The eighties live on for more than 25 million Brits.

From food to fashion and music, the decade still influences more than half of British adults, according to a survey. Favourites from those years include video recorders, chicken Kiev, Eurythmics records, hoop earrings and leg warmers.

I’m heartened to hear this – because in our home the eighties lives on. Only, as my children are keen to point out, it’s not the 1980s, but the 1880s.

With basic furnishings, a barely-functioning cooker, dodgy taps and no broadband, our life can’t be far removed from that enjoyed by Yorkshire families more than a century ago.

It may not have an open range, but our kitchen is every bit as cluttered as the Victorian version. Theirs were full of floury bowls, and pie dishes, as well as the high-tech implements of the day such as pastry cutters, potato peelers and mincers. Ours is cluttered with much the same, particularly mid-week when my daughters gather their ingredients for cookery class and don’t clean up after themselves. In our kitchen, things never seem to get put away. We’ve even got a pair of ancient scales – a nightmare when all the quantities in a recipe are in kilograms. We can’t use the cold water tap, which ties in with Victorian living – it was rare, even for the poorest people, to have sinks in the kitchen, most having a separate scullery.

My generous, green-fingered neighbours donate so much homemade jam, marmalade and chutney, our cupboards are stacked with jars – not unlike a Victorian larder.

Our living room is dominated by a piano – given to us by neighbours – rather than a plasma screen, and we have a threadbare rug that, although it came from Ikea, looks and smells at least a century old.

I’ve just taught my eldest daughter to darn her tights as she’s getting through a pair a day at school, and her sister still prefers dolls to computer games.

Mod cons are conspicuous in their absence – it really is more 1880s than new millennium.

While our home and lifestyle is fairly rudimentary, I can’t say that we sit around every evening playing parlour games and listening to my children playing the piano. That would be taking things too far. The TV may be small, but on a night, it is the centre of our universe. And, however hard I try, I can’t convince the children to swap texting for sewing. But we do have a real live 1880s person in the house. My husband is every inch the Victorian father, striding around in his smoking jacket (aka M&S dressing gown), ruling the house with a rod of iron.