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!!

An egg in my mothers prepubescent womb.

I was loving Debbie Harry, Kate Bush and Siouxie Soux as well as loads of rock bands and spent a lot of time going to gigs at Hammersmith Odeon. There wasn't much to do socially as I was only 16/17 in late 70s so there was cinema and sneaking into pubs to watch bands as they never asked for Id or kicked us out unless we acted stupid or tried to get drunk.

I also wandered about in a smelly afghan coat with no shoes a fair bit. This tended to mean I always got a seat to myself on the bus. Oh, we also spent a fair bit of time hiding and running away from skinhead gangs.

Forgotten about skinheads! Our local girl skinheads very scary. What was the name of those shiny 2 tone jackets and skirts they wore?

I straddled childhood and teenage years in the course of the 70s, finished up at age 16.

I agree with a lot of what TheSandman says.

However, design-wise the 70s were incredible. I didn't appreciate the look of the decade enough while living through it all.

I loved the music - Irish radio of the 70s (and 80s) was great. We got BBC 1 and 2, ITV and Channel 4 as well as RTE in Dublin, so a flavour of more than one culture. Also loved music of the 80s.

There was a sense of things changing in a fundamental way, at least in Ireland.

Radio Caroline and Radio Luxembourg

Being born (mid 70s)

I was born in 1967 and remember wearing a pair of purple and red flared trousers when I was about 7. I absolutely loved them. I shared a bedroom with my sister who was 2 years older and we had a massive poster of Donny Osmond on the wall which I would kiss every night.
Half day closing on Wednesdays.
The bread strike- having to queue with my mom for ages at the bakers for a loaf of bread.
Power cuts were common- we'd often end up eating our dinner by candlelight.

Eating dinner by candlelight!!

My Mum getting hold of cheap paint and the entire downstairs being Aubergine.

Drinking cow and gate and pooing myself 😂. Born late 70's.

@Knittingnanny

Forgotten about skinheads! Our local girl skinheads very scary. What was the name of those shiny 2 tone jackets and skirts they wore?

Harrington jackets? Also Crombie coats with the hanky in the pocket. And Ben Sherman shirts.

A few of the things I remember:
-School with no school uniform- and for some reason a child in my class who periodically brought a pre-school aged sibling with him because his mum was not in

• Long party dresses in man made fibres
• All kids birthday parties were at home (or occasionally a village hall) with home made cake (butter icing-none of this crappy fondant stuff), party games, jelly and icecream (or blancmange if it was a bit posh)
• Ashtrays everywhere, even in the rare few houses where no one smoked
• Dad getting an estate car and being very excited at how many of our friends we could get in it (crammed in to the boot/5 on the back seat etc)

Painting my bedroom walls dark purple.
Wearing burgundy mascara.
Everyone wearing Charlie perfume.
Going to the cinema every Saturday and never seeing the film - the back row was the only place my boyfriend and I could snog in peace

I wasnt born yet so a star in the sky but I had a dream I went back in time to the 70's if that counts. Cadburys chocolate was ina white wrapper and tasted alot nicer. I often wish I could visit thay decade as it sounds like an awesome time!

@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

Elton John (and some other famous musos) played on those "Top Of the Pops" and similar LPs.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_of_the_Pops_(record_series)

Happy carefree days and hot summers!

wishing i had straight hair.
freedom, freedom to do the stupidest unsafest things imaginable.
trying to be cool and grown up, thinking i knew everything.
zero parenting.

With hindsight, it was a great time to be a teen.

Smitty Did It perfume, hovering around the Boots' beauty counters on a Saturday afternoon, recording Tom Brown's Top 40 on a Sunday and fast forwarding the DJ speaking and news breaks, watching TOTP at a pal's house on a Thursday with a yay or a nay when the charts were announced, feather cut at the start of the decade, shaggy perm at the end.

Much more freedom. Fewer cars so walked everywhere. I babysat for pocket money from my first year at high school (11/12 year old!). Loads of after school activities.

I do also remember the power cuts, strikes and money being short and not having bread or sugar but, as a teen, that wasn't a worry to me.

Dancing.

Every weekend at some disco or other, either local (ish) or at a posh club in London that was taken over by the Singles' group I belonged to.

Fab music - disco, soul, funk.

There's so much more. But that's what I look back on with the fondest memories.

I was a teen. Spent most of the 70's riding horses (free from the local stables due to mucking out stables and taking holiday makers out on a hack and running pony rides on the beach), babysitting and working in the corner shop for money.
I remember being quite worried life would never be good, no chance to succeed and being quite depressed for a while there.
Money was tight, Mum worked three jobs and pulled in enough to pay rent on our council house. We no longer had holidays abroad like we had in the 60's when we were more affluent.

Being a kid - born in 1970 so the seventies was definitely my childhood.

Wearing long bib dresses, quite often made by mum from cloth kits. The Muppets. My dad wearing flares (He still wore them in the 1980's much to my teenage chagrin) and having massive sideburns. Mum and dad driving absolute bangers and no seatbelts, so me and my brother fighting and rolling about the backseat. Dad often used to let us stand up through the sun roof on fairly busy roads!! Very simple seaside holidays.

lovely memories.

And yes the summer of 1976 - spent the entire summer in thin cotton dresses and flip flops hanging off the metal climbing frame in out back garden, along with all the kids from the street - we were considered very cool for having a rather crappy steel tubular (typical 1970's) climbing frame!

I was a child. I remember cold winters without central heating and icicles. I remember playing outside without parents hovering. I remember totps and the muppet show. I loved elvis Costello & Ian Dury & the smell of hash. I loved being an only child until 79 when the other one appeared:(

My Dutch relatives would visit in groups of twenty. Everyone would just bunk up where they were put.
Old ladies had beds but everyone else was always too pissed to care and the kids loved it. Blankets and mattresses everywhere it was like soft play.
Everyone just enjoyed seeing each other for ten days.
Good times.

Dutch cousins starting my lifelong love of hash