These days we are all permanently attached to our smartphones but there was once a time when they didn’t exist! Imagine sitting on a bus and having to read a newspaper or even worse actually talk to another person. How did we cope? Read on to find out!

1. Pager

All the cool kids had a pager clipped to their belt but did anyone ever actually page you? At 75 pence a message this was never going to take off!

2. House Phone

If you were lucky you had a house phone. I remember having one upstairs in our house. It was ideal for listening into family members conversations.

3. Pen Pals

If you had the urge to communicate with a random stranger then you could find yourself a pen pal and exchange regular letters via The Royal Mail. Did anyone have a pen pal? Have you kept in touch?

4. Mobile Phone

In the mid 90’s mobile phones started becoming affordable with popular designs including the Nokia models. I had this Phillips phone on the BT Cellnet network. I remember texts messages were 12 pence per message so you didn’t want to waste them!

5. Location Based

In the 80’s Hutchinson launched Rabbit, which was a location based Telepoint service enabling subscribers to make outgoing calls when they were within 100 meters of a base station. Hutchinson went on to create the Orange and 3 mobile networks.

6. Paper Cups

With a couple of paper cups and a length of string we created our own telephone network!

7. Walkie Talkies

Did anyone have Walkie Talkies? If you lived close enough to your mate you could have a convo using these. The ones I had some how managed to pick up the local taxi rank radio.

8. Graffiti

You couldn’t declare your love for someone using Facebook in the 80’s. A marker pen down at the local park was the only way to tell the world.

9. Car Phone

If your parents had a car phone then you were possibly very posh!

10. Fax Machine

In the absence of email we had to use these horrible screeching fax machines to send important documents when we were too impatient to wait for the post.

11. Phone Box

Not everyone had a house phone so we spent a lot of time in these talking very fast to get our point across before our 10 pence credit ran out. Unfortunately, they also seemed to be a popular choice for people who needed to pee!

12. Shouting

When it was time to come in for your tea your mum couldn’t drop you a text. Instead you would hear that all too familiar yell that Mum had perfected to be heard within a half a mile radius.