Life in the 80s

Last night we attended an 80s Party. For clarification purposes, let me state that this was not a celebration of octogenarians, but a remembrance of all things circa 1980-90.

A decade is a long time, of course, and there’s a lot that went on during the 80s. Jigging about to Spandau Ballet's Gold and Marc Almond’s Tainted Love got me reminiscing. But instead of trawling through the golden oldies of yesteryear, here’s my review.

I remember when the 70s were finally over: An insufferable romantic, I stood in the yard of our North Audley Street basement flat and, like some moron, looked sorrowfully up at the ever-pinkish London midnight clouds and plaintively wailed as Big Ben clanged, “Oh 70s where hast thou gone?” I remember the strange sensation that we were onto something new, modern and exciting: Who knew where it would take us.

So, I started the decade living in Mayfair. My Mother, sister and I were living in such splendid surroundings courtesy of my Uncle Bruce who at that time was a rising star in property development. I attended the Purcell School of Music in Harrow-on-the-Hill, so each day walked up Baker Street to get the near-empty Metropolitan Line trains out of the heart of London (everyone else was packed into trains going in the opposite direction). Mum worked at the big Marks and Sparks at the bottom of Baker Street (now gone). My sister worked at John Jones Frames just off Bond Street framing the pictures of the great and glorious including the large portrait that appeared behind the opening doors each week on This Is Your Life (but she could never tell who and was sworn to secrecy).

We had moved to Knightsbridge and then to Chelsea before Mum moved to Lynton in North Devon in 1983. I stayed with my mate Dan’s family in Harrow for the last few months of school. These were great summer days full of cricket, girlfriends, naughty lunchtime trips to the pub and partying. We were young, free and penniless!

I remember thinking that 80s fashions were really crap. Part of that was my highly opinionated adolescent appreciation of all things under heaven, but part of that was the plain obvious. Pixie boots? Off the shoulder dots and stripes t-shirts? Asinine ‘Frankie Says’ sloganeering? I mean, come on…

There are, of course, those for whom this was their best time of it. Not I. I was trying to make something of it in London when my mother broke her arm and she asked if I would come down and help run the creaking ghostly guest house she had at that time. A fiery autumn turned into a bleak dreary winter of daytime TV and long tramps across Exmoor. Although this aspect was nice, having no money wasn’t. I hitch-hiked everywhere. Or walked.

The 80s were momentous. Thatcher began her process of privatisation and the Miners went on strike. President Reagan deployed nuclear weapons across Europe and the Greenham Common lesbians struck camp: the Cold War was in full swing, the Soviets fought a terrible war in Afghanistan, the Ethiopian famine provoked Live Aid (I gave £5, ya know) and Zimbabwe became independent. Mount St Helens erupted, Chernobyl poisoned half the world with lethal radiation and the Challenger Shuttle exploded live on TV! Communism crumbled across Eastern Europe and the Tiananmen Square protests were mercilessly crushed. And much, much more...

I took Flavia to see Life of Brian, Sam to The Meaning of Life and Rosie to Gandhi (and Amadeus with me Mum).

I met Brenda at Tim Welch’s 21st birthday party. I don’t think we thought much about each other at first. We both liked Jethro Tull. She said she had some friends who’d like to see them at the Albert Hall, I thought I could get tickets. Time elapsed. I wrote and explained my fiscal embarrassment which meant I couldn’t get tickets. She replied that her friends were thinking twice about an expensive trip to London. And so began 7 months of letter writing during which we realised we would be married. We knew we had to wait until we had both finished college in Hull and that was difficult –Hull’s terrible! For some reason getting married is an extraordinarily important and urgent thing to do when you’re young. But wait we did and on November 1st 1987 we finally got hitched in St Albans (because it was the most central spot for our families). Phew!

I got my first computer –an Atari ST! This baby enabled me to put together electronic music: Wow! Many nights were filled with little compositions, big band moments and quirky electronic ditties that pleased me at the time. Sometimes they completely disappeared into the eternal nether-regions of "disk error", sometimes they saved. I still have a tape somewhere.

By the end of the decade Brenda and I were living in Hastings expecting our first baby. I remember watching the terrible news of Tiananmen in 1989 with a tiny Rachel Peters on my lap and wondering if there would be some sort of connection –us and China. How strange life can be.

We bought our little basement flat at the height of the housing price hike and it immediately fell into negative equity. Our first rung on the property ladder snapped under us. Brenda went off to do her Masters at Manchester University. So, we said goodbye to the South and lived with Brenda’s Mum in Bolton for a little more than a year.

And that was the 80s. We came downstairs in our dressing gowns to watch the countdown on telly. At 5-past midnight Brenda’s mum popped her head around the door to wish us a Happy New Year and caught us in flagrante –our first act of the 90s!

Comments

Hi Richard,
I was looking for something entirely different on the internet and found you and read on ..your whole 80s story. Great reading!
Narelle
SKSF

Posted by: Narelle Pamuk | Wednesday, 28 July 2010 at 08:35 AM