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Do people really have trouble imagining what life was like in the 1980s? Wasn’t it basically like now?

Society was very different in many ways:

• Personal computers were only just starting to become common. The Apple Macintosh launched in 1984, the IBM PC a few years before. There was no Microsoft Windows, no Linux. If you didn’t type your paperwork yourself, most large workplaces had a typing pool to do it for you
• There was no Internet. If you wanted to send a message to someone, you could write a letter and post it, or phone them, or send a telegram
• mobile phones were uncommon, and usually only in cars
• the Sony Walkman had only just come out in 1979, and you listened to your music on cassettes
• cancer, AIDS, heart conditions were almost always untreatable and terminal within years, if not months
• US involvement in the Middle East and Afghanistan hadn’t happened yet. Britain had a war with Argentina in the Falkland Islands. Ireland was still fighting with Britain
• LA Law and Miami Vice were considered cool

I’ve been thinking for hours how to describe it.

It’sa sort of echoing scraping noise. A sheet of plywood lying on the ground, being kicked down the road. Only it’s quite faint, I can only hear it when the room is quiet or when I’m trying to get to sleep.

I can hear the muscles in my eyes when I look from side to side or up and down.