Our Mags had all the Answers #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on March 22, 2022 by Gloria

Day 38 #100DaysOfOldDays

Because we had no Instagram or TikTok, Facebook or Twitter in the 80’s, we had to buy our weekly teen magazines to keep up with the latest trends and to find out all the celebrity gossip.

Patches and Blue Jeans were my favourites. My friend used to buy Jackie and we’d often swap them around mid-week. They were around 20p each and we could only afford to buy one magazine a week.

In the centre fold of the magazine was a poster of a pop star, or a band, and sometimes a TV or film star. If we liked it, it went on our bedroom wall. Otherwise it stayed in the magazine or we passed it on to a friend.

The mags kept us up to date on the latest fashion trends. Rara skirts, neon colours, legwarmers, polka dots, fishnet tights and string tops. We had fingerless gloves, bangles galore, and big plastic earrings.

I have a photo somewhere of me (I’ll hunt it down) wearing a blue dress, blue nylon tights, blue calf length boots, blue plastic necklace with matching earrings. All in the same shade of royal blue. I was sitting on the surround of someone’s grave. I blame the magazines for that faux pas!

I particularly enjoyed the comics strips and feature length romance stories. I was in all of them!

The make-up tips were easy to follow. We didn’t need long YouTube tutorials to tell us how to rub on a wee bit of foundation and blue eyeshadow!

Sometimes we got a free pot of rouge or lip shiner sellotaped to the front cover. That made our day and we couldn’t wait until the next disco to get trying it out.

The problem page was a very important feature. It was so personal and someone always had the same problem as us. Cathy and Claire solved all the problems of the Jackie readers.

They also had quizzes with multiple choice answers, that helped us figure out important life stuff, like; Are you a Good Friend? Or Have you got a Magnetic Personality? When we had the full ten boxes ticked, we checked our score and matched it to the relevant answer. When the score was low, it gave advice on how to improve ourselves. Pure genius!!

Smash Hits was a big one when it made its way to our little corner of the universe. It was all about the pop stars and the music. And the best thing of all was, they had the lyrics of all the chart hits. Back then it was awful hard to learn the right words of a song. We had to tape the song from the wireless to the tape recorder. The DJ was a divil for talking during a song so he didn’t make it easy for us. We’d replay the song, pausing after a few words, write them down, and repeat until we had all the words. When Smash Hits came out and we got the lyrics, we realised we had half the words wrong. They sounded right, but they were wrong!

The magazines were a vital part of our lives in the 80’s.They held all the answers.

A fun fact I found out today; Children’s author, Jacqueline Wilson, wrote a lot of stories and articles for Jackie magazine!

***Lucy’s Drawing of Patches Magazine***

Blackberry Picking #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on March 21, 2022 by Gloria

Day 37 #100DaysOfOldDays

There wasn’t a child in the country who didn’t go out blackberry picking in the 70’s and into the 80’s. And of course long before that too.

We’d go in small groups, walk for miles in our wellies to find the best blackberry bushes. Our buckets sat nearby, and we used a can or a jar to collect the berries; the red and green ones went in as well the dark purple juicy ones. When our can was full we’d tip it into the bucket. Scratches on our hands didn’t bother us, neither did damp feet when our wellies had holes in them.

On a Saturday we stayed out until our buckets were full. We went for as many days until the blackberry bushes were bare.

We did it for the fun, but mostly it was for the money. We’d take our berries back into town and bring them into Peter Murtagh’s yard. He weighed them and paid us. It was very little but a fortune to us. If it had been a good day’s picking we went straight to Francey McDonald’s for sweets but didn’t spend all our money. We had to have something to show our parents for our long day’s work!

The more berries we had in our buckets, the more money we got—which is why we didn’t eat very many. A certain lad or lassie would add a few stones into their buckets to increase the weight. Not me!

***This lad put more berries into his mouth than he did in his bucket!***

Games #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on March 20, 2022 by Gloria

Day 36 #100DaysOfOldDays

It was great growing up on a terrace along with dozens of children. There was always someone to play with. Everyone has their own favourite games that they played as children. Here’s mine;

Hopscotch

The boys has no interest in hopscotch. Too easy-going and quiet for them I suppose. It wasn’t a highly competitive game either. All you needed was to be able to hop and have good balancing skills. People never minded the chalked squares on the footpaths; it was all about the children.

Queenie-eye-o

Everyone wanted to be Queenie—the person who stood at the top with their back to the others. Queenie threw the ball behind her back, and she had to guess who caught it. Every player kept their hands behind their backs and Queenie had to guess who had the ball. It’s the song I remember most about this game.

Queenie-eye-o, Queenie-eye-o, who has the ball? Is he big or is he small, is she fat or is she thin, does she wear a wedding ring?

French Skipping

I don’t remember the boys skipping although I’d say they would’ve been great at it. French skipping was one of my favourite pastimes. Some girls played with a very long length of thick elastic, but mostly we used old nylon tights. This may be a game from the past but it has made a huge comeback. French skipping kits are available to buy; it includes a 3 metre elastic rope, a songbook and instructions.

Baseball

It was actually rounders but we called it baseball for some reason. We used a tennis racket and jumpers as the markers. It was usually easy enough to round up enough players for this game.

Hide and seek

We usually played this in teams, rather than have one child searching the neighbourhood for about 30 others. We had so many places to hide; gardens, sheds, ditches, or sometimes you just kept running round the block until you got back to base without being caught. A certain amount of team members had to make it back to base for the team to be declared the winners. We shook this up a bit in our early teens and called it, ‘Catch a girl, kiss a girl.’ No explanation needed!

Of course there were many rows and arguments during all this playing, but it was harmless—most of the time!

Two Weeks in Bettystown #100DaysOfOldDays

Posted on March 19, 2022 by Gloria

Day 35 #100DaysOfOldDays

For quite a few years in a row, we went to Bettystown (Co Meath) for two weeks on our summer holidays; the last week in August and the first week in September. We were always a week late going back to school. It was about an hour’s drive from our home but it felt like a hundred miles away.

There were five of us, and the dog, all packed into a small car—we owned minis too—four in the back and the youngest in the front on Mam’s knee. Completely acceptable in the 60’s & 70’s.

On the roof of our little car we had a roof rack, and tied to the roof rack was a big trunk packed to the brim with all our stuff. I swear, that big trunk was like Mary Poppins’ bag. It held all our clothes (seven people), buckets and spades, rubber rings, balls, shoes, food, tennis rackets, and wellies & raincoats — because we live in Ireland.

***The McEntees Heading for Bettystown by Lucy McBreen***

The little thatched holiday house we used to stay in didn’t supply bed linen. Mam had all our sheets and blankets folded neatly on the back seat. We had to sit on them; our heads touching the roof of the car.

We didn’t have seatbelts, or air conditioning. When we got thirsty, my dad didn’t stop at the next petrol station to buy us all a coke. No such thing! Mam would take out the big bottle of Mace red lemonade. And a straw.

Thinking back now…I think she was a contortionist. She was able to reach each of us in the back from the front seat, the child on her knee (or maybe he had slithered to the floor, I can’t remember) with the bottle of lemonade in her hand, a finger and thumb holding the straw. She’d put it into the first child’s mouth. We had to be really quick and suck fast on the straw to get as much in as possible because after about three seconds, Mam would squeeze it and move on to the next child.

There was no point in whinging for more because she’d say, ‘Swallow your spit if you’re still thirsty.’ But she was great!

For weeks before the holiday, Mam would’ve been saving up some non-perishable foods like; tins of Ambrosia rice, jelly, biscuits, soup, cereals, beans, diluting orange. She was a planner and always organised.

Our beach picnics are stamped in my memory and there to stay. We had sandwiches—usually egg and onion—creamed rice, melon, Kimberley biscuits, and wee bowls of jelly. And as much diluted orange as we needed. We never had to swallow our spit at the beach!

Dad spent hours in the sea with us, and building sandcastles. He was very competitive with the sandcastles. They had to be the biggest and the best. And they were!

Some days we’d drive as far as Laytown just to see the trains. That was exciting for us. Laytown also had a little playground, which we loved. A trip to Laytown was a very enjoyable day out. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get ice-cream too.

Laytown was great for shells. This is where Mam gathered most of the shells she used for decorating her lamps and other things in the house. You can read about that HERE.

Those holidays were fantastic. We were so lucky!