to want to go on a visit to the 70s

[morningtoncrescent62]

I'm not dewy-eyed about the 1970s, and I know it was a time of unchecked sexism, racism, homophobia etc., with levels of child abuse that are only now becoming evident. I don't want everything to go back to how it was then. But I do sometimes feel left behind and overwhelmed by how much has changed since I was growing up - a bit like having culture shock when you go to an unfamiliar country. I just long to have a couple of weeks in the early 70s. I'll sing a few New Seekers songs, hang out on a picket line for a bit, do some shopping in Woolworths and C&As and then I'll come back and get on with my life here. AIBU?

And those dreadful knee high tights that were all the rage for some inexplicable reason - they had a name - can't remember it though

Are you thinking of Pop Sox? The ones with the elastic below the knees? I liked them - I thought they were much more comfortable (and less likely to ladder) than tights, and since the skirts I wore were close to ankle length, there were no worries about anyone seeing that I wasn't wearing real tights.

Did anyone see the t.v. show, 'Back in time for the weekend' ? Each weekend was themed for a different decade.

I didn't see that one, but I saw Back in time for Christmas which I thought was interesting. I was a bit at how open the youngest child (boy of about 11) was about his materialism. He said without any sense of it being absolutely natural that he was 'in it for the presents' so that was his sole criterion for judging how good each decade's Christmas was. The older girl liked the 70s best - she had more freedom than in the earlier decades, and presents that weren't entirely homespun, but she thought the overall feeling wasn't anything like as pressurised and commercialised as it's since become.

I used to love the way the entire neighbourhood got excited when someone bought a new applicance. Talking here about the big ticket items which started to appear, and the early innovators would be the envy of the street - washing machines, deep freezes, colour TVs. Everyone would go round to marvel at whatever it was, and it would be discussed for what seemed like weeks. I definitely want my fortnight's break to include one of these events. Perhaps I'll time it to co-incide with Princess Anne's wedding which was when the first people in our street got colour TV.

Pop socks! That was it. Ridiculous things - I wonder why we thought they were a good idea?
The 70's was the decade that loved brown - at least until things started to get a bit not-brown with the arrival of punk. We had a brown bathroom suite with brown lino and brown towels and that was as out-there as it got I think my Dad had a brown car too and he certainly had an awesome collection of brown kipper ties. Some things are better consigned to the past on a permanent basis!

My MIL still wears pop socks. My DH hates them more than probably anything else he hates in the entire world. They literally make him sick.

Don't know where some of the posters on here lived in the 70s but I didn't know anyone who's house didn't have central heating. We had air conditioning where I worked in the mid 70s.

It was a great time to be young, lots of work available, more money in people's pockets than in previous years, lots of new fashions to spend the money on, lots of new products and coming onto the market.

I'm aware it is now seen as a time of greater racism but I wasn't aware of it: had lots of friends from different parts of the world; and tbh after listening to some of the vile things that floated to the surface during the EU referendum I'm not so sure there's any less racism now.

Everywhere was pretty smokey it's true and travelling on the tube - I was in London - was pretty unpleasant but generally I would say life was pretty good in the 70s.

Perspicacia - I had those records - I still have a lot of the 'Pickwick' records from the 60s and 70s - used to buy them in Woolworths - came out once a month. A lot of tracks sounded dreadful but they were good enough to practice your dance steps in your bedroom!!

No definitely no central heating. None until we moved to another village in 1978.

I read my DM's back issues of Home & Freezer Digest and, I confess, feel a decidedly un-feminist blush pull towards the 'lifestyle' of the readers..."

To be fair, I'd quite like to live in the world that most of today's magazines portray Not sure they've ever been particularly reflective of real life!

I'd hate to have lived in the seventies. Sounds grim. But then, I grew up in the nineties and some of it sounds much the same. Certainly the powercuts (northern town, shit infrastructure - also frequent water cuts and inexplicable brown water). Also terribly underfunded schools - Izal medicated toilet paper that we got sent off to grab for tracing paper, three or four kids to a textbook, multiple leaks in the ceiling so buckets everywhere, no heating at school in winter when the boiler broke down (so lots of trying to do schoolwork in gloves and a coat), snow-filled streets and no gritters, many men out of work because the local industry was wrecked… things might have improved in other parts of the country but fuck the north.

But our telly worked straight away when you turned it on, so there's that. I came from a wealthy family so some of the deprivation didn't touch me.

No iced vanilla lattes in them days :( but a cup of (gross, instant) coffee was at least very cheap.

Don't know where some of the posters on here lived in the 70s but I didn't know anyone who's house didn't have central heating.

Really? At the start of the 70s we had no central heating, no bathroom (just an outside loo), and that was quite usual. In 1973 we moved into a new house with 'all mod cons' which had central heating and an indoor bathroom but I knew plenty of people who didn't. We also didn't have the central heating on much, and only one bath a week (Sunday evenings) presumably because it was expensive.

I was very much alive in the 70s and I didn't have central heating until I was 30 (in the mid 80s).

But yes it was a great time to be young. I had a blast.

'The Top of the Poppers sing and play Gilbert O Sullivan/Hits from 1974/insert band' ! We had loads of those, all in 70' writing with a long haired girl n platforms and very short hot pants/variation of posing on the front.
My mum had a 1963 mini estate and drove me all over the country in it, including 400 miles to wales and around 250 up to Yorkshire with me in the estate boot. Madness

Some of these things were my experience of growing up in the 60s but certainly by the 1970s we had central heating.

Everyone smoked, the world was a blue fug. At work the man at the next desk to me smoked a pipe. All the time.

1976 was my happiest year ever. Hot summer, Young Farmers and no exam results to worry about. The food was quite boring and choice was limited but now I think it's all too much. There was much less waste and the packaging we use now sends me witless.

It was one of mine, too derxa: First year at uni, in love (with a knobhead but never mind) and waking up every morning just assuming it was going to be warm and sunny

Even the 90's now seems like a time of naive innocence, free of the rampant commercialisation and financialization of just about every aspect of life today.

Our house didn't get central heating until the mid-eighties. I was at university and it was supposed to be a surprise when I got home at Christmas, but an overexcited relative let the cat out of the bag.

How can 1976 be 40 years ago?

Another who, at the start of the 70s lived in a house with a coal fire in the living room and no other form of heating. My mum used to get up first on a morning to lay the fire and I can remember our dog used to sleep on the other side of the wall in the kitchen and press herself against it to get the warmth. In fact, I lived in 2 flats as a student in the late 70s/early 80s without central heating.

Notwithstanding the many negatives about the 70s I'd love to go back to a time when we didn't suffer from technology overload. Just the one house phone, 3 TV channels (and I'd forgotten about no remote controls!), no internet. The excitement of listening to the top 30 on a Sunday and listening to Radio Luxembourg on a tiny crackly radio when I was meant to be revising. The only way to hear your favourite songs was to listen out for them on the radio or hope they were played on TOTP.

I look at my almost grown up dcs and they're always glued to their phones/ flicking tv channels etc. I can remember summer school holidays being long and boring, but by the time I went to uni I had read loads of good literature (Dickens, Hardy, Brontes etc) Doubt I would have done if I'd had the delights of the Internet to distract me!

Anyone remember vesta curries? And clackers (I loved them - 2 balls on strings ...). And Chinese skipping (lots of elastic bands joined together which you did intricate things with). And playing '2 baller' against the wall?

We had a coal fire up until about 1974. We had no immersion heater, you had to adjust the "lum" to divert the fire to heat the water in the tank..very hit and miss and so baths didn't often happen in our house. Our only other form of heat was paraffin heaters which you may as well have stood around a candle, and they were a terrible fire hazard. I remember getting sent out to buy a gallon of paraffin from the "Paraffin Man" who came round on Friday nights...pitch dark, standing there with my pound note and my jerry can at 7 years old.

We got a fridge and a twin tub about 1974 and a phone in 1975 but it was a "party line" which meant if our neighbours were on the phone, we couldn't use it. Nobody would stand for any of that today!

Having said all that - and enjoyable as this thread is - I also think a lot of things are better today.

I have great memories of the 70s but then I'd passed my 11 plus and gone to uni. Plus I was white and straight. Most people weren't that lucky.

I know it was a time of unchecked sexism, racism, homophobia etc., with levels of child abuse that are only now becoming evident

I don't agree the 70s were like this, at least not where I was. I think its a bit of a myth and part of the self-hatred that this country seems to like to engage in at the moment. Like the current squalid search and exaggeration of hate crimes, it is dangerous and divisive, and is a slur on the vastly tolerant people of this country.

But yes, I would go back to the 70s in a heartbeat!!!!!!! Fab ice lollies, Sister Sledge, strange clothes, no make up and a relative innocence.

Vesta curries were the best. I liked the crispy bits.

Captain - I'd forgotten about the party line! And crossed lines - they were amusing!

The house we moved out of in 1970 didn't have a fridge, but it did have a walk in pantry with a marble shelf to keep things cool. I can remember being sent out to the ice cream man just before Sunday lunch with a bowl for him to fill for our pudding. We must have had to eat our lunch - sorry 'dinner' - quickly before it melted!

They literally make him sick.

Pop Sox? Really?

I loved the seventies, especially my space hopper and my Sindy dolls.

Seriously wasonthelist, he HATES them, he goes a funny green colour at the mere mention of them.