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!!

We had local play schemes that were free.
Every kind of dangerous activity using dangerous equipment, every year an accident...
We fucking LOVED it especially hurtling down grass embankment on a plastic tray on to the dual carriageway it was a badge of honour to have a pot from the scheme.

Going to school.
Playing a couple of musical instruments and doing well in competitions. Singing in several choirs.
Taking 'O' then 'A' levels. Working in M&S as a Saturday girl to pay for my driving lessons. Passing my driving test.
Au-pairing abroad for a year.
Going to university and then 1979 - 1980 doing my year abroad in France and Germany.
So nothing terribly exciting or out of the ordinary.

Travelling in the boot of the car, going to the beach, woods unsupervised, raw sewage pouring into the sea from huge pipes, building dens, proper markets where you could get everything, cattle markets & butter markets. Tesco clothes shop where you could get the longest socks ever
Peach perfume from Avon, crossroads on the TV. Snow White horses, folly foot farm and the monkeys on Saturday morning TV. Going to the cinema on the occasional Saturday and chucking your hubbabubba at someone's head
Stink bombs sold in little glass bottles
Parks that had a maze of cement tubes the climb through

Clothkits smocks, the huge Kays catalogues at Christmas, no seatbelts, bright yellow lemonade, sparklers on Bonfire Night, Neapolitans and metal tins of Quality Street at Christmas, Smash, Vegetable Rice & Birds Eye Potato Waffles (they're waffly versatile, don't you know), plastic bobbles, Ballet Tap & Modern classes, everyone smoking everywhere, apple shampoo.

I’m a bit younger, born in 1971, but most of these resonate. This thread could be used as a new version of this....

All the Men!
Pop Man
Coal man
Bread man
Fish man
Provi man
There was always something everyday.

I still maintain Alpine Dandelion and burdock the best fizzy pop EVER!

Going to the skatepark on a Friday night for the roller disco, playing street cricket, Saturday morning cinema (flash Gordon) Fred Perry shirts, stay pressed trousers and waffle stitch cardigans (all the boys were wearing them).
The stranglers, status quo, Levi's and braces.
Opal fruits, tootie frooties, savoury vinegar crisps, rainbow sherbet and sherbet pips. Buying scraps from the local chippy for tuppence ha'penny. Bazooka bubblegum (with the lick and stick tattoo and comic strip cartoon)
Playing out until it got dark, Sunday School and brownies. Duffle coats and satchels

Corona fizzy pop from the milkman, running out of coal the day before the coalman delivered a new load ( I used to wonder what he actually looked like but I only ever saw him covered in coal dust) parrafin heaters in the bedrooms.

@1DoesNotSimplyWalkIntoMordor I still have coal and can confirm nothing has changed he's still jet black from the dust and only speaks coal!

@TheQueef

Cheesecloth wrap around skirts that soaked up rainwater like a sponge!

I had a guitar and wanted to be Joan Baez or Joni Mitchell!

I will never forget the sound of the coal bunker lid being lifted and pushed back onto the wall and the noise of the coal as he emptied the bags nor the the stomp of his boots as he tried to get the coal dust off before walking back through the house, we would have at least 10 bags of coal delivered, it all seemed quite scary really.

I hated our bunked, my brothers in their hilariously funny jokes would either lock me in or throw something Lamby in it.
When I moved back to this ex miner cottage the first thing I did was remove the concrete and ballast bunker with it's rusty lids.

I was with Father Christmas .. that’s where my dd says she was before she was born , no idea why ! I wasn’t born till 82

3 day week... Rubbish in the street. Rubbish piles in the street.

Multi coloured swap shop... Newsround... Hector's house, Mary mungo and midge,

Summer of 76...heat wave, cheesecloth shirts.

ABBA, playing French skipping, slade...

Polyester... Everywhere!

No seatbelts in cars, and the red vinyl seats in my mum's Cortina that got really hot and stuck to your legs in the endless summer days of 1976.
Going off to play for hours on end on the moors or down by the river. Finding crayfish lurking under stones in said river.
Going to see bands in Leeds and Bradford, punk, metal, all sorts.
Visiting London during the winter of discontent and seeing Leicester Square piles high with rubbish.
Green Goddess fire engines, and cheering the fire fighters who were outside the fire station during their strike.
Feeling as if anything was possible and the world was at my feet.

@TheQueef ours was a galvanized metal bunker with a huge lid and a small door on the front that you pulled up (kind of like a portcullis) so that you could shovel the coal into the coal scuttle.

Oh I LOVED swap shop! Up early every Saturday to watch all the way through! Then went to the shop for a 5p mix.

Holly Hobbie
ABBA
Feather haircuts
Listen with Mother
Chigley Trumpton Camberwick Green

Second half of 70s
Falmer jeans
Cut off collar grandad shirts
Punk
Mum cooking Rose Elliott lentils and bean meals

Hoping we could get fed and candles ready for when the electric was turned off.
Strikes and riots.

Falmers jeans and Apple shampoo... oh yes!
Panache perfume ..
Anne French cleanser.

O levels in 1972, A levels in '74, University until 1977, then London with a flat share until I married in 1979, just in time to move to NYC for the 1980s. All the other things mentioned above along the way, set to awesome music.

But also the oil shock recession, the advent of massive terrorist attacks, from the IRA and Bader-Meinhof outrages, to the Munich Olympic carnage, the winter of discontent, unemployment figures that rose relentlessly, endless strikes so power cuts and full bins everywhere. Never a dull moment really.

@Runningdownthathill

Falmers jeans and Apple shampoo... oh yes! Panache perfume .. Anne French cleanser.

Remember the strip adverts for Anne French cleansing milk (which I think you can still get) and Immac in Jackie Magazine - they were hilarious.

I started my first job in 1972 at a large supermarket in London. Sugar shortage, toilet roll shortage, salt shortage. 3 day week, powercuts, winter of discontent, bomb threats from the IRA. In the pubs, Dr Feelgood, Ian Dury, Brinsley Schwarz, crap food. In the bigger venues The Who, Deep Purple, Rory Gallagher. The summer of 76. A cracking decade.