A 1980s Childhood (19 page)

By the time Live Aid was concluded, around £150 million had been raised and Geldof received an honorary knighthood for his efforts.

In November 1983 children across the UK sat and watched
Blue Peter
in cross-legged horror as Janet Ellis mournfully confirmed that vandals had broken into the
Blue Peter
garden and wrought terrible destruction. When you consider the magnitude of some of the tragedies that occurred in the eighties, you would be forgiven for thinking that the vandalism of the
Blue Peter
garden was relatively inconsequential, but for the children of our nation this was a tragedy that was very personal to them and was one for which they felt a sense of real outrage.

The vandals, who remain unidentified to this day, broke into the
Blue Peter
compound at Television Centre and smashed the ornamental urn (given to them by Mrs Taylor from Barnett, apparently) and callously threw the sundial into the fish pond, along with some fuel oil which killed a number of the fish. As if that wasn’t enough, they also trampled on the bedding plants and tipped over a garden bench.

The entire
Blue Peter
team immediately set to work repairing the damage and were able to save some of the fish, but for poor old Percy Thrower it was all too much, and he had tears in his eyes as he told Janet that the culprits must have been mentally ill.

In 1984 I remember watching the opening ceremony of the Los Angeles Olympics with great excitement as a man wearing a jetpack flew around the stadium for a few seconds before landing in the middle, much to the delight of millions of spectators. From this moment on, I was fully expecting to be given my very own child-size jetpack for my birthday or Christmas and was sorely disappointed when the jetpack never arrived. It wasn’t until I saw the film
Back to the Future
a couple of years later that my desire to own a jetpack was replaced by my dream of owning a hoverboard, a dream which persists to this day.

The whole jetpack thing is all I really remember from the 1984 Olympics, but apparently there were some sporting events as well, which included the debut appearance of Carl Lewis, who won four gold medals, and saw Sebastian Coe become the first man to win consecutive gold medals in the 1500m having previously won gold in 1980.

In addition to the numerous sporting achievements, the 1984 Olympics were notable for the absence of fourteen Eastern bloc countries, including the Soviet Union who boycotted the Games in retaliation for the US boycott of the previous Soviet Games. The boycott had a dramatic impact, most notably in the weightlifting events where ninety-four of the world’s top 100 ranked lifters were absent, along with twenty-nine of the thirty medallists from the recent world championships and all ten of the defending world champions in the ten weight categories.

Despite the boycott, 140 nations participated in the Games with over 6,829 athletes participating in 221 events.

While the 1984 Summer Olympics was most memorable, in my opinion, for the jetpack man at the opening ceremony, the 1988 Winter Olympics was most memorable for the debut appearance of the Jamaican bobsleigh team.

The four-man Jamaican bobsleigh team was assembled by two Americans, Fitch and Maloney, who visited Jamaica and witnessed a pushcart derby, which is very similar, in essence, to bobsledding. Knowing that bobsledding was dependent on very quick starts, they selected four fast sprinters to form a team and made their way to Calgary, Alberta, where the Olympics was being held.

Coming from a tropical country, the Jamaican team was something of a novelty and they had little opportunity to practise on a real bobsled track and didn’t even have their own bobsled. Fortunately, the other teams lent them spare bobsleds and offered them guidance and support in a show of sporting brotherhood. The team became firm favourites with the spectators, representing the ultimate underdog story in sport.

Despite making excellent progress, the team didn’t officially finish after they lost control of the sled during one of the four runs and crashed at over 70mph. After coming to a rest near the finish line, the four men were helped from the sled before walking to the finish line as the crowds cheered them on.

This failure didn’t deter the team and they returned to the Games in the 1992 French Winter Olympics and went on to place fourteenth in the 1994 Norwegian Winter Olympics, beating the United States, Russia, Australia, France and one sled from Italy.

The Jamaican bobsleigh team was the inspiration for a major movie in 1992,
Cool Runnings
, in which John Candy starred as the team’s coach.

Many English football fans still feel deep bitterness and resentment towards the Argentinean football team for the events that took place on 22 June 1986 at the quarter final of the 1986 FIFA World Cup.

Having enjoyed a gradual improvement in form throughout the World Cup, England were ready to take on their old nemesis Argentina in the quarter finals, confident that they could beat them and go on to win the World Cup. Rivalry between England and Argentina ran deep, thanks to a previous falling out at the 1966 World Cup, and tensions were now heightened due to the recent Falklands Conflict, just four years earlier, which had resulted in 258 British and 649 Argentinean deaths.

An uneventful first half saw no goals scored but the second half went on to produce two of the most famous (or infamous) moments in football history. Six minutes into the second half, Argentinean player Diego Maradona punched the ball into the goal with his fist and the referee, not having seen what happened, allowed the illegal goal. It didn’t take long before the slow-motion replays confirmed that Maradona had indeed used his hand to score the goal but by that time it was too late and the referee’s decision had been made. After the match, Maradona claimed that the goal was scored ‘a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God’, leading to the goal being forever known as the ‘Hand of God’ goal.

Just four minutes after this infamous goal, with the England players and fans still reeling in disbelief at what had just happened, Maradona made an impressive 60-metre dash up the pitch, dribbling the ball past five English outfield players before manoeuvring around the goalkeeper and scoring a second goal. The goal was so impressive that it was later voted ‘Goal of the Century’ and it was this goal that secured victory for the Argentinean team over England in the quarter finals.

It was a Friday night and we had just been watching
Blankety Blank
with Les Dawson when the newsflash appeared on the television and Nicholas Witchell told us that a ferry carrying more than 600 people on board had capsized just one mile off the coast of Belgium. The vessel was called the
Herald of Free Enterprise
, part of the Townsend Thoreson fleet, and was on her way from Zeebrugge to Dover. At the time of the newsflash, little information was available other than that the ferry was currently lying on its side and that rescue teams were on their way.

It wasn’t until some time later that the full extent of the situation became clear and we learned that 193 people had been killed in the tragedy, mostly as a result of hypothermia from submersion in the icy cold water. Many of those on board had been
Sun
newspaper readers taking advantage of a promotion for cheap trips to the Continent.

Seconds after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan on 30 March 1981 outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.
(Public Domain)

The ferry was a roll-on, roll-off vehicle ferry and an investigation after the event concluded that it had capsized due to the bow loading doors being accidentally left open as the ship left the harbour. Water had poured into the car deck and rapidly caused the ship to become unstable and capsize within just ninety seconds of the water first entering, without time for the crew to raise the alarm.

Following the disaster, a number of modifications to the design and procedures for roll-on, roll-off ferries were introduced to prevent a similar incident ever happening again.

Reactor number four at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine began a systems test on Saturday, 26 April 1986 which recorded a sudden power output surge. An emergency shutdown was attempted but this was followed by an even larger power surge. A reactor vessel ruptured which led to a series of explosions, resulting in the ignition of the graphite moderator. A large plume of highly radioactive smoke rose from the reactor into the atmosphere and spread over an enormous area, causing widespread contamination of the Soviet Union and Europe. Around 50,000 people from the nearby city of Prypiat were immediately evacuated but the contamination was so severe that other towns nearby were also evacuated; in total, over 350,000 people were resettled after the disaster.

It is estimated that thirty-one staff and emergency workers died as a direct result of the accident, but the World Health Organisation estimated that 4,000 civilians may have been killed some time after the event as a result of radiation exposure. Further studies have suggested that the long-term effects of the incident could ultimately lead to 200,000 premature cancer deaths, although the full impact will probably never be known for certain.

The majority of the radioactive fallout landed in Ukraine and Belarus, but the pollution spread across Europe and contaminated some areas so badly that slaughter restrictions for grazing animals had to be imposed since their meat was considered unsafe for human consumption. As of 2012, restrictions still apply to the slaughter of sheep in some parts of the UK and it is expected that the radioactivity from Chernobyl will be found in the UK and Norway for at least another 100 years.

Here’s something a little lighter to close the chapter – a happy world event for most – Christmas in the 1980s. The excitement would begin the night before Christmas when my dad would take us out into the garden and we’d all look up at the sky to see if we could see Santa flying around on his sleigh. We never saw anything, of course, but we always managed to convince ourselves that we had. We would leave out milk and a cookie for Santa and a carrot for the reindeer and place a plastic ‘Santa sack’ at the foot of our beds in the hope that we would find it filled in the morning. After trying to stay awake for as long as possible, we eventually drifted off to sleep and would awake the next morning at some ridiculously early time to noisily wake up our parents and take our Santa sacks into the living room to unpack them, as my dad filmed our reactions with his cine camera.

We knelt on the floor in our picture pyjamas (mine was He-Man) and rummaged through the sacks excitedly, chattering to each other about what gifts we had received. We would usually get a mix of the exciting and the slightly more mundane gifts that ranged from something cool like a Rubik’s Cube to something practical like a new pair of socks, or on one occasion a jar of pickled onions. Whatever it was we were given, we would gleefully exclaim, ‘just what I always wanted!’ and while we were generally very grateful for our gifts, I do remember causing a scene one Christmas after counting up the gifts to discover my brother had been given one more present than me.

On Christmas day 1980 a heavy snowfall covered the country and my dad took the opportunity to add a little magic to the day by sneaking outside and making some reindeer ‘hoof prints’ in the snow to show us evidence of Santa’s nocturnal activity. A little piece of nibbled carrot lay on the ground next to the hoof prints and a set of boot prints led from the flying-sleigh landing area to the back door of the house.

After the presents had been opened, a celebratory breakfast would be prepared which was essentially the same as a normal breakfast but included a glass of Corona Cherryade or Limeade. Suitably refreshed we would begin playing with our new toys as mum busied herself in the kitchen preparing a veritable feast for the Christmas lunch. Sometimes our grandparents would join us, or maybe our great-aunt, and we’d all get together and exchange yet more gifts.

My mum would usually be given some kind of soap, body cream or other beauty lotion, and maybe a sweet treat like a box of Turkish delight or a Walnut Whip. My dad would be given a bottle of Old Spice aftershave and a pack of handkerchiefs. My gran would get a calendar and would always exclaim, ‘Oh, you shouldn’t have!’ at which point the present was jokingly retrieved. My older brother would get a soap-on-a-rope and a Hai Karate talcum powder.

After the presents had been opened, we’d sit up for a spectacular lunch of roast turkey with all the trimmings and the adults would drink Blue Nun, Babycham and egg nog, while the children drank more Corona. We would pull crackers, share jokes and wear silly party hats and then retire in front of the television to watch the Queen’s speech. The afternoon would be spent playing with our new toys as the grown-ups talked about boring, grown-up stuff, and by teatime we would all be so worn out from the festivities and excessive sugar consumption that we would happily settle down to watch the Christmas specials of
Morecambe and Wise
,
Only Fools and Horses
or
The
Two Ronnies
at the end of a perfect day.