Emilie Silverwood-Cope: In the 1980s, you had to get your kicks where you could

Car journeys lasted for days. We weren’t troubled by seat belts, child seats (installed) or sometimes even the actual car seats. If we were driving to our holiday destination children could be found all over the car, including the footwells, the boot and sitting on the luggage.

Maps were made of paper that ripped in key places. It was spread over the dashboard except when there was a disagreement and then it was held up, covering 50 per cent of the windscreen. The driver and passenger could point at the ripped bit and argue whether it was a left turn.

The windscreen was covered in dead insects. We passed the long boring car journeys by looking at the squished corpses of various insects marvelling at the different smears they left. I tell my children about this because they have never seen a windscreen with three dead insects on it let alone 400. This is known as ‘the windshield phenomenon’ and is a nice anecdote but is also another bad climate-news sign.

If you wanted to liven things up a bit, fighting with a sibling was an option. Even better if they were stuck in a footwell or sat on a suitcase. We’d be told to look out of the window or read a book if we were bored. Reading a book would inevitably end up with being carsick - which could be directed at the most irritating sibling.

Telephone

When I tell my children one household shared one phone they look at me like I’ve told them I got all our water from a well. Telephones were for one thing and one thing only. Making calls. In our house though it wasn’t even there for making calls. It was for receiving incoming calls because the phone had a lock on it, probably to stop us from calling our friends to tell them how bored we were. I grew up believing any call made before 6pm must cost about £100. I also grew up believing calling the speaking clock was a good way to alleviate boredom.

Being out

Our holidays were spent going on long, sometimes dangerous, walks. At the end of the walk we’d get to a pub which would not allow children to step one foot inside so we sat on the wall outside and hoped a bag of crisps might appear. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere about the 1980s childhood.

Films

My children could sit down right now and watch a film. Not just any film either, but a good one. It blows my inner child’s mind that such a thing is possible. We sat through dull black and white films, endless Laurel & Hardy films and men playing tiny guitars. If we got to watch something in colour it was a big day. Our children have avoided the pain of queuing for the cinema and not getting in. Or turning up to Blockbusters and having to rent something not very good, because there was nothing else available. It would still be better than the actual telly though.

Television

Every single Gen Z child knows we only had three TV channels growing up - because it’s something Gen X parents are required to tell them at least twelve times a week. Though, as my friend said, it was actually two channels because no one in their right mind wanted to watch BBC2 which didn’t get watchable until the late 1990s. There was a smug programme put on in the school holidays called Why Don’t You. The whole gist of this was child actors telling viewers (kids) not to watch too much telly. The chance would’ve been a fine thing.

Parks

Another place you could go to to puncture the boredom was the local park. You might puncture a lung too though. Doing the monkey bars in the 1980s was an extreme sport. Instead of landing on a bouncy surface you had concrete and broken glass to break your fall. Playground injuries were debated in the House of Commons in 1988 after a campaign on the BBC’s That’s Life. Finally, the number of serious injuries to children was taken seriously (more than one every single day) and the Children Act of 1989 made sure councils finally removed the broken glass and the rickety slide held together by sticks and elastic bands.

National Trust houses and other terrible days out

Getting seriously injured at a park was still more fun than going on a family day out. Days out, designed with children in mind, were not invented until the 1990s. If your parents wanted to take you somewhere then chances are you wound up at a National Trust house. Back then grown ups didn’t trouble themselves with hiding how much they disliked and disapproved of children and the staff were recruited on the basis of how aggressively they could scowl at a child. The moment a child walked into any room of a dreary stately home the adult/guard would give them death stares to make sure they weren’t about to pocket an ornament. One brother did manage to jump on a bed once so it wasn’t entirely unjustified.

In the 1980s, you had to get your kicks where you could.

Read more Parenting Truths from Emilie Silverwood-Cope every month in the Cambridge Independent.