**** things about the 70s,80s,90s...that don't happen now!

1980's
Buildings covered with exhaust fumes
Skinheads
Solvent abuse
Violence
Rampant joyriding
Itchy jumpers and hand me down multiple times clothes
The smog
Watch towers on the border with NI (and young soldiers with rifles trained on the family car at checkpoints)
Runners that cut your feet - and applying a whitener to cover the cracks
Accident Black Spots - the roads were treacherous in places
The whole Yellow Pack concept
Parts of inner city Dublin looking like they had been flattened by aerial bombardment
Ambitions of many in school - "Go on the dole" or "Get out of this shíthole"

The 1990's were pure bliss in comparison

I was indeed there, they happened, regularly but they don’t happen hardly anymore….. :) things that don’t happen now !

As recently as the naughties, you couldn't use a landline and the Internet at the same time!

Didnt the UK power grid ramp up supply for the tea break in coronation street back in the 80s?

Loose chippings!! You had to drive at 10mph with all hands pushing on the inside of the windscreen to stop it cracking from being hit by little stones (no safety glass in the 1980's). I remember when I was a kid (late 70's) driving to Courtown for our only holiday as a kid and my Dads car having its windscreen shattered by bloody loose chippings. I just remember we had to stand on the side of the road for hours whilst we tried to sort it out (no mobile phones!!). Luckily we were in a two car convoy and my uncle went off to get help.

That was one of the best things back then. It was always the same phone boxes and you could often get the backed up clogged coins out of them by putting your finger up the refund slot. Paid many a busfare that way.

In a bit of a Derry Girls toaster-in-cupboard thing, you could often tell a protestant household by what they had tuned on 1 on their TV - BBC1 or RTE1

7 was probably the video recorder in most houses around my area, you could get the UK channels with a (ridiculously massive) aerial here.

Homophobia being the norm.

"Fallen" women having to take the boat to England.

The Catholic Church being a powerful political force rather than a hangover of a bygone era that hasn't realised it's dead.

New release films in the cinema that were shown in the US a year or more ago.

Kids TV being restricted to a few hours after school (i.e. The Den, CBBC etc) and Saturday morning cartoons (not sure this was a bad thing tbh!).

The news opening with the latest body count from Northern Ireland.

A flight to England being the equivalent of a month's wages.

Overdone meat and mushy vegetables being the standard.

Bathing being a weekly rather than a daily thing.

Another TV one. BBC and UTV reception used to be grainy for us but sometimes it was really clear and a big storm always followed. Good weather predictor!

Going into RTV to pay the weekly rent on the TV in first year college house.

Going parish to parish looking for a short mass.

leaving the empties out for the milkman too.

That reminded me that when we were very small and lived in Dolphins Barn flats my dad would take the distributor cap out of his Ford Escort engine every night and bring it inside so no one could steal the car.

Apex airfares and having to stay a Saturday night before the return flight.

No idea why.

Also, stand-by fares where you’d go out to the airport and hope for a last minute bargain.

My da had a small piece of wood to put over the bottles,didn't stop the crows though.

There was always a race to see who could get the bottles open first to get the cream on top, absolutely magic.

In my folks area the milkman gave out solid plastic covers that went down to the ground, with the brand name on it. Like a plastic box with one end open. Even the crows couldn't flip it so milk safe from pecking.

Pissing in phone boxes.

Those steering wheel anti theft things.

Getting felt up by a priest.

Getting battered by nuns, Christian brothers, teachers, your parents, everybody.

Cars with no seat belts. cars with calves in the back seat, cars held together with baler twine.

Shíte choice of food.

Houses with no indoor toilets and rural houses with no toilets.

If the dog misbehaved, he got a kick up the hole

Stuff held together with baling twine. Cars, gates, fences, tools, if it fell apart it was fastened back together with baling twine.

The hedges across from the dump full of plastic bags. Looked like they were acting as bag filters.

Cigarette butts everywhere.

getting hit with the leather strap on the hand by the teacher, christian brother if you went to A CBS school . i dont think theres any schools left where theres christian brothers as teachers .

people smoking at work, in pubs, shops, everywhere, men smoking pipes . houses with a shed out the back where the toilet was located .people with glass,s held together with tape. milkmen delivering milk in glass bottles to the house. making phone calls in a phone box with coins , if you got a answer you,d press an a or a b button the money would fall into the metal box , and the person on the other end would hear you.

people renting tvs or vcrs from a shop rather than buying them ,tvs were usually 20 or 32 inchs wide,

there was no such thing as 50 inch large screen tvs,