The Coolest Things About the 80's

A few years later, in the 90's, the 80's were way uncool and we all cringed at the monstrous fashion and having to tape the top 40. Only the best songs though, we had to stop the machine on the rubbish ones and press play and record again when our favourites played.

My faves were Bananarama, Wham, Paul Young, Eurythmics, Duran Duran....so many of them.

Every Sunday I would sit on my bed poised and ready with my tape recorder, all set to record over the previous week's chart toppers.

Now the 80's are cool again. My son regularly buys clothes that I turn my nose up at because I wore them the first time around. But it's cool he says, as I laugh at the track suit top and the super-massive shades he has on 'Are you going to a fancy dress party?' I ask laughing, because I think I am funny. I am funny.

'When I was your age...' I start. Before I can finish my sentence, he's heading back up the stairs.

I mean really, what was up with it? Mine was clearly broken. It didn't do what it was supposed to do and all of the colours had clearly been arranged in the wrong places.

I'd watch kids on the TV, young one's, way younger than me. They'd do this crazy thing with the coloured boxes. They'd move their hand in some bizarre magical, Harry Potter, Wizrdy type way, and hey presto, all of the colours were arranged in neat little rows and all the same too!

Clearly this type of toy (I use that word very loosely because toys are supposed to be fun) was made for sub-normal kids, ones with all the wrong wiring. They are in need of something to play with too I supposed.

I was unsure why my parents had considered me one of those kids.

Hmmm. This was somewhere I really, really wanted to go every Tuesday night, but I didn't dare turn up because I would have no doubt shamed myself to the max because balance was a skill I didn't possess. Even now I can't stand on one foot for longer than three seconds.

I was, it has to be said, a total baby when it came to anything that came with risk attached. And whizzing around on wheels with a bunch of other people who didn't seem to be looking where they were going, quite simply, scared the hell out of me. And there were boys there, boys I quite liked, and I'd never live it down if I fell flat on my face in front of one of them let alone all of them. I was such a nerd. I knew I was, yet I kept being one.

When my friends talk about those heady days, spinning around the hall to all the best music and getting off with the boys who usually sat about on the stage because they were way too cool to do anything else, I was cross with myself for missing out on those times. It's funny because now, I'll risk it all for a biscuit!

The thing with the 1980's when it came to fashion, was that nobody was prepared to buck the trend and do something different, so we all walked around looking like we'd escaped from somewhere with bars on the windows.

Those ridiculous items designed with zero attention to UVA protection but lots to size and glaring illuminous-ness. I know that's not actually a word but that does sum it up. I like that word, I will use it again, maybe in my latest book.

The bigger the better was what it was all about back then. Can you imagine how we'd have laughed in the face of apple headphones?

Things may have been crazy, huge, ridiculous, outrageous and any other word that describes that time, but hell it was fun wasn't it?

Perhaps we all remember things back then with such fondness because we're all so serious nowadays. Life seems more stressful and everything is smaller. And where is the Texan bar?

Why is Jiff now Ciff and where are Spangles?

We've lost things we'll never get back and there was no social media to mess us up, photoshopping or sweet potato chips.