In hindsight

[Richard1978]

Re: In hindsight

I remember Father Ted's Eurosong entry was supposedly chosen because it was almost guaranteed to lose!

There were plans to host the 1997 contest in Belfast, with the BBC sharing costs.

[George 1978]

Re: In hindsight

The 1990s had a few country related trends, with the mid 1990s Irish things seemed to be all the rage, thanks to the peace process in Northern Ireland. Things like Roddy Doyle novels, Father Ted, Ballykissangel, Ireland winning the Eurovison song contest 4 times in 5 years, U2 staying popular, Boyzone etc. Almost every town that didn't already had an Irish pub suddenly got one.

Good point - Ireland won the Eurovision Song Contest four times in the 1990s - three years in a row from 1992 to 1994 and again in 1996, and the 1994 contest (hosted 1993 to 1995 and 1997), introduced us to Riverdance - rumours were that RTE might go bankrupt if they had won again! Gay Byrne's Late, Late Show from RTE was seen on Channel 4 as well - the show where Boyzone made their first appearance (as seen over here on one of those Before They Were Famous programmes - all looking very 1990s!) And we ended the decade with Westlife as well.

Also, if we think of Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement in 1998, Bill Clinton visiting Ulster in 1995 (pre-Lewinsky of course), Gerry Adams getting a lot of prominence in news bulletins were certainly a huge part of the latter half of that decade. I almost felt that Jim McDonald was Northern Ireland's own ambassador to Coronation Street himself!

[George 1978]

Re: In hindsight

It wasn't all great in 1981 with the Brixton riots, hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, Poland cracking down on the Solidarity movement & the first threats of a miner's strike over pit closures.

Quite true, but I am sure you would remember being a 1978 person like myself that I was a bit too young to have followed news bulletins and understood them! Funnily enough, I looked at the "1981 in the United Kingdom" page on Wikipedia this morning, and saw the hunger strikes in Northern Ireland where the 10 strikers died, and indeed, their combined ages was just 252, meaning that they died at an average age of 25.2 years of age - I suppose that despite The Troubles still going strong in 1981, Northern Ireland seemed a bit more remote to me than mainland Britain. The same year was full of assassination attempts as well such as Ronald Reagan (almost making him the shortest serving American president); Queen Elizabeth II on her Official Birthday in June that year; and Pope John Paul II who would have had to have cancelled his trip to Britain the following year and his appointment with Robert Runcie if Mehmet Ali Ağca had succeeded with his plans.

The Brixton riots were another thing of course, and rioting also apparently happened in other cities including Nottingham, but as I have said, I was too young to remember it - well, I was never scarred for life from seeing an ITN bulletin on my parents' TV set at the time! One interesting point is the comparison that 2011 had with 1981 - both had major Royal Weddings happen in both those years, and both had major rioting which started in London as well. But ironically, those bad things happening, I just cannot remember. But I suppose, in hindsight (damn, I have said it again with no irony intended), one can look back and think of the positive things that happened - school days always seemed to be the opposite of that for some reason.

[Richard1978]

Re: In hindsight

It wasn't all great in 1981 with the Brixton riots, hunger strikes in Northern Ireland, Poland cracking down on the Solidarity movement & the first threats of a miner's strike over pit closures.

The other big American thing in 1984 was the Olympic games in Los Angeles.

The 1990s had a few country related trends, with the mid 1990s Irish things seemed to be all the rage, thanks to the peace process in Northern Ireland. Things like Roddy Doyle novels, Father Ted, Ballykissangel, Ireland winning the Eurovison song contest 4 times in 5 years, U2 staying popular, Boyzone etc. Almost every town that didn't already had an Irish pub suddenly got one.

The late 1990s India had a similar fad, with Cornershop having smash hits, Goodness Gracious Me, Bollywood going from a niche among British Asians to being common on cable packages, & almost every city gaining a Curry quarter.

[George 1978]

Re: In hindsight

I have always been fascinated with the year 1981, even though I was two going on three and don't remember that year - I think that it was because it was a very perfect and "British" year because it felt British to me that I wouldn't mind living over and over again - we had a huge Royal Wedding, we won the Eurovision Song Contest, we had a white Christmas, Bob Champion won the Grand National on the same day as the ESC, and the fact that the Census officially recorded what went on in that year. Shakin' Stevens had two number ones that year and was seen on Top of the Pops quite frequently, and Aneka took over from him singing about her Japanese Boy. Going back to the 1970s even comparing something from November of a certain year, with March of the same year and the difference would be more than apparent - no "chicken and egg" factor needed there.

When I look at the Mirror or Express archive, looking at the TV guides and adverts from 1981 is one of my favourite years to go to - supermarket adverts where Jacob's Cream Crackers would be around 24½p or something back then - that half pence at the end says a lot more looking back than that actual price does now. An ATV ad break recorded on the eve of Charles and Diana's wedding seemed like a time capsule that even one year later, would be lost forever. The difference between 1981 and 1982 is more than apparent from a TV perspective when you think of things like ATV becoming Central and things like that - something like that happening in 1981 would not have happened in exactly the same way one year later.

Does anyone associate certain years with different countries? In hindsight (pun intended), I think of 1984 being a very "American" year because of all those films and songs released and Reagan winning a second term in the White House, and 1988 being a very Australian year because of Kylie at the top of the charts, Neighbours being big non-UK soap opera seen in Britain, and Australia marking its 200th anniversary - even Prisoner: Cell Block H was gaining benefit from all this as being a cult series in Britain - two years after it ended in Australia, even though most ITV regions was showing the pre-Joan Ferguson episodes. To a lower degree, Italy won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1990 and also hosted the World Cup that year, and Gino Ginelli ice cream was seen in the freezer compartments in Tesco and Asda at the time, and so therefore 1990 was a very Italian year.

Life can be frightening - look at how many famous people died in 2016. My late mother used to say that there would be a lot of births and deaths in leap years, not that the extra day would make any difference. I often used the birth of test tube baby Louise Brown as a template for my own life as we were both born within five weeks of each other, almost in the same way that the Queen Mother was used as a template to represent the duration of the 20th century.

I suppose that we get comfort in the fact that in the past ten years or so, things have not changed as much as it has in the ten year period between 1975 and 1985 for example - as late as 1992, we still had these "Tomorrow's World" predictions that by 2000 we would be in the space age, and even in 2000, people had those feelings about 2010. When ITV did its New Millennium programme, they showed some black and white clips from the 1960s about how they thought back then what life would be like in 2000.

[80sChav]

Re: In hindsight

I can see from looking at old posts that this forum was first set up in 2005 which was just five years after the 1990s had ended. Don't forget that as late as 2001 we had so-called nostalgia series on the TV such as I Love the 1990s where Z-listers were being "nostalgic" about things which happened two years previously. Indeed, there was a time when two years ago used to be ancient history. In 1986 as a seven year old I was fascinated about things that had happened just four or five years previously, and what with my young age and so much changing during those years that it did feel to me as if it was a previous decade at the time. To me, 1981 looked fascinating in 1986, but 2014 doesn't look fascinating in 2019.

Likewise, the fact that very little has changed in the past five years then it had between 1984 and 1989, as well as the fact that I am a lot older and feel more or less the same as I did five years ago (sans house move), all that combined and things are different the second time around. From a nostalgia perspective, I would have put the final decade of nostalgia ending at 1989 which is what I would have also done 10 years ago to be honest.

I went online for the first time 20 years ago this year, so not quite half my life, but it is on its way to being half of it. I do know that websites have modernised - sometimes I see an "old fashioned" website still online which had not been updated since 1998 or something - the fact that it is a lot less animated compared to more modern pages and probably takes up less than half the screen is a sign that it is an old page. Also, I have to admit that if I saw a car with the number plate blurred out on TV, I would not know whether it would be a 2006 or a 2016 model if I didn't see the registration number so I could see that it had a 06 or a 16 in its number. Cars from the 2000s don't look as dated now as 1970s cars did in the 1980s - even without looking at the number plate I would know that a 1975 Ford Escort was not a 1985 model.

Shows like Wogan used to have Hollywood guests on there in the mid 1980s talking about their heyday 1950s - now timewise, that is just like talking about my 1980s schooldays on here in the late 2010s.

I managed to get a 1978 newspaper published on the day I was born from a company back in 1995 when I was 16 - I would think that a 2002 newspaper would not gain as much excitement unless it referred to the Queen's Golden Jubilee or something

You raise some smashing points here George mate and make some great reflections. I feel some of these 2 from being fascinated by af ew years back as young kid in the 80s, I recall in 1986 going into my local WH Smith and getting Football Stickers (actualy I bet it was more like mid to late 1987) and this was just before the "watering down" of Football Sticker Albums in that the they stopped adding the old 2nd Division Team pic and Foil Badge - this was the year Birmingham, west Brom and Ipswich went down from the old 1st Division (and at the mo I am struggling to recall ... sadly the 1985/86 Album) but what always interested me was it took 16 years (unbe-known at the time obviously) for two out of the 3 (Birmingham and West Brom) to get back to the Top-Flight after 2 and 1 seperate 1st ever spells respectivley for both in the old 3rd Division/3rd Tier. That so so interests me - that fact as do many others, but has as been said about getting older - things also change in how people recall things I think - on a massive scale 2003 (o Leeds last being Relegated from the Premier to going down to the old 3rd in 2007 does not even hit the same scale on the radar - though the time difference in years was'nt as mega, it was a much more major event), but put 2003 (just outside the 1960s to 1990s nostalga of DYR) and it seems shocking that 2003 is nearly 20 years a-go (or will be in 4 years). As too it does with Saddam Hussein being captured in late Winter 2003 and the Twin Towers Atrosity of September the 11th 2001 - who can believe that took place 19 years a-go this September?

It is the same with Princess Diana's tragic passing 4 years before the events of September the 11th - no way did I ever enisage I could believe 1 day I'd say "it is 20 years since the tragic events the night Princess Diana sadly passed away"

I kept all the Paper Tributes (and I even signed the Condolance Book in my local Town Hall) and at a similar not long after ( 3 to 4 years or so)- it was the era of Saturday and Sunday Papers giving CDs/DVDs out a few Princess Diana ones came out - particulary 1 from 2007 I recall and I could not believe then that it was 10 years since the events of that night in 1997), let alone now believe 2 years have passed since it being 20 years to mark 22 this year

As too you say about the Internet - I was only thinking of this earlier (an hour back if so) and how the web-pages/websites have changed .... check out how dated the final Episode of Grange Hill Series 25 from 2002, where for me - really it did end and the next 5 years was just a slow slow drall etc - but that is another story in itself - not for this thread (well admitted it was made in 2001) looks with the expose of Deverill as the brute he sadly was

Sometimes life is really frieghtening and in-particular as we age at times I feel (though I'm loathed to admitt it/say it) but going back to websites and pages you are not far wrong in your summosing here George - as as we are both of a similar age I guess that is why I feel what you are saying - but too a lot of that time is tinged with Rose-Tinted (but very very happy memories of the 'net in the late 1990s to early 200s and going to College for the Penutimate last full year and traveling like 10 miles from home and wanting to get there to see what was on the 'net ( Forum-wise before Facaebook took nearly everything away), so yes it is tinged with "how things was then, but also to the tune of moving on from Cassette Tape to CD and Video to DVD" but it sure sure was a lucky-time to experience (in summising my reply in this thread, here I would) certainly say

80sChav

[CrystalBall]

Re: In hindsight

Time appearing to pass more quickly as we age is sometimes called the 'holiday paradox' and quite a lot of research has been done into it. The consensus seems to be that in childhood and early adulthood we have many new experiences and learn many new skills. As adults our lives are more routine and we experience fewer unfamiliar moments. A lot of the time we are on autopilot which means less conscious cognitive processing and storage of information in the autobiographical memory. The result is that our early years are relatively overrepresented in our autobiographical memory and appear to have lasted longer. This makes a lot of sense to me. When you start a new job, for example, the first few weeks seem to pass really slowly as you get used to things and they stand out in your memory. After that, time seems to speed up again as you are now familiar with the situation. All very interesting.

[George 1978]

Re: In hindsight

I know this is an unusual tital for the thread

It's an unusual spelling of the word "title".

[George 1978]

Re: In hindsight

It does seem odd that I have spent more of my life using the internet than before, certainly it would have been useful to me before the mid 1990s. I first used it at college in 1995 & at home from 1998.

I do think time goes faster as you get older, as I kept realising how long ago things were that seem fairly recent.

There are lots of things that I think were a couple of years ago and finding out, it was over a decade ago. When I was younger, that seemed to be the other way round.

[George 1978]

Re: In hindsight

I can see from looking at old posts that this forum was first set up in 2005 which was just five years after the 1990s had ended. Don't forget that as late as 2001 we had so-called nostalgia series on the TV such as I Love the 1990s where Z-listers were being "nostalgic" about things which happened two years previously. Indeed, there was a time when two years ago used to be ancient history. In 1986 as a seven year old I was fascinated about things that had happened just four or five years previously, and what with my young age and so much changing during those years that it did feel to me as if it was a previous decade at the time. To me, 1981 looked fascinating in 1986, but 2014 doesn't look fascinating in 2019.

Likewise, the fact that very little has changed in the past five years then it had between 1984 and 1989, as well as the fact that I am a lot older and feel more or less the same as I did five years ago (sans house move), all that combined and things are different the second time around. From a nostalgia perspective, I would have put the final decade of nostalgia ending at 1989 which is what I would have also done 10 years ago to be honest.

I went online for the first time 20 years ago this year, so not quite half my life, but it is on its way to being half of it. I do know that websites have modernised - sometimes I see an "old fashioned" website still online which had not been updated since 1998 or something - the fact that it is a lot less animated compared to more modern pages and probably takes up less than half the screen is a sign that it is an old page. Also, I have to admit that if I saw a car with the number plate blurred out on TV, I would not know whether it would be a 2006 or a 2016 model if I didn't see the registration number so I could see that it had a 06 or a 16 in its number. Cars from the 2000s don't look as dated now as 1970s cars did in the 1980s - even without looking at the number plate I would know that a 1975 Ford Escort was not a 1985 model.

Shows like Wogan used to have Hollywood guests on there in the mid 1980s talking about their heyday 1950s - now timewise, that is just like talking about my 1980s schooldays on here in the late 2010s.

I managed to get a 1978 newspaper published on the day I was born from a company back in 1995 when I was 16 - I would think that a 2002 newspaper would not gain as much excitement unless it referred to the Queen's Golden Jubilee or something

[Zincubus]

Re: In hindsight

It does seem odd that I have spent more of my life using the internet than before, certainly it would have been useful to me before the mid 1990s. I first used it at college in 1995 & at home from 1998.

I do think time goes faster as you get older, as I kept realising how long ago things were that seem fairly recent.

There’s a reason why it seems to go faster as we age ... just can’t recall what it is ...


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[Richard1978]

Re: In hindsight

It does seem odd that I have spent more of my life using the internet than before, certainly it would have been useful to me before the mid 1990s. I first used it at college in 1995 & at home from 1998.

I do think time goes faster as you get older, as I kept realising how long ago things were that seem fairly recent.

[80sChav]

I know this is an unusual tital for the thread - but on a fair few specialist Forums i go on, we have threads "what would be talking about now in 1986/1997 etc" (in that particular week we are on and often I've started to wonder - what if the Internet was in full swin in the 1980s or even 70s and as DYR 's remit goes right back to the 1960s, and I joined in 2010 when 1999 was only even years before-hand (which makes me feel shockingly terribly old here .... lol) , I wonder how things would be if this scenario could of arisen .... and we was in 1986/87 or whatever year now, given that in theory too only 11 or 12 years at the least seperated the end of the 60s and 1980

80sChav