“My dream is to live in the eighties.” announces A wistfully. “Of course, it will never come true” she adds, just in case we thought she had mastered time travel during all the quarantine free time.
We go for a family bike ride, which is rare for all 4 of us, out on our beach cruisers, feeling like we’re the gang from Stranger Things, but without the psychokinetic girl. “If this was really the eighties, the adults wouldn’t be on the bike ride, they’d be at home not giving a crap about us” suggests A. “And we’d have walkie talkies.”
We find an off road dirt track, and discover a heavy equipment graveyard. Who left this machinery here? It looks like it’s been abandoned since the eighties. Or longer. We cycle to the end of the track which hits the open sea. It’s raw and beautiful. A has brought Oreo cookies as a snack – in case anyone is hungry in the 20 minutes since we left the house. We cycle off, A in front, trying to throw cookies to B behind her, who is cycling to catch the artificial chocolate treats in his mouth.
We arrive at our next destination, the beach, and walk around on the deserted sand spits, that have trapped shallow pools of sea water. “This is why I like the eighties” says A. “In the eighties, kids were free to go off wherever they wanted, the beach, or wherever, no one asked where they were, and no one made any rules.”
“There were some rules….” I start.
“Yeah but not many. For example, everyone could wear what they wanted. It didn’t matter if you wore bad clothes, and had bad hair. No one cared.”
“A bit like quarantine then?” I offer.
I haven’t the heart to tell her people looked the way they did in the eighties, not through lack of care, but with effort placed into their sprayed flicked hair styles. We looked bad by design. We thought we looked great.
We walk the dog, and come home for dinner: tagliatelle with tomato sauce and Parmesan. “A classic eighties meal?” Asks A. Yes, but the pasta would be dried spaghetti, the sauce would not contain fresh tomatoes, and the Parmesan would be dried, shaken onto the dish from a cylindrical container with an Italian flag on the side to insist on authenticity. “I remember that dried parmesan, it smelled like old socks,” I say. “And the wine should be a bottle of Chianti in a straw basket.” A looks at me like I am mad. I have clearly got the eighties all wrong. Good night.
