By Harry Warren

As my grandmother wisely said, ‘you don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone’, but in the case of the 1980s, we didn’t know what we were missing until it arrived!

Back then, life was simple. We had two TV channels RTÉ 1 and RTÉ 2 and rigid viewing schedules. Miss a show? Too bad, you’d wait months for a re-run. Then one day, Dad waltzed in, grinning like he’d just conquered Everest, lugging the biggest box I’d ever seen.

“Lads,” he announced grandly, “the future is here.”

Enter the VHS video recorder. My father brought it home like a medieval knight returning with the Holy Grail. Forget toasters, washing machines or fridges, this was the future. A giant box that made you wonder if it was a machine or an alien spacecraft. My father, like Indiana Jones handling the Ark of the Covenant, nervously proclaimed, “This is going to revolutionise our evenings.”

Mam squinted at it, probably calculating if it could steal the good china, while my younger brother wondered if it made toast. My Dad sighed, an expression he perfected when speaking to us, and got to work.

Now, setting up a VHS recorder in the early 1980s was no picnic. It was an Olympic level event requiring patience, dexterity, and ignoring a constant stream of ‘helpful’ advice from the rest of the family. The instruction manual, written in a language only engineers and wizards understood, didn’t help.

“What’s this one for?” I asked, holding a cable that looked like it might summon E.T.

“It’s the aerial loop-through,” said Dad, as if that cleared things up. My brother, ever the optimist, asked, “Will it explode if you plug it in wrong?”

After what felt like hours of tangled cables and whispered curses, the moment came. Dad pressed the power button, and the machine whirred to life. The TV flickered like it was preparing to transmit secret government codes, and then there it was! The main menu of the VHS recorder appeared, crisp and clear. We erupted into cheers like we’d just won the All-Ireland final.
But the pièce de résistance was still to come. From his magical bag of wonder, Dad pulled out a VHS tape, Ghostbusters. Now, if you didn’t grow up in the 1980s, let me explain the magnitude of this moment. If you missed a movie at the cinema, it was gone. Poof! No Netflix, no YouTube, just a faint hope it might appear on RTÉ in five years, edited of course, to remove anything remotely fun. But here, in our very own living room, was the promise that we could watch Ghostbusters whenever we wanted. We’d entered the Promised Land.

Of course, like any new technology, the VHS recorder had a learning curve. The first time Dad tried to record Glenroe, he accidentally taped over it with Bosco. Let me tell you, nothing crushes your mother’s dreams of Irish soap opera drama like seeing a puppet sing nursery rhymes instead of Miley and Biddy sorting out their marriage woes.

Every Saturday, we excitedly strolled to the local video rental shop, a weekly adventure we always looked forward to. Rows upon rows of VHS tapes lined the walls, each box more colourful and enticing than the last. Choosing a film was like negotiating a peace treaty. My brother always voted for Rambo, Mam wanted ‘Gone with the Wind’, and I just wanted something, anything, without explosions or someone tragically staring into the distance.

Despite occasional mishaps like recording over your favourite show or losing the rental shop debate, the VHS recorder became a beloved part of our family routine. Saturday nights were sacred. We’d huddle around the TV with Tayto crisps and Club Orange, watching movies that took us to other worlds.

We laughed with Back to the Future, cried with E.T., and screamed our way through Poltergeist (well, except for Mam, who peeked through her fingers during the scary parts). The VHS was more than a gadget it was a bonding experience.

Looking back, it’s amusing to think VHS was once cutting-edge tech. Now, we have more TV channels than brain cells and streaming services that let us binge entire series without moving, except to grab snacks. But in the ‘80s, that VHS recorder was a magical portal, turning Saturday nights into epic cinematic events.

So, here’s to the VHS recorder. Here’s to Ghostbusters, to rental shops, to Tayto and Club Orange, and to my Dad, who truly believed the future had arrived in a big black box. It was a simpler time, a time when the excitement of watching a movie felt like pure magic, and it brought our family together in ways no modern gadget ever could. ÷

Read Just A Memory every week in Ireland’s Own