Good clothes being robbed off the washing line!
Pissing in phone boxes.
Those steering wheel anti theft things.
Getting felt up by a priest.
Getting battered by nuns, Christian brothers, teachers, your parents, everybody.
Cars with no seat belts. cars with calves in the back seat, cars held together with baler twine.
Shíte choice of food.
Houses with no indoor toilets and rural houses with no toilets.
If the dog misbehaved, he got a kick up the hole
That reminds me we lived next to a green area and there would frequently be stolen cars speeding around on it at all hours of the night. Gangs of youths hanging around and drinking all night, killing people's pets, clothes getting stolen from the line, windows smashed if you said anything to them, young people dying from overdoses all the time. It was actually low key traumatizing to live on a council estate in Dublin in the 80s/early 90s. Things seem to be a lot more quiet now
In my folks area the milkman gave out solid plastic covers that went down to the ground, with the brand name on it. Like a plastic box with one end open. Even the crows couldn't flip it so milk safe from pecking.
I still remember missing a Babylon 5 episode, dunno if I set the times wrong or power cut. And that was a series where as it went on every episode counted.
I don't remember the episode for obvious reasons !
My da had a small piece of wood to put over the bottles,didn't stop the crows though.
There was always a race to see who could get the bottles open first to get the cream on top, absolutely magic.
I remember my baby sister's night gown, it wasn't made from fireproof material, and standing at an open fire it would go up in flames. She was ok, I'm sure the parents got it off quick. Also the fireguard stopping sparks from setting the carpet on fire. How did we survive?
Trying to figure out how to set the video to record your show. Easy to get the times or the channel wrong. If you missed it, who knows when you'll get another chance to watch it.
Then came video plus where you could enter an 8 digit code and it would set the start, end and channel.
Generally though, TV shows weren't so 'series' based. So if you did miss an episode you wouldn't be too lost if you caught the next one.
Now it's binge watchers paradise.
And needing a cover for the bottles after delivery so birds wouldn't peck them open to get at the cream at the top.
Apex airfares and having to stay a Saturday night before the return flight.
No idea why.
Also, stand-by fares where you’d go out to the airport and hope for a last minute bargain.
My local shop would let the neighbours buy stuff “on tick” with the shopkeeper keeping a record of what people owed him in a little red book. He would also accept butter vouchers as payment for groceries and would occasionally sell bottles of poteen from underneath the counter.
I remember bringing bagfuls of milk tokens to Dawn Dairies in Clare Street Limerick to exchange for cutlery and tea towel sets.
That reminded me that when we were very small and lived in Dolphins Barn flats my dad would take the distributor cap out of his Ford Escort engine every night and bring it inside so no one could steal the car.
That lasted in Premier Dairies areas til 1999
I still have a milkman, Avonmore now but was Dawn years and years ago; always been Tetrapak here that I can remember.
leaving the empties out for the milkman too.
In the 70s, you brought (some, it was already on the way out) bottles back to the shop to get a deposit back on them. We just stopped doing it for 50 years
No recycling.
Then you could drive to the bottle bank.
Now you have a blue bin at your gaff.
Also the bottle return thing, but I don't know much about that tbh.
Ah yeah, I remember the codes.
Another TV one. BBC and UTV reception used to be grainy for us but sometimes it was really clear and a big storm always followed. Good weather predictor!
Going into RTV to pay the weekly rent on the TV in first year college house.
Going parish to parish looking for a short mass.
Even new release albums taking months to get here, unless you paid 50%+ more for it "on import". Australia was often another year behind us too.
Youth fashion lagging by prolonged periods due to being somewhat connected to movies and youth culture.
Homophobia being the norm.
"Fallen" women having to take the boat to England.
The Catholic Church being a powerful political force rather than a hangover of a bygone era that hasn't realised it's dead.
New release films in the cinema that were shown in the US a year or more ago.
Kids TV being restricted to a few hours after school (i.e. The Den, CBBC etc) and Saturday morning cartoons (not sure this was a bad thing tbh!).
The news opening with the latest body count from Northern Ireland.
A flight to England being the equivalent of a month's wages.
Overdone meat and mushy vegetables being the standard.
Bathing being a weekly rather than a daily thing.
Entering codes from the game manual or the game wouldn't load.
Come to think of it, my rear windows are actually manual, relatively new car.
Ask Jeeves
In a bit of a Derry Girls toaster-in-cupboard thing, you could often tell a protestant household by what they had tuned on 1 on their TV - BBC1 or RTE1
7 was probably the video recorder in most houses around my area, you could get the UK channels with a (ridiculously massive) aerial here.
Cars getting robbed. At least a couple of times a year, someone would try and rob your car at night while it was sitting in your driveway. If they succeeded, you'd spend the following morning roaming around nearby council estates to find it - usually parked up somewhere with a broken lock or window.
That was one of the best things back then. It was always the same phone boxes and you could often get the backed up clogged coins out of them by putting your finger up the refund slot. Paid many a busfare that way.
If you had a bin collection back then, you probably had the binmen knocking on the door looking for a tip at Christmas.
Loose chippings!! You had to drive at 10mph with all hands pushing on the inside of the windscreen to stop it cracking from being hit by little stones (no safety glass in the 1980's). I remember when I was a kid (late 70's) driving to Courtown for our only holiday as a kid and my Dads car having its windscreen shattered by bloody loose chippings. I just remember we had to stand on the side of the road for hours whilst we tried to sort it out (no mobile phones!!). Luckily we were in a two car convoy and my uncle went off to get help.
Yes cos half the country were boiling the kettle on the ad break at 7.45pm 🤣
Crappy TV choice.
Bloody dogs roaming everywhere in the early 90's and then getting chased by one of them…..40 years old now and I still have a fear of dogs from it!
General crap quality of life.
P.S. - Queuing with my mother at the local Credit Union every Thursday to lodge £15. Jesus the queue used to wind down this stairs and out the door.
i reckon a lot of paedos left porno mags in bushes for kids to find.
