what is so great about the 80s

[Boudica]

i hate them.

i can't believe someone born in 1980 is 30 this year

[Clippy]

Just for you!

[NickFitz]

The Eighties sucked in an enormous number of ways, mainly because of Margaret Thatcher, but at least they weren't dull

I have many interesting memories of being hassled by the Wiltshire Constabulary (and usually coppers from a dozen other forces brought in from around the UK) in the near and far vicinities of Stonehenge around Summer Solstice. I think the best we managed was being told to keep walking or face arrest somewhere near Nether Slaughter, about thirty miles away in Hampshire, when we were keeping on walking anyway - they stopped us so they could tell us not to stop

That must have been 1986 - Roy Harper managed to locate our refugee camp and played a few songs for us

[Gonzo]

I was at school in the eighties. I went to a grammar school so was with the brightest 25% of kids and had no contact with the thicko oiks, those days were pretty good for me.

However, every summer was ruined.

I grew up near to stonehenge and every summer there would be an influx of scruffy traveller types trying to reach the stones so that they could spray graffiti over them. They would leave rubbish everywhere and their crappy vans and buses would frequently break down causing congestion all over the place. In 1985 the police gave some of them a good clobbering as is right and proper but it did not stop them coming back.

[NickFitz]

FYATHYRIO, Gonzo

The only people who have ever sprayed graffiti on the stones have been football supporters and Neo-Nazis. At Summer Solstice 1987 we were allowed to go to the stones on foot (about eight miles there, and the same back) and some of those London football arseholes tried to kick off then as well. We all helped to hand those we caught over the fence to the Police, and those too far from the Police were, shall we say, encouraged to moderate their behaviour or have it moderated. Scum like that have no place in our society, whether the Prime Monster thinks such a thing as society exists or not.

There were a good number of tulipheads amongst the new age travellers of the mid-Eighties, but they were always in the minority, and even if they shat in your grandmother's goldfish pond they would never have damaged the stones. Even if they'd wanted to and had tried, they were always outnumbered and we wouldn't have let them. But they never did. They may have had no respect for a society that had no respect for them, but they respected the stones.

[mudskipper]

1980s - started work in 1985 as an operator. Was left to nurse the old ICL mainframe while the more experienced operators were let loose on the shiny new DEC VAX equipment. Loaded a test batch of punch cards through the reader every morning, although I don't think I ever saw it used in anger. But the plotter was still driven by paper tape. Wasn't long after that both the punchcards and paper tape were being used to make Christmas decorations.

[NickFitz]

Oh, and I've done plenty of litter-picking at Stonehenge myself - for some reason it was never a problem if we went there for the sunrise at the Vernal and Autumnal Equinoxes and the Winter Solstice, as long as we cleared up by the time they opened to the tourists. We didn't always manage it right on time: at Winter Solstice 1997 they'd already shut the gate, so me and my girlfriend had to leave via the tourist tunnel, against the early tide of Americans, where one of the English Heritage staff kindly directed us to the place where we could deposit our bin bags and thanked us for our trouble.

One of the things that always disgusted me about that scene in the Eighties was the way that Thatcher and her cronies would claim to be acting on the basis of desperate pleadings from English Heritage to save them from us, yet English Heritage staff always said they were fine with us being there.

Before Winter Solstice 1997 I read some gubbins in the paper about the Wiltshire plod gearing up after a request from English Heritage to help them fend off the flood of hippies that were likely to arrive. I phoned EH and asked to speak to the person responsible for Stonehenge and, to my surprise, got though to him. Upon asking if we would be allowed in for the sunrise he was very cautious until he'd satisfied himself that I wasn't a journalist (or a Government minister) whereupon he told me that, barring any unforeseen circumstances (see earlier parentheses), we would be, "although we would like you all to leave before we open to the public, as they aren't allowed to go into the stones." See above paragraph about litter-picking; we picked up the rubbish because it was the right thing to do, but it turned out to be an easy way for the EH people to explain why we were there - although if they'd told the truth and said "They're collecting all the roaches" it might not have gone down so well

[suityou01]

FYATHYRIO, Gonzo

The only people who have ever sprayed graffiti on the stones have been football supporters and Neo-Nazis. At Summer Solstice 1987 we were allowed to go to the stones on foot (about eight miles there, and the same back) and some of those London football arseholes tried to kick off then as well. We all helped to hand those we caught over the fence to the Police, and those too far from the Police were, shall we say, encouraged to moderate their behaviour or have it moderated. Scum like that have no place in our society, whether the Prime Monster thinks such a thing as society exists or not.

There were a good number of tulipheads amongst the new age travellers of the mid-Eighties, but they were always in the minority, and even if they shat in your grandmother's goldfish pond they would never have damaged the stones. Even if they'd wanted to and had tried, they were always outnumbered and we wouldn't have let them. But they never did. They may have had no respect for a society that had no respect for them, but they respected the stones.

1987 me and my London football and Neo-Nazi mates went to stone henge and beat the crap out of this geeky chap that kept on handing our London bretherin over to the coppers. *








* No I didn't, I don't know why I just said this.

[NickFitz]

Wasn't long after that both the punchcards and paper tape were being used to make Christmas decorations.

Back in the 70s I used punched paper tape from the school PDP8/e as streamers at Christmas - I was able to assess how far I'd advanced (or how verbose I'd become) as a programmer on the basis of which programs stretched across the room, which ran the length of the room, and which would cross the room diagonally.

Ironically, none of said programs had anything to do with Pythagoras's theorem

[Pogle]

I left home, dyed my hair bright pink, wore lots of white makeup and black clothes, went on loads of protest marches, lived in a squat and took lots and lots and lots of legal & illegal substances in the 80's