Like Glasshopper, my forthcoming novel Hurry Up and Wait is set on the south coast of England in the 1980s.  It’s the era I grew up in, and having revisited the decade in my first book, I couldn’t help lingering a little longer as I went on to write the story of Sarah in Hurry Up and Wait.

I often meet readers who share my interest in the period.  The 1970s had its own particular personality, and every decade before then – so what was it that made the Eighties unique?

Perhaps it was the passionate sense of change that made it stand out; a sense of ‘anything goes’.   It was a time of social transformation: we had the miners’ strikes, Band Aid, the anti-apartheid movement, the dawn of HIV and AIDS.

Stylistically, everything was up for grabs: we watched music videos on The Tube, where boys wore makeup, girls shaved their heads and the dance floor was a sea of big hair and bangles.

British youth culture was a post-punk/new romantic/yuppie smorgasbord of bad taste, and we were lovin’ it.

In the run-up to the release of Hurry Up and Wait (16 June), I’ll be tweeting a daily fix of nostalgia from 1985/6 – music videos, fashion blogs, TV clips and news footage – along with sneak preview lines from the book itself.  I’ll be using the hashtag #HUAW – do join in and tweet back with your own photos and memories!  You can visit my 1980s Hall of Fame/Shame, where Twitter and Facebook friends have kindly donated their wonderful photos of Eighties style!

I hope you’ll enjoy this trip down memory lane as much as I enjoyed putting it together.

In the spirit of sharing, and to encourage you all to do the same, here’s a little treat from 1985 – me, aged 15, complete with badly backcombed hair, an ill-advised shade of lipstick and the obligatory sulky teenage pout.

Nice.