#1 RTE1
#2 Network 2 when it came along
#3 UTV
#4 BBC1
#5 BBC2
#6 Channel4
#7 Sky - the excitement of a channel to fill the last button when it eventually came. Note it wasn't Sky1 or Sky News or Sky Sports, it was just 'Sky' 😁
We didn't have all of those channels from the start but they came along eventually. While I was still pushing the buttons 😀
The dirt that would come out of my hair when I washed it over the bath (does anyone do that any more?) due to the smog and smoke outside from open fires in homes and fumes from cars, at least that's what I assume it was. I lived in an urban area so walking to school and wherever else you'd be around a lot of homes with fires burning for heat.
Another thing - waking up on a winter's morning and trying to get dressed as quickly as possible in front of the two bar heater in your bedroom because there was no central heating and the fire wouldn't be lit that early in the morning. Brrr.
yeah I forgot a lot of the conductors smoked so they’d head upstairs every so often
I remember banking up the fire with wet slack so it would stay burning all night, a lost art nowadays. I wonder if you can even buy slack anymore ?
I learned about slack when in student accommodation - did the job nicely of keeping the fire going for as long as possible and giving us the heat we needed so desperately
Did you have Super Channel too (probably around 1987)? That had some great music after midnight, for an impressionable young teenager like myself. I particularly remember The Fall, The Wedding Present and Laibach, and you wouldn't have seen them anywhere else.
Just two will do was the advert that we remember here.
Bit of a dark one but just casual violence by teachers against pupils being kinda of acceptable.
I was lucky as the most notorious brutes always seemed to go too far in the year before I had them and they were on watch. My older brothers told me that a religious order teacher broke a kids arm off the runner that held the blackboard duster, turned out the kids dad was in the local barracks and a personal visit put an end to that level of violence.
He was still sadistic and I dreaded my turn in his class, but the very year it was my turn in his class he was mysteriously no longer a teacher and was confined to admin duty in the school.
Being asked by dad to change the channel... Getting up, walking over to the 14 inch b&w grundig & pushing the relevant button.
We had one with a dial selector at one stage rather than push buttons.
PC speakers. You couldn't have a computer without buying a set of speakers :)
We'd have "stitches" which was a smack to the face, "Wiggings" which is where they'd tug and twist the hair at the front of your ear and "knuckles" where they'd rap your knuckles with a ruler.
And in evening study if you misbehaved the prefect would have you kneeling. And if that continued, kneeling on a duster, and then kneeling and doing circles (holding your arms out, parallel to the ground and doing small circles with them and then finally circles whilst holding a hurley.
And this was the early to mid 90's.
hmm, think it was pretty much what people thought. my father in law reckoned he was grand upto 4 pints to drive ( he wasnt)
before the 80s90s it was drive home drunk.
