The best and worst of School Holiday's in the 80s

Camera film

These days, everything has to be instant doesn’t it? Using the camera on your mobile phone you can instantly check your selfie to see if you should take it again, one nano-meter to the left with a slightly poutier mouth.  Then these people (who are more interested in how they appear in selfies than in any other aspect of their lives) add filters which give them dog ears or huge teeth.  Then they adjust the light and contrast settings and post it to social media to see how many strangers click the thumbs up to validate their self-worth.  

A dog using a human filter

Back in the 80s, we had to put a small plastic cartridge (see pic above) in our cameras which contained a magical kind of photosensitive paper that captured what we could see with our eyes. It cost a fair few quid for the 'film' and it only enabled us to take 24 photographs.  We wouldn’t see any of the pictures we'd taken until at least a week after getting home from the holiday because we had to go down the high street, find a pharmacy, give the cartridge to a shop assistant who popped it into a small envelope and sent it away to a magical land where the pixies turned the little plastic doodah into actual photographs you could hold in your hand. You'd already paid for the film but now you had to pay again for the pixies to turn it into photographs.

The photographs would come back filled with people with blazing red eyes or with a sticker attached saying ‘quality control’ if the photo was a little blurry, which in the 80s, they all were.  Some photos would have a stray finger snaking in from the top right corner too.

If it was dark we had to affix an ice-cube to the top of the camera (see pic above). Each side of the cube had a bulb in it and once the photo was taken, the bulb would explode and the cube would swivel around to the next available.  Someone thought this was ridiculous however and decided to simplify the process.  They came up with this :

This is a tower of explosives which blinded anyone casually glancing in the direction of the camera when it went off.  1000 watts of spotlight power which could wake hibernating tortoises around the world with one flash. Also, the bulbs didn't just 'blow', they melted. Another example of that wonderful 80s health and safety.

Back to the pharmacy a week later to find out the entire staff have seen your photos before you did, even the one you accidentally took of your dad in his pants cooking breakfast when you were trying to fit the lava-hot-laser-death-flash to the top of the camera.  You know they've seen the photo because they've put a 'quality control' sticker on it; it came out a bit blurry, thank the lord.

Prize bingo

All the ones, 111; two and five, 7. Kelly's duck, 12.

You'd always be drawn into these places by a booming voice promising the world for a mere four corners, line or a full house.  It's always wise to check out the prizes before playing prize bingo as sitting for four hours trying to get a winning token to find out all you can swap it for is a chair leg or a key ring with Adam Ant on it probably isn't worth it unless you've got a chair at home with three legs or absolutely love Adam Ant. 

No ergonomics or risk assessments had been carried out on those bright red, round plastic seats that you could raise and lower by spinning it round.  Posh ones had the shape of someone's bottom carved into them to make the plastic more comfortable or something.  The 'caller' would then announce the beginning of the next game by telling you to point your eyes downwards and then proceed to shout out numbers printed on balls pinging around in a large glass cubicle. The 'fun' element came from the caller likening the numbers to things. Things like twenty two being 'two little ducks' because the number two looks like a duck or 11 looking like a pair of legs. Rogue callers would make up new ones such as 'the key of the door - twenty one, the hinge of the door - three, the handle of the door - seven' and so on and so-forth and what have you.

Playground equipment

A rare example of a vomit-free roundabout

Health and safety in the 1980's was non-existent. In the playground, children weren't required to wear PPE (personal protective equipment), there was no need for RIDDOR, NEBOSH or COSH and there definitely wasn't a CCST (Council for the control of slide temperature). On hot sunny days, metal slides could melt your soul.  They’d cause you to lose some of the skin on your legs due to friction but also, you’d garner some lovely third degree burns before you flew off the end onto the nice soft concrete.  

Everyone in this picture is completely fine, no need to worry.

There were no rubbery substrates to land on like they have these days, or bark chippings with families of woodlice living in them (which also help cushion any falls). Most playground apparatus in the 80s was made of metal and painted with the kind of paint that chipped off if you looked at from the wrong direction - probably lead-based too. 

What do you call a horse with no legs?

Playgrounds were full of the sounds of children crying after falling off things, hitting parts of their body off things or being forced to go too fast on things by other, laughing children.  Slides varied from playground to playground but they were generally too high, had two loops of metal to hold on to when you'd managed to scale the steepest metal staircase known to mankind, then you had to try and manoeuvre your legs into a sitting position with about six inches of space in which to do so.

Totally totally safe. Nothing to see here.

Then the speed of your descent would be governed by the material covering your lower half.  If you were wearing linen slacks then you'd fly off the end into a tree. If you were wearing lederhosen, you're probably still stuck at the top.  When you finally reached the bottom, you’d invariably find a moat surrounding your exit.  

Just before your best day turns into your worst day

The earth had slowly been eroded by children's ‘Clarks’ and filled with rainwater which never seemed to evaporate.  This moat wasn't exclusive to the slide however as you'd also find one under each swing, around the perimeter of the roundabout and under each end of the see-saw.  It made asphalt playgrounds much more attractive.

Water painting

Colour so vibrant, you needed polarised retinas

At an age where your drawings of people consisted of just a head with arms and legs sticking out of it, the water painting book was like Merlin's spell book. You're still a few years away from actual paint, you're not allowed anywhere near the felt tips, you've only just discovered crayons and staying 'within the lines' is an advanced class for the older kids who are allowed to play with Plasticine.

F!!

The water painting book had ten pages, each with a line drawing of something fun like a duck in a rain hat or a pastiche of allegorical magical reality, and instead of painting it intricately with a subtle blend of pastel tones, you just had to dip your paintbrush in water and slap it on the paper.  As you did so, a barely discernible colour would begin to appear - a faint, pale, ghostly apparition of a tribute to a colour, creating a world of despair and desolation until you realise that the completed picture is actually a metaphor.  A prediction of what colour the actual world will turn when the child gets their own mundane office job they hate and kids of their own.

White arrow van

The White arrow van was as close to Christmas as you could get without it being actually Christmas.  It was the bringer of all things, Aladdin’s cave, Sport Billy’s holdall, that Karate guy off Batfink's sleeves, that uncle you never saw who gave you money in your birthday cards, finding a fiver in the pocket of your winter coat. It was all of those things combined.  It's the equivalent of today's Yodel or DHL I think, just a courier to many people but to a child in the summer holidays, it brought all your catalogue fantasies to the doorstep.  Stuff you'd pay 25p a week for 52 weeks for. Stuff you'd stand at the bottom of your garden path, staring down the road, hoping to glimpse sight of a navy blue van with the white tick on the side for.  Then it would drive right past and not stop. RUINING YOUR DAY.  Sorry... I apologise for the flashback... 


YOU WEREN'T THERE, MAN!!!

Daisy Chains

Daisies are everywhere these days aren't they? If you're in a grassy field they are anyway.  To boys, daisy chains were like witchcraft or alchemy. Girls could whip up a horticultural-based necklace or bracelet in seconds, then flounce off with an arrogant strut, leaving the boys behind, each holding two daisies, trying to stick them together like two blocks of Lego with no bobbly bits.  

It wasn't until my age was into double figures that I worked it out.  I was ten years old, playing for my school football team at centre half.  As we were playing a team vastly inferior to us (probably the under 5's B team) me and my fellow central defender hadn't had much to do for a good ten minutes so he sat down and proceeded to make a daisy chain (an act for which he was ridiculed for many years following, but I digress).  It was like one of those TV programs where a masked member of the magic circle shows you how they chop someone in half or escape from a locked barrel of water.  He drew back the curtain of mystery that shrouded my innocence that day and I've never been the same since. Cheers Alan!

The Waltzer

The Waltzer will forever remain a mystery to me.  Rickety oval diner-booths on castors with nothing but a rusty metal bar to keep you in your seat whilst a crazed young carnie spins you round, all while you're being carried around a rotating decking-based carpet of death with flashing lights and blaring dance music.  I have to say, it's not my favourite.

Batteries

Ready to power your portable anything

A big part of growing up in the 80s was getting toys with the phrase 'batteries not included' on the packaging.  There was even a movie with that as the title; it was about some alien robot toys that didn't have batteries or something.  

80s batteries were massive (probably still are but I've never needed batteries this big since) - I'm sure, from memory, that AA and AAA batteries were around but all I remember are those ones that looked like the front wheel of a steamroller.  Huge barrel shaped batteries they were; even something tiny like a calculator watch needed eight of them to work for twelve minutes.  

The fact I'm still alive enough to write this means I survived this weird practice, but whenever a particular toy was running out of power, my parents would whip the batteries out and put them in the oven! Then, five minutes later, pop them back in the toy so I could enjoy another twenty minutes of Astro Wars. I'm not entirely sure we should be doing that though. Please google it first.

Space Invaders

The first time I had to come to terms with the fact that the way things look on the box and in adverts are never the same as you get in real life, was at the age of six. I saw this huge arcade cabinet with big scary monsters on the side, big menacing yeti monsters with glowing eyes, stalking the moon menacingly, with lots and lots of menace.  However, when I stuffed my 10p into the slot and gazed down at the screen (I was standing on a box, I wasn't a freakishly tall six year old), I saw cream coloured blobs jerkily blipping and blooping across the screen.  Not a hairy humanoid alien in sight. Don't even get me started on McDonalds Hamburgers.

Life is just one huge lie about hairy aliens and hamburger quality