Nuclear 80's

While musing along the road I looked into a charity shop window and low and behold staring at me was this poster which a dawned my bedroom wall back in time and later my flat.

While shopping I racked my brain to remember where I bought the ruddy thing which is me all over I get a spark and must remember how, where, when. I concluded it must have been in the poster rack at Virgin or WH Smiths were I normally bought them if I was paying cash.

Not my normal kind of poster. I would normally shop for pretty young things with a fine set of boobs or film posters but married life and kids put a stop to that.

Interestingly I was never a ban the bomb kind of person. I was very political and left of right but felt safe under NATO’s nuclear umbrella it was more about hating Ronnie Reagan and Maggie Thatcher. Every lefty or ban the bomb household, flat, bedroom in the land must have had this poster on the wall it became iconic as the tennis girl with the itchy bum.

There was a great case of anxiety around that time at good old Ronnie could actually press the button with Maggie tagging along in a junior partnership kind of way. Husbands and boyfriends bemoan the fact there other halves wouldn’t be home slaving over the cooker. They were more likely holding hands outside RAF Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp protesting the decision of Maggie’s government allowing USA cruise missiles to be based there. That was the protesting culture of the time, marches, and demos about the bomb.

The government didn’t help the situation by distributing Protect and Survive booklet telling me I would need to use my doors to survive with some pillowcases filled with sand or earth but after seeing When the Wind Blows, I decided f**k it! I would be the first to embrace the first missile to hit my house.

There were TV shows like ‘Whoops Apocalypse’ with the brilliant named President Johnny Cyclops while in the charts Frankie Goes to Hollywood were giving the world ‘Two Tribes go to War’ with a crazy video of the then-President Ronald Reagan and then-Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko have a no holds barred wrestling match.

All joking aside then we had the BBC drama Threads depicting a nuclear attack on Sheffield in 1984. Enough to give anyone plenty to think about and it truly scared the pants off me I was in fact horrified. That one person with a finger on a button in Moscow and Washington back then could destroy the world, frightening. I remember one small scene that I never forgot. We see the mushroom cloud and the next scene we see a lady and then see her peeing down her leg.

Still the poster caught the mood of the time with the slogan,

“She promised to follow him to the end of the earth and he promised to organise it.”

The greatest case of unrequited love ever Maggie and Ronnie.