To ask what you were doing in the 70s?

[PossiblyPattio]

I feel like having a nostalgia moment. I was a teenager in the 70s and I remember wanting to be like Patti Smith, I idolized her much to my mums disapproval... I was Patti and my friend was Stevie!!
Looking back I was quite cool!!
Any mumsnetters who were teenagers in the 70s? What did you enjoy doing? Who did you want to be? I'm looking back and I miss it so much!!

Christmas singles - didn’t they pretty much all come from the 70s?
Youth club Saturday nights, followed by ice cream floats or chips on the way home.
Arthur Scargill
School discos, party snogs ...

70s Christmases were the best

I was born in 1978 so don’t remember much. Looks and sounds like it would have been an amazing time to be a young adult, but I am glad to have had marriage and kids recently. My marriage turned out to be very abusive, and I am glad to have the modern protection we have. It’s very far from perfect, but my choices in the 1970s would have had far worse consequences for me.

I love the 70s!!!! Love Patti Smith, I’ve been to one of her gigs on my own coz I just needed to go... love Stevie too. Unfortunately during the 70s I was an egg inside my mum’s wherever the eggs live 🤷🏻‍♀️

Persuading my Mum to let me wear hot pants.
Snogging my first boyfriend in a youth club while Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves was playing.
Being jealous of my friend’s Afghan coat, even though it hadn’t been cured properly and stank to high heaven.
Getting a Dansette record player for Christmas but being secretly disappointed it wasn’t a stereo.
Getting a stereo a couple of years later. Bought from Boots. With a ‘smoked glass’ lid.
Drinking Whisky Mac
Going to Rock Against Racism gigs and Demos.

Slightly different, not UK, but long hot summers, camping, my parents taking us to the swimming lakes with picnics, going to the outdoor swimming pool with a picnic with friends.
Visits to the ice cream parlor where you agonised over the flavours while my mum sipped her coffee.
Probably driving my parents mad with my bay city rollers albums.
Christmas was great, wondering if you were going to get what you asked for and finding that you had before helping my mum to prepare the family meal, which was attended by both sets of grandparents.
Christmas day itself spent visiting other relatives. Wonderful. I loved it.
Music and fashion .... ankle snapping platforms anyone? 😱 Flared jeans with frayed hems, the wider the better 🤭
No mobiles or internet. You either made arrangements when you were with that person to meet again or you phoned them on the house phone, which was attached to the wall while your dad pointedly looked at his watch.
I loved it.

I was born in 1967, I gave so many fond memories of the 70's, such a fabulous time to be a kid. Playing out, the fashions, the music. Cheese cloths and gypsy skirts, hot pants and platform shoes.

Big decade for me as most of my childhood (6-16)
Platform shoes and stripy socks with wide leg trousers
Donny osmond - David Cassidy and the bay city rollers
Later punk, Bowie, Lou Reed, iggy pop, heavy metal
Whilst wearing Indian print and an Afghan coat until I discovered punk and Vivienne Westwood

Oh and Patti Smiths Wing is one of the best songs ever written.

Wearing loons and cheesecloth. Walking barefoot can't remember why now. Listening to Pink Floyd and David Bowie. Everyone deciding they were bisexual because of DB so snogging everyone in our friendship group boys and girls

O levels in 74, A levels in 76, graduated 79.
Richard shops with a Biba concession, Bus Stop, and I always hankered after a Gina Frstini dress. Never got one, but did wear much Laura Ashley. I remember the excitement when a Body Shop at last opened in town. I had a Saturday job at Peter Lord shoe shop...
Music - my first live concert, Lindisfarne at the Theatre Royal. I was also a fan of Wishbone Ash and saw Ralph McTell and Tom Paxton several times.
Food was plain and simple. No takeaways bar occasional fish and chips. It was ham and salad, a lump of cheddar, some fruit cake and a roast on Sundays.

Tie-dyeing my jeans and fraying the hems.
Getting into a hot bath with jeans on to shrink them.
Going on a school trip and the coach broke down, so had to call my parents from a phone box to tell them we’d be late back - hadn’t any money left so called the operator to reverse charges.
Getting prickly heat sunbathing in our back garden in ‘76.
Cheesecloth tops and long, bohemian skirts. Flimsy Indian silk scarves.
Joss sticks everywhere. Patchouli, musk.
Oxygène by Jean-Michel Jarre, a futuristic sound.
I loved the 70s.

I had a boyfriend who wore higher platform shoes than me

Oh all of this! I was a teenager, student and new teacher in the seventies. I loved it all, can remember where I was whenever I hear a song.
Meeting in town under the clock, going to the telephone box to call your friends, homework by candlelight, Friday night youth club and taking your new 45 to be played.
Going to the market Saturday to buy a piece of fabric, machining a maxi skirt and wearing it out that night.
Putting your name down at 14 to be a Boots Saturday girl.
Dropped off at university in a strange city with a suitcase, a cheque book, kettle, violin and just being left to get on with it!
Cheesecloth!!!! I had a 24” waist which was a size 12 in the 70’s and loved my cheesecloth top tied at the front and a wrap around Indian skirt.
Such random memories! I wonder if we remember certain times of our lives differently though? My 80’s were a blur of babies, no money, abusive husband, no wonder I look back at the 70’s with such fondness!
Loved being a mum with little ones I should hasten to add! But those 70’s! Going to the cinema to see Saturday Night Fever, I can still remember how exciting it was.
Thanks for the thread, I was feeling down today ( rain, not seeing overseas children, broken boiler etc) but now I’m smiling and humming “gypsies, tramps and thieves” and thinking about my first boyfriend and the excitement of getting the bus into town to meet him under the clock.

Fleetwood Mac "Rumours" album coming out and playing it to death.
A summer job with the Civil Service, typing the dole giros.

Pvc platform boots, Granny Shoes, Jesus sandals, pvc clothes, college jumpers, oxford bags (trousers), nylon school shirts, nylon bedding. Bay City Rollers, Rod Stewart, Leo Sayer, The Osmonds, Dr Hook, Sweet, Mud. Heatwave of 76, hosepipe bans, miners strike, power cuts, ice inside windows, corporal punishment in school. Getting our first microwave oven, first colour TV, getting a phone installed. Wood panelling everywhere.

TV adverts -
Stevie B perfume
(ANY lentheric perfume “gonna be an Aviance night”)
Nivea “that ain’t no way to treat a lady - oooh nivea”
Show them you’re a slimcea girl
Nimble balloon

Vesta curry kits

WH Smith “Win A Pony” competition

Espadrilles!

Not existing

The Osmonds, David Cassidy, David Essex, Bay City Rollers
John Travolta, Saturday Night Fever and Grease,
Disco, lights and smoke machine
Midi skirts, wide leg trousers platform shoes
Punk, The stranglers, Blondie (saw her live at the local music club just before they got famous, the coolest women I had ever seen)
The smell of smoke on my clothes the morning after a good night out even though I was a non-smoker, it was impossible to go anywhere without being surrounded by smoke.
From age 14 being the one who got sent to the bar to buy the drinks as I was the tallest of my friends, never got challenged.

At the beginning of the 70s I was still at school; by the end I was married with 2 kids. Having left school, had a job, done my nurse training, visited many night clubs, met and married exh (1976), become a RSCN. DC1 born 1977 and DC2 born 1978.

Still love the music and can remember many days from each year (which is why I feel so much sympathy for what today's kids are missing). I wish I had kept some of the clothes, especially my psychedelic flares (30" [135cm] round the bottom, with huge orchid/lily flowers in neon green pink and orange).

So young and so stupid but what an amazing time to be a teen.

(I had my second teen years after I split from ex. '86 to '89 were even more fun)

oh, drinking Black Russians and feeling very sophisticated. (End of the decade)

@Ahwig

I was listening to music and buying a top of the hits record which had all of the hits on it but sung by other people and cost about 80p. Learning the words to the songs from smash hits and before that disco 45 magazine. I was dressed in Socks with individual toes, cheesecloth smock, Applecore on a necklace ( god knows why) and of course an ID bracelet

The records of other people singing hits was the KTel records. I had a few.

I loved Disco 45 magazines. The rough paper and the ads in the back for slogan t-shirts and purple loons.

I had the applecore on a necklace too.

I was in the Beano club and had a Gnasher badge that I was very proud of.

I travelled everywhere lying on the parcel shelf in the back of my Dad's brown cortina.

The staffroom at school was just a haze of smoke whenever the door opened.

@AmandaHoldensLips the adverts were so funny! “Richards shops are filled with all the pretty things, soft and lovely pretty things to wear, hey there pretty girl, make the world a prettier place, come buy your clothes at Richards shops”. Our poor Mums, they didn’t stand a chance.

[quote PossiblyPattio]@Ahwig Ah, the cheesecloth!! Cheesecloth everywhere!! [/quote]
I adored cheesecloth, still do, I managed to buy a few pieces in India a few years back. A cheesecloth midi-length skirt is the best thing ever when it's very warm, the floatiness creates its own air-conditioning.