Oh God, I think my teens may perish should they ever be teleported way back to the 80s and subjected to the summer holidays of my youth.
I’ll admit they’ve now learnt not to chant the ‘I’m borrrrred’ words too loudly, consequences are dire – a soliloquy from me on the realities of holidays without the mod-cons they are forever glued to.
My parents both worked and so, in my teenage years, school holidays allowed me and my younger brother a great deal of unsupervised freedom. We could have managed to get ourselves into much greater trouble than we ever did, but maybe we were safe all because the world was a simpler place back then. You know, in the day.
The long weeks of Christmas School Holiday … all internet-less and high definintion-free in the 80s mind you … were spent in ways my teens shudder at considering. Shenanigans like
- pedalling the pushbike around the neighbourhood with a friend
- some serious channel surfing, toggling between Seven’s Summer of Tennis and Nine’s coverage of the cricket
- sleep overs and catch ups where we we chatted, laughed and listened to the only trendy FM Radio station
- hours devoted to creating mix-tapes courtesy of listening to above mentioned FM station with fingers poised on the REC button
- catching a bus into the city for a movie or Hungry Jacks, ensuring 20c was kept for the public pay phone to call Dad just letting him know what bus I’d be catching home
- really old-fashioned pursuits such as … reading, writing or art
That’s right, kids. No PS3, no Minecraft, no Facebook. And I don’t think it did any of us harm.
Do your kids complain of school holiday boredom? What did you used to get up to?