Growing up in the 70's

[morethanpotatoprints]

I bet there's been one of these before but who remembers stuff about the 70's, looking back to me it was all a bit weird.

So some of my memories.

Mary Mungo and midge, the music in the lift. my orange space hopper, gridsy marbles and clackers.
Dehydrated potato, free milk you had to drink at school.
Playing out from after breakfast until dark or tea.

I remember only having orange juice as a very special treat, and when we did have it, it came in glass jars with a screw top and was really really sharp tasting.

Also remember our first washing machine in 1978 - we put it on and sat in front of it as a family, totally captivated. We didn't even have a twin tub back then, my mother used to wash all our clothes in the bath.

Does anywhere else remember daylight being "different" to what it is now? I remember sunny days literally being hazy (maybe pollution?) but all my friends think I'm making it up. Don't think I am

Ha, here is the doll, vintage 70's

Dancergirl - that's the one! Although I also had a bath for her that had a working shower (proud emoticon).

I washed her hair with Fairy Liquid and it was never the same again

I had a Sweet April doll. And a Carrie. Also a Sindy but only random bits of her equipment like a horse a bed and sideboard but no actual house.

Chilblains

Brownies

Watching Kojak with my dad and pleading for peanuts from his bag of KP

I used to put my Fruit Gums on top of the electric heater to make them less hard

Lots and lots of fillings. As an adult I haven't got a filling in my head. Did dentists get a kick back for every filling?

If you went to a party you just got a bit of cake.

But sometimes you got a plastic thing with some wool. You had to d some sort of weaving and you'd get a long tail of twisted woven wool. WTF was that all about.

Papier mâché was HUGE round our way.

The Blue Peter Christmas lantern that was a tinsel covered pair of wire hangers with actual candles.

I was a massive Sindy fan, although this was probably early 80s.

I had the big house which was my pride and joy. Collected lots of furniture over the years. Mum used to take me to Fenwicks in Brent Cross, they had a fab toy department with a whole wall devoted to Sindy.

Magpie was the ITV rival to Blue Peter.

One for sorrow, two for joy,
Three for a girl and four for a boy,
Five for silver, six for gold,
Seven for a secret never to be tooooold,
Maaaaaaaagpiiiiieee!

But people who watched Magpie instead of Blue Peter were terribly common

this thread makes me nostalgiac and i wasnt even around in 70s! it sounds fun

i know its often said and it may be bullshit but, to me, things were simpler then. if you were skint you were skint and had nothing just like your neighbours and friends most likely. now if youre skint then you look to your neighbour with their fancy clothes and car but riddled with debt and you are silently encouraged to do the same. go to brighthouse for furniture and catalogues for new clothes. then have that horrible debt hang over you

Lets, yes, I had a schoolfriend who told us very smugly that her family didn't watch ITV because it was common. More fool them!

Lump, yes, far less debt. Lots of people were paid in cash, having a bank account was less common, credit cards weren't so easy to get, mortgages were very strictly controlled. You had to save up the deposit over at least two years with the building society you intended to apply to, and then submit full details of your income. The amount you could borrow was limited to a maximum of three times your salary, I think. For married couples it would be three times the higher income (almost certainly the husband's) and once the lower one, or possibly 2.5 times the joint income. I think there was, however, plentiful use of hire purchase to buy furniture, catalogue shopping to spread the cost of buying clothes, overdrafts (for those who had a bank account) and no doubt loan sharks were just as predatory as they are now.

We didn't watch itv at all, my mum thought it was common I desperately wanted to watch stuff like Magpie, Tizwaz etc.

Being a wrinkly I started my first job at 19 in 1974. This was all pre digital and I had one of the first golfball typewriters. Photocopiers were not common so I used a mimeograph stencil machine for copies. I used to walk across the road with a bread tray full of punch cards to the computer "house"; feed the cards into the machine then wait 3 days for the print out to appear.

I remember wearing a lot of bright yellow with huge collars on my shirts. I flat shared with 5 other girls (one of whom was a Bond girl - Octopussy) and Blue Nun seemed to feature a lot! As for Aqua Manda, I loved that stuff. Wish they still made it!

The only orange juice we had was concentrate bought from the freezer in a sort of tube and then diluted with water. None of my friends' parents had it, I think my mum thought she was quite posh!

When the ice cream van came at my grandmas they had teddy bear shaped lollies. Never saw them elsewhere. Sometimes they were made of milky raspberry ice, they were the favourites! And screwballs with bubblegum at the bottom.

Lime flavoured angel delight, yum.

lidlangel that was Sunquik. I used to love just tasting the concentrate.

Telephone locks.
Trim Phones

My pal's dad put a lock on their phone to cut the bill down. She got round it by tapping out the number using the plastic the receiver sat on. I tried it too, it worked!

I had Carrie and Christopher dolls. They were anatomically correct. I also had Tiny Tears and Sweet April. I didn't ever get a Sindy, and didn't want a Barbie but I did get two Dusty dolls. They were air hostesses.

I remember roaming the woods and fields or going to the beach all day long in the school holidays. Without phones or even a watch between us, we must've gone home when we were hungry. If we played out on the street mum's would stand outside calling your name

I had the small Sweet April with the swing and also the large on with the button on her back that made her arms move.

I slightly melted my Girl's World after I put her wet hair in curlers and placed her too close to the coal fire for her hair to dry/set. She was fine to keep using though.

As someone else mentioned, Sundays were so boring! Nothing was open, it was a long and depressing day. I actually looked forward to school the next day to have something to do.

..when it was time to come in!

Sunday afternoon/evening was for taping the top 40.

My school uniform was brown and orange!

No one really went out for meals, on the very rare occasion you went to a Berni Inn where you could have a glass of orange juice as a starter. Main course would be steak or scampi and chips. No one had nut allergies and and individual frozen cheese and tomato pizza from Sainsburys was really exotic.
Anyone remember dealy boppers? The where balls attached to springs that you wore on a headband for some weird reason

Loons
Petrol blues for ska heads
Starsky and Hutch cardis
The summer when American soul hit the UK ( Detroit Emeralds etc)
Ladybird infestations of 1976
No tv after 10.30pm as Edward Heath wanted to know "who runs the country". Well it wasn't you matey.
I want to teach the world to sing
The George Best saga
When Althea and Donna were on TOTP we knew reggae was now mainstream.
Queen and esp when Bohemian Rhapsody had everyone asking WTF?