Did anybody grow up in the 70s?

The cashiers in the supermarket used to have to put price tags on everything and then put it into the til by hand - no scanning! The noise at the Coop check out was deafening!

Sharing a landline - if you picked up the phone you could sometimes hear the 'party line' talking.

It was really really dark in the winter.

IRA bombings.

Power cuts.

Hand knitted jumpers.

Purdy hair cuts.

The 6 million dollar man, on It's a Knockout and Les Dawson on TV.

Standing room only at football matches.

Black and white telly.

Every room in the house was alive with colour! I had a purple carpet in my bedroom. Nothing was neutral.

Woodchip wallpaper.

The Pools man at the door.

The novelty of Vesta meals.
Getting 2oz of sherbet pips if you hadn’t much pocket money left.
Conductors on buses with crossed leather straps on their ticket machine and money bag.
Buses always finished at the terminus.
Habitat.
Laura Ashley gypsy dresses for parties.
Star Wars
Fuzzy felt every Christmas
Shouting/garbling goodby after the pips had gone in a phone box.
Power cuts
Such hot summers and all those ladybirds in 1976
Gaberdine school coats
Counterpanes and eiderdowns on the bed.
Twin tub washers
Marbled tiles with chickens in them if you squinted
Grange Hill

Tufty the squirrel and the green cross code
The smash aliens
School inspectors in black uniform with caps
Roller skates to strap on your shoes
Jesus sandals all summer
Jam sandwiches with added sand on the beach
The ladybirds everywhere
Spending summer in the paddling pool
Very strict school teachers
Pirate reading books
Metal climbing frames over concrete

The Tufty Club
The Red Hand Gang
Crackerjack, especially the "double or drop" game
The drought in 1976
When a Knight Won His Spurs
Emu's Broadcasting Company... EBC1
Block ice cream in square cornets
Pampas grass
Prawn cocktail
Avocado bathroom suites
Curtains with massive flowers in brown, yellow, orange, white or purple
Getting a tan was supposedly "healthy"
Wearing floor-length flowery hippy dresses to parties
Space hoppers

As others have said bombs and the IRA loomed large
So did the Green cross code man though!

I remember the clothes most!
Clothkits
Peddlepushers
Camping in France was exotic!

Clothes were really expensive. Someone on our Facebook local page shared a 70s advert for a clothes shop and things were the same price as now, sometimes more expensive. Compared to wages the cost was enormous.

Big flares
Nappies soaking in a bucket 😷 (baby brother)
Ugly Clarke's shoes
Heatwave, hosepipe ban
Mary, Mungo and Midge
Pipkins
Getting our first coloured telly
Dad's Ford Capri
Evil Kenevil

I remember that clothes were very expensive, I'm sure mine were 90% handmedowns and I didn't have any siblings 🤔

Paedos. Loads of them. We had one in our street, at least one at school and we'd never be alone with Dawn's dad.
Orange and brown everywhere.
Leaflets about what to do in a nuclear war. Programmes on telly about what happened to you in a nuclear war. I remember one particular scene where they talked about a nuclear winter and the bloke's face went really old and he went bald and then my mum told me to go and brush my teeth.
IRA bombing all the horses in Hyde Park.
Tarmac sticking to your feet.
Cords and dungarees. And long party dresses (I guess the grown-ups were wearing maxi dresses so that made sense.)
I am the spirit of dark and lonely water.
Barry Manilow and discussing that he's probably gay.
Val Doonican sat with his legs crossed wearing a jumper.
Terry and June and hilarious hi jinks with Terry's boss.
Men watching the Good Life for Felicity Kendall.

Sainsbury’s having two long counters and taking the handwritten bill to one of the two tills at the far end. Newspaper sellers on the street and the same brewery mentioned by BikeRunSki. You could smell it from our school!

Green shield stamps! Rag and bone man and jumble sales.

Lots of strikes and power cuts, yes. Homes were poorly heated.

1976 was the summer of the massive heatwave, and 1977 had the Queen's Silver Jubilee and there were lots of community festivals for that.

Cinemas were single screen and had no AC. Out TV was black and white.

I got the bus to school aged 8, waiting at a remote bus stop on my own - very concerning in retrospect.

Not many mums worked where I lived, and none full time.

School milk.

I can't remember many details but generally it has a kind of a golden haze around it for me
I do especially remember the summer of 76 of course 🌞

I was born in 1969 so my childhood was the 1970s.

Birthday parties for children were always at home, going to a venue wasn't something that happened.

Walking home along the main road from infant school with friends and no adults.

Coming home for lunch rather than stopping in school.

My Mom made most of my clothes, the sewing machine was used a lot. She'd knit all jumpers and cardigans.

Eating out wasn't done apart from perhaps chips in an eat-in fish and chip shop on a day trip to the seaside. The first time I ever ate out locally was 1985.

The bin men used to come into the back garden to collect the metal bin and then carry it down to the lorry and empty it before bringing it back.

We had a bread delivery man.

The council rent woman would call every Monday and would walk around the streets with the bag full of cash that she'd collected.

The post would be delivered at breakfast time with another delivery coming later.

My first holiday was at Butlins Pwllheli in 1977, just me and my parents (my sister is much older and had already left home) in a very basic little chalet which probably hadn't been modernised since the 1950s. We didn't have a car so travelled by coach.

Walking past the house of a family whose daughter was killed in an IRA bombing every time we walked to my Nan's and my Mom always saying something like "those poor people". It scared me that something like that had happened to someone close to home, especially when it was on the news about letter bombs being sent. I wasn't old enough to realise that they were sent to targets so I lived in fear of the post arriving. For some reason I was never shielded from the news.

Jimmy Savile. Even as a kid I ‘knew’ there was something not quite right. He always gave me the creeps.

He was even worse in person. I met him a few times (as an adult) and he made my skin crawl. I felt somewhat vindicated when it all came out.

And (how could I forget!) JAWS

I was terrified to even turn the taps on for months afterwards.

And the national anthem at the Cinema and everyone stood up

..and ran for the door before some officious older twat 'tutted' at them them for being disrespectful.

Delivery vans milk /bread /meat.
The summer of 76.
So hot

I was born in 1959.
The early 70s were utter shit. The hangover after the 1960s.

In the 1970s spaghetti (that didn't come in tins) was exotic.
Yoghurt was Ski - and sugary.
No one knew what Muesli was.
Brown bread was weird.

The British film industry was making crap like Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

The BBC was making 'light entertainment' shows with people in blackface. Not just the abomination that was The Black and White Minstrel Show - even 'educated' innovative shows like Monty Python have embarrassing "Well hello dere, massa boss" moments.

Gay people were nearly invisible or presented as grotesque caricatures and always conflated with paedophiles. 'Bi' people did not exist. you were 'AC/DC'.

Pornography was incredibly hard to get hold of. Trust me, I tried.

People smoked EVERYWHERE. In cinemas, in restaurants. My doctor smoked during consultations! About the only place where people didn't smoke was in primary school or while performing open heart surgery.

Someone saying 'fuck' on TV would make front page headlines.

It was damn near impossible to get a decent cup of coffee.

Utter shit.

The only things I think I would save from a bonfire of the 70s would be the theme music from Shaft, Pam Grier's movies, and a Lamb's Navy Rum advert with Caroline Munro's sweaty breasts in it. That was another thing about the 1970s. To sell anything you had to have a large breasted 'girl' in (some of) a bikini draped over it.

Talking of which, apparently Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd were 'funny'.

But don't take my word for it. I suspect this is what Post Brexit England is shaping up to look like.

Sunblest bread, frays bento, brains faggots, Vesta, frozen mousses, artic roll, jam sandwiches for tea. Green shield stamps and cardboard boxes for shopping. Advocate as Christmas drink watching Dave Allen who was v sophisticated. Fawlty tower s

Hotpants
Charity shops were a new clever idea and were the Sue Ryder then Oxfam.
Hospices were also a new clever idea
Roots was something every one watched talked about and enacted for weeks after it was broadcast
The national anthem before the TV closed for the night at about 11
And the national anthem at the Cinema and everyone stood up
Hotel California
Pans people and the top of the pops
The Vietnam boat people
Love thy neighbor
Benny Hill
BBC tape computers
Girls shoes being lace up platforms for school
LoadS of teenage pregnancies and abortions
Always several pervie school teachers to avoid and some friend's dad's
Veg cart came twice a week
Milkman every day
Blue Smarties were banned
Hula hoop craze
Skateboards for the first time as a crazy thing from America
Cluedo craze
Neighbours would come round for Christmas drinks
Corduroy trousers and pinafore dresses
Fairfield style cardigans
Duffle coats
Package holiday to Spain
Blue Peter
Black beauty
Upstairs downstairs, Corrie, Hammer House of horror
Then late 70s was the strikes and Thatcher and then no hope of a job and dole queues and waiting for your giro cheque to arrive in the post. Child benefit was a book of tear out yellow papers with the date of each week it would be paid for six months.
Carry cots on the back seat that slid around if you took the corner too fast. Child seats started to come in.
Most people drove for ages before getting a driving licence.
Policeman would clip you round the ear and send you home 😁

Walking down to the phone box to make calls (using 2p pieces). It smelt of metal and wee, the phone directory in it had pages missing, and there were often people waiting outside who had arranged for people to call them at a particular time.

Woodley’s Green Apple Shampoo.

Keys hanging behind the front door on a length of string, parcels tied with string, home made go carts and wearing one roller skate and your friend wore the other, posters on my bedroom wall, Grease on the cinema and my idol Elvis passing away 😢 star sky and Hutch, Follyfoot farm, six million dollar man and giving my mum all of my first weeks wages for 'bed and board' and going to TW Records to buy the latest Top of the Pops LP. and watching Sunday night at the London palladium.