Born before 1959? Want to chat about your memories of the 1960s and 1970s?

[SequentialAnalyst]

This is a thread to do just that And to compare, contrast, and discuss our memories of living through those times with MNers around the world, and share good stuff from those days we might have overlooked back in the day

I'm sorry to have to write this: but please No BabyBoomer Blaming or Bashing.

Wherever you come from, whatever your experience, whether you saw the Stones in the Park, or whether you could only listen longingly to Radio Luxembourg on your transistor radio in your bedroom, this is the place for you.

@AcrossthePond55 Could you do a similar para re the range of US experiences?

I don’t remember the 60s but do remember the 70s. I remember the 3 day week, i remember walking myself to school at the age of 5yo as my mum had gone back to work. She was a teacher and had had to leave work when pregnant with my older brother as women with babies/maternity leave wasn’t a thing. But she went back part time when I started school.

i remember as a family being skint. I think the lack of material things/standard of living is probably hard to understand. And with both my parents working (dad was a head of dept teacher) we should have been ok. We only had one car as a family, no way could we afford to run two. Dad had a moped to get to work. Mum needed to drive to work.

Every item of clothing I wore apart from school uniform had been my male cousins, then my brothers, then mine….inc shoes. I seem to remember wearing a lot of corduroy trousers.

food was so dull. And expensive. Dad used to cultivate a batch of yoghurts in the bathroom every weekend became shop yoghurts were too expensive. When I was young I remember going to all the different food shops, grocer, butcher, etc. but I also remember the first supermarket in our city opening, we lived within walking distance and it was like a different world. When I was about 7yo my dad bought a VCR and that was a massive event. Nobody else we knew had one. We had to go by train to a bigger city as nowhere in our city sold one. It cost my dad a month’s wages he said!

i played out with kids from school every afternoon after school and weekends, out for hours. Was made to go to Sunday school and looking back my parents didn’t go to church, think they just wanted rid of us for the morning! 😂. When I was 7yo we moved to the country and again roamed pretty freely. Me and my brother were proper latchkey kids by then and most afternoons I’d walk over a mile across the fields towards the next village and my friend from that village would walk towards me and we’d meet in the middle and play in the woods.

holidays were a week in a cottage every summer. Pretty run down cottages iirc. Nothing was open on a Sunday apart from garden centres. Used to get dragged round those a bit. Our phone number was 3 digits. We got a soda stream to make fizzy drinks which was quite fancy. My mum cooked the same meals on a weekly rotation, so we always knew exactly what we’d have each day of the week. We never ate out, maybe a Little Chef on a long car journey but normally we’d take sandwiches from home.

at secondary school my best friends mum had been obsessed with The Beatles and had seen them quite a bit live. I went away to uni. We had no telephone in my shared uni house but we did have a black and white tv in the sitting room. One of my lecturers had worked for the Beatles, as an assistant I think to Ringo but possibly George. I remember a group of us going back to his house one evening and he showed us his old contracts from Apple. He’s in the footage where they played on the roof of the recording studio. He hated Paul with a passion.

You were lucky. Our phone was for "important messages only" and you weren't allowed to chat in case someone was trying to call with an "important message".

I've just looked at my 1964 school leavers photo. There wasn't a single girl with long hair except for one girl with deeply religious parents who wouldn't let her have it cut! We all wanted to look like Mary Quant or Cilla Black.

I remember that hot summer
we had exams, and as it was so hot the boys were allowed to take their shirts off
one of the girls tied up her school blouse to expose her midriff (people don't seem to do that now I don't think)
and she was told she couldn't because.......
it would put the boys off their important exams !!!!!!!

I'm so glad to see this thread resurrected!

@AnneWhittle Ah, yes. We must not tempt the boys! I remember that when miniskirts were in. Seeing female thighs would turn them all into ravening beasts, don't you know! I can remember wearing micro-minis and having to have a friend stand behind you at HS if you had either a top or bottom row locker because reaching high up or having to crouch down was apt to show more than you wanted to!

@ElizabethanAgain For us in the US it was Twiggy rather than Mary Q or Cilla. She was a wee bit before my time, but I remember my sister going from the early '60s huge bouffant (held up by a can of hairspray) and lipstick to the Twiggy 'pixie' haircut and huge false eyelashes. By the time I hit high school it was all about long, long hair parted in the middle, peasant blouses, head bands, and peace sign jewelry.

And as far as phones go we always had one, phones were commonplace in the US. But I was the envy of all when I got my own private line when I was 14. Not because we were posh, but because my dad worked for the phone company and I turned 14 the year the company began paying our phone bill (perk of the job). Mum & Dad figured I hogged the phone so much it was worth continuing to pay for a phone. I wasn't allowed to make long distance calls on my phone though, I had to use the 'house phone' because the company also paid for that. Thank you, Pacific Bell!

Why did he hate Paul?

Can’t remember the details but he always said it was Paul’s fault that the Beatles split.

Which of you watch Get Back is clearly completely untrue.

Born in 55, so many memories

Freezing cold house, with ice on the inside of the windows, no carpets on the floors, one gas fire and two fireside chairs. I have no idea where we sat as children. The copper in the kitchen providing hot water, an old fashioned kitchen cupboard (no built in units then) and a pantry, but luxury, upon luxury a fridge.

Being visited by the health authorities when we got scarlet fever and having all our very few toys and books taken away to be burnt because of the infection risk

Having doctors come to the house when you were ill.

Visiting butcher dentists, who pulled out teeth willy, nilly. No fluoride treatments then and no orthodontists. We have just had to live with our overfilled ugly crooked teeth.

Out fair share of childhood illnesses, Measles, Scarlett fever, Chicken Pox, Rubella (twice) and the biggie Whooping Cough. What a difference vaccines have made.

Walking to school alone (in a very built up area) from the age of 5. Learning to swim at the local baths and literally just being thrown in and told to paddle.

Visiting grandparents on the south coast and driving across Salisbury Plain. Just stopping the car and going to play on the stones at Stonehenge.

Being allowed to walk to the beach alone at the age of 5. Bringing back starfish and crabs in a metal bucket riding alone on the cliff railway.

Tuttifrutti ice creams.

The winter of 63. Being stuck away from home and when my Dad eventually battled through all the pipes in the house had frozen.

Travelling 10 miles to senior school by normal bus, changing in the local town. Chatting up the boys from the ‘Grammar’ and constantly having my ‘Boater’ stolen. Frequent detentions for not wearing said Boater.

First Saturday job at 13, washing nitty hair for 10 bob a day. 2nd Saturday job at the brand new Sainsburys for 17/6 a weekend.

Repricing the sugar stack and baked bean shelf on DDay.

Total freedom as a teenager. Went where we wanted with whoever we chose. The only rules were that homework must be done on time, a decent school report was a must and you mustn’t get pregnant.

As birth control required a visit to the Family Planning clinic and a ring on your finger, the last rule was relatively easy to obey. With a few scary encounters!!

Leaving school at 17 and leaving home the same day.

Walking straight into a Civil Service job at half the rate of pay as a man and being subjected to both blatant sexism and ageism from day 1. That was aside from the casual sexual inuendos and patted bottoms doled out daily by my first Manager.

Married at 18, pregnant at 19. First mortgage at 20. Still no heat, carpets or furniture. Still freezing cold.

No car until late 20”s. We walked a lot and stayed slim.

No furniture either until you had saved for it. HP was far too scary when you barely had enough to pay the mortgage and eat.

Returning to education in my mid 20’s having twigged that the only person I could rely on to feed us, was me. Struggling to hold down a job, care for my DD and study for an OU degree.

No financial help of any kind from my parents. Never dreamt of asking and definitely wouldn’t have taken it from them if offered. There was a constant memory of all that generation had gone through. Both evacuated during the war, both witnessing friend killed in the bombing and both struggling to put a roof over our heads and feed us. It broke my heart when they died, that despite my father having a professional career all the savings they had to their name (apart from their house) was £20k and some inherited War Loan stocks. I have often wondered how they would have coped with retirement if they hadn’t died in their early 70’s.

Would I swap all of that for the lives my DGC live today. No way. Our lives might have been harder at a very basic level but I would hate to have to deal with all the issues they experience today, especially social media, educational changes and the economic issues they face as they reach adulthood. I also fear for them enormously in relation to climate change and feel ashamed that our generation didn’t step up and do more to change that scenario.

@SequentialAnalyst we have resurrected your thread to add more memories. The perfect way to spend a wet Sunday morning.

I was born in 1953 and dropped out of school halfway through my A levels because I’d had enough of the convent. Lived with my boyfriend in glamorous Reading for a while, saved up some money and took off. We got into the habit of spending winters in Morocco and summers in the UK or Amsterdam, saving up to go back. (At one point, my boyfriend, a good mechanic, was offered a half share in a vehicle repair business by the Moroccan owner, our landlord, whose sons were not interested. I sometimes wonder what might have happened had he accepted.) Jobs everywhere were easy to come by and living was cheap, especially if you found a well-run squat - “cracked houses” were a big political thing in the Netherlands, sanctioned and sometimes subsidised by government. We hitch-hiked everywhere and sometimes ended up staying for a while with people who picked us up. (Only once was this an uncomfortable experience.) I got my passport stolen once and travelled through France using my NHS card for ID. Through the early to mid 70s, Europe was full of Americans evading the draft, and, sadly, some of those had endured awful experiences in Vietnam. We had two of these stay with us for a couple of months in Morocco - they were the sweetest and gentlest guys you can imagine.
An enduring memory is hitchhiking back North in April one year. We got a random ride overnight to Grenada in a lorry and our driver stopped off at a cafe just outside and above the city for the traditional morning double espresso and double brandy. We climbed down from the lorry and stood on the verge, looking down on Grenada at sunrise with the wind blowing the smell of snow from the Sierra Nevada towards us. Someone put My Sweet Lord on the jukebox. It was sublime.

Edited to add that now I see it’s an old thread I wonder if I contributed before!

That’s was an amazing read!

Dunno, never watched it. I’m not into the Beatles at all. All I will say is that I’d guess in any documentary type thing they will present what they want presented. My lecturer thought Paul wasn’t a nice person at all. He lived and travelled with them for years so guess he saw a lot.