Stuff My 8 Year Old Has That I Didn't In 1979

DaddyBear

I'd much rather have been a child in 1979 than now. A few materialistic items in the OP isn't going to make up for unaffordable housing, rising cost of essentials, poor job prospects, poor quality of education, increased risk of family breakdown and a bankrupt nation.

If I can see that I had it better than my children, why can't the boomers?

wotsthat

DaddyBear wrote: »

I'd much rather have been a child in 1979 than now. A few materialistic items in the OP isn't going to make up for unaffordable housing, rising cost of essentials, poor job prospects, poor quality of education, increased risk of family breakdown and a bankrupt nation.

If I can see that I had it better than my children, why can't the boomers?

I was 12 in 1979 - I'd rather be 12 today. Forget about the consumer stuff; there are just more opportunities today for children (especially the less well off) to get on.

Housing wasn't cheap in 1979, inflation wasn't low, job prospects were p*ss poor for that 12 year old leaving school in 1983, at my school only 4 in my year got a full set of 8 o levels, I came from a broken home and the country was skint.

How it turns out for the kids of today is mainly in their own hands - that's the beauty of being born in the UK.

Tylium

No, you have those things. You allow your 8 year old to use them. He's not going to have bought six computers and two DSLRs by himself.

zagubov

DaddyBear wrote: »

I'd much rather have been a child in 1979 than now. A few materialistic items in the OP isn't going to make up for unaffordable housing, rising cost of essentials, poor job prospects, poor quality of education, increased risk of family breakdown and a bankrupt nation.

If I can see that I had it better than my children, why can't the boomers?

I was happier then than I would be at that age now, but it would be much better if I'd known for sure back then we'd make it this far without a World War III. Mind you how many people thought that European Communism would just quietly fizzle out mostly without a fight (or that the main fighting would be a war in somewhere called Bosnia)?

demystified

DaddyBear wrote: »

I'd much rather have been a child in 1979 than now. A few materialistic items in the OP isn't going to make up for unaffordable housing, rising cost of essentials, poor job prospects, poor quality of education, increased risk of family breakdown and a bankrupt nation.

If I can see that I had it better than my children, why can't the boomers?

Isn't nostalgia a wonderful thing. I remember '79 very well, I was 14.

Massive inflation, massive unemployment, labour disputes and endless strikes. When I left school a couple years later there was zero employment opportunities, I lost count the number of interviews I went for. I spent 2 years claiming unemployment benefit.

Happy days indeed.

noodle_doodle

Supermarkets (at least in my home town). And they're brilliant.

Remember moving when i was 5 from a busy district high street of butchers, bakers, toy shops etc (i lived next door to a fine fare) to a suburban road with a decorating shop and a newsagents within half a mile. I felt like I'd moved to the moon. At least now i live 5 minutes walk from a morrisons.

vivatifosi

noodle_doodle wrote: »

Supermarkets (at least in my home town). And they're brilliant.

That got me thinking. I can remember shopping with my parents in the 1970s. The shelves were mainly filled with staples, plus food in tins or jars. Very little chilled food. A ready meal was a tin of Heinz tomato soup. If you wanted foreign food you bought a packet of spaghetti rather than a tin. And if you really wanted to push the boat out and buy exotic cheese it was Edam. Also everyone went shopping on Thursday or Friday evening because that's when they were paid.

That's what it was like where I lived anyway, it was very homogeneous: white and working class.

lostinrates

Food often comes on on these, and I always raise smoked salmon, and sometimes prosciutto. Smoked salmon was for New Years or fancy occasions and prosciutto one got from a deli, it was expensive and one bought it by the slices per person, (again on quite special meals) not the packs of six and rounding up!

noodle_doodle

vivatifosi wrote: »

That got me thinking. I can remember shopping with my parents in the 1970s. The shelves were mainly filled with staples, plus food in tins or jars. Very little chilled food. A ready meal was a tin of Heinz tomato soup...

Some shops had a freezer section, with the emphasis on "a freezer". It had some individual ice lollies in it and maybe an arctic roll. Mixed in would be a few packets of Findus and Ross's beefburgers.

The one thing I remember pre-supermarket was just how long it took to do the shopping. Individual queues in most shops, sometimes having to nip in and out of bad weather to each shop, and that annoying community spirit of all the dotty old ladies chatting and taking their sweet bloody time, there was Rainbow on at home, hurry up! My mum liked knitting so there was the agonising trip to the wool shop, a shop that just sold wool, not even one single packet of sweets, just wool. !!!!!!? And then I'd be dressed in some woollen abomination soon after. Children nowadays should thank god that ruthless 3rd world labour exploitation put the nut on that make your own clothes tradition.


eeh, do you remember spangles? *Morphs into Stuart Maconie*

Oven chips? Oven chips? Chips you put in the oven? *Morphs into Peter Kay*

vivatifosi

lostinrates wrote: »

Food often comes on on these, and I always raise smoked salmon, and sometimes prosciutto. Smoked salmon was for New Years or fancy occasions and prosciutto one got from a deli, it was expensive and one bought it by the slices per person, (again on quite special meals) not the packs of six and rounding up!

The only salmon I had in the early days was in salmon paste sandwiches. One was thought upmarket when a sandwich had salmon paste and cucumber in. It was definitely a step up from the bread and dripping of my grandparents. Then, when we were really upwardly mobile, we had salmon from a tin: but pink salmon as it was cheaper than red. Only really posh people had red salmon.

I do remember buying just two slices of ham too...

Oh, and noodle doodle - I didn't like Spangles but I loved Opal Fruits. Also we had a big chest freezer back then - far bigger than anything we had now. The bottom was filled with newspaper as we never had a freezer full of food. We did have the occasional arctic roll though!