Ellie Williams

Back in my day, we begged for days like this. There wasn’t much weather, we didn’t go out and play in.

Where I grew up in Cardiff, we had lots of hills. Even the hill to my Primary School was steep! You could slide down the pathway right into the yard on cold days. I sh*t you not, lol.

High School was the same. The Dell was a steep muddy hill. We used to use black bin bags to slide down the hill. You had to be careful though as there was a 4 foot drop at the end of the Dell onto the main road outside the school, lol.

We used to do it on the Ski centre on the Dell as well. Go sliding down it on for sale signs, lol. Scratched all the way down the side of my hip and thigh, lol.

I grew up in the wonderful setting of Fairwater when I was a kid. Even though my parents moved around a lot, we always came back home to Fairwater.

Sheesh, I had such an amazing childhood. I look back often, and it brings tears to my eyes. To be a kid again, I wanna go back!! The 80s were the best time. My generation was the last to play, they say. Every generation after us has changed dramatically.

Technology just took over.

The generations that follow will never understand the lives we lived before the internet, before mobiles, before consoles, and quick access music. They will never understand the days when we‘d knock up on our mates’ doors and ask if they were in, and sometimes they weren’t! Lol. Sometimes you had to go to at least 2 or 3, sometimes 6, friends’ houses before you found them, and back then, another way of finding your friends was to go down to the horses’ field, or the Dell or even over Fairwater leisure centre and just call out. And it wasn’t just any call. There was a specific call we all used. I can‘t write it, but if you know, you know. It was something like a high-pitched “ooohh ahhh!” lol. Bloody bird call!

These other generations will never know what it was like not having a mobile. We had landlines, and some didn’t. Many had to use neighbours’ phones or a phone box on the corner of the street. And not all streets had these payphones. Sometimes, you had to walk a fair distance to get to. Can you imagine if you walked 2 miles to a payphone and called your friend’s house only to find out he/ she isn’t there, lol.

Aww, my days, lol.

Then there’s consoles, bloody hell. We had things like the Atari and the Amstrad to begin with. The Atari was a cartridge you had to keep blowing into to clear the dust. Games would crash constantly. The Amstrad had a cassette tape, and you‘d put it in a deck and have to wait ages for it to load, lol. If the cassette was chewed up or had a scratch on the spool reel inside, you were screwed! It also had one of the most annoying load-up sounds ever!

And music! We had to get on a bus to Cardiff town and go to HMV to buy a tape or CD. We thought we were the sh*t when we bought it, lol. Kids today can download and listen to their music whenever they want. They‘ll never know what it was like to have to wait for it to come out on physical copy to listen to it in its entirety, because the copy you had was taped off the radio. Aww, the poxy radio, lol. We‘d stay in all day listening to the charts, just waiting for that song to come on and tape it, and when we did, the DJ would be talking over it! We didn’t have Lime Wire or Napster until the late-90s.

Bloody hell! I went on a tangent then, lol.

I miss the 80s/90s <3 *sighs deeply*

Anyway, have an awesome day, and I hope whatever you‘re doing it is good, and that you’re happy, safe, and feeling loved. You are important. You bring such light and good energy to a broken world.

Keep ya chin up <3