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 used to represent my county in the 100 metres and won every time in my little black elastic plimsolls. I lost for the first time in years in 1979 when trainers came in and mum bought me a pair. I went back to plimsolls and won every race.

I found a pair of black plimsolls in a discount score a few years ago and managed a pretty good 11.9 seconds.

I love plimsolls.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:School_plimsolls.jpg These ones.

morethanpotatoprintsThu 13-Feb-14 14:40:59

When was Juliet Bravo, that was a great change to all the macho Police programmes we had seen. I'm sure it was 70's.

Think it was early 80s. Another breath of fresh air was The Gentle Touch.

I had a pogo stick. Vaguely recall bill and ben the flower pot men! Oh and paisley print.
I joined the Bazooka Joe club and thought I would make a great spy. Loved rainbow drops, coconut mushrooms, sweet tobacco - yes tobacco!
I can remember decimalisation day! Going to the shops with my brothers and buying a huge bag of sweets before the currency disappeared.
ADVERTS - remember 'For Mash get Smash' with those funny looking robots. I can sing the Martini ad (sad) and remember seeing a woman wearing a floaty dress provocatively eating a flake.

Oh yes, decimalisation.

The little old ladies trying to work out their money, I didn't understand why they were confused as only young then.
The comments were "which coin is 10 bob?" and what was equivalent to 5 shillings etc.
Poor old dears.

I was born in 1965 so should remember decimalisation, but don't. A financial ignorance which has remained with me ever since.

Has anyone mention The Lost Islands? Sunday morning and I can even remember the theme tune:

So Tony, Mark and David, Anna and Su-Lin
Are left here on an island, who knows what could begin?
Adventure lies before them, danger lies behind
And as they go on searching what new troubles will they f iii iiii iii nd.

Bomb scares - my sister had a M&S Saturday job and plastic macs were standard issue in case they had to vacate the building while it was raining.

Being off sick from school, munching doorstep slices of toast my Nan gave me from under the covers of the bed and when the doorbell rang she would screech: "AAAAAGH!! School Board Man!!! Hide!!!" Who on earth was the School Board Man anyway? The very idea of him used to put the fear of God into me.

Several price stickers on food, which as you peeled them off revealed what you might have paid. Should you have bought it a year earlier.

Opening a box of chocolates all excited to reveal they all had a 'bloom' on them. Because they should have been bought a year earlier ....

Teachers who knew nothing about human rights - primary school netball game in central London on a hot day where none of us were allowed to drink from the fountain because the coach was waiting to take us back to school. Not one slurp. And those nuns. They'd never get away with stuff like that in a primary school today!

Katie. Katie Copycat. She can write the same and draw the same as you!

Only she couldn't.

I remember decimalisation- very exciting- also watching Daktari on a Saturday with Clarence the Cross Eyed Lion.

The Brotherhood of Man. Save All Your Kisses for me was the first single I ever bought. And now someone's going to come on and tell me it was actually released in 1982 .....

I'm glad to read I wasn't the only one who bathed once a week. The reason we don't remember anyone smelling is because we all smelled the same! Or so I am given to understand .....

Any body remember "bags" I think they were a type of trouser, baggy top and bottom ?
I had a pair of two tone flares, and thought I was really cool.
Anyone remember " French skipping" , a piece of elastic, two people stood either end and one jumped in and out. Used to go " in , out, in out,on out twist and jump. You started at the ankle, then went to the knees, you could go upto waisties" .
I remember I used to play this all day long, as well as skipping, British Bull dog, and of course " cops and robbers " on our bikes.
Rainbow sherbet , sherbet fountain, and sherbet dibs dabs. Oh those were the days.

Oh yes, Oxford Bag trousers. We used to wear them for school discos.

And olive green. Don't forget the olive green.

I was 18 at the start of the 70s, single but " courting " as we used to say back in the day. Come 1980 I was married, two children and a third on the horizon. That was definitely what I call growing up in the 70s !
So here's my happy 70s memories :-
petrol at under £1 a gallon
my first new company car - a Morris Marina 1.3 DeLuxe in Brooklands Green with Sorrell trim. Utter bag of shte.
No elfnsafety
No political correctness
Bernard Manning on " The Comedians " making everyone laugh and no-one complaining
trade unions with muscle - before Thatcherscum emasculated them
jobs for all - take your pick - no special qualifications needed, no 10-page application forms, no psychometric testing just to get a job in Poundland.
If the boss liked the cut of your jib, you got the job.
no housing shortage - my wife-to-be and I went for a mortgage and walked out 10 mins later with an offer.
No social unrest because of excessive immigration.
the EU ( then EEC ) was just there for trade and NOT to take over our lives.
The Sweeney. Best cop show EVER.
becoming a dad.
Led Zeppelin at the start of the decade, punk at the end of it.
The Professionals - great at the time but curiously dated and almost embarrassing to watch whereas The Sweeney has achieved classic and cult status.
6 cans of Stella Artois for £2
getting pssed at sales meetings held in pubs and no-one even aware that driving home was both stupid and dangerous. It's just the way it was in those days.
Texan bars - my eldest lad loved them. As a boy he got 50p pocket money on a Friday and we went to the corner shop and he bought a Texan and a Matchbox car with his 50p.
Nutty bars - lovely chewy toffee smothered in peanuts
Terry's 1776 chocolate assortment
Water rates - £4 a year. If my salary had risen as much as my water bill, I'd be earning over £100,000 pa.
Council tax - £25 a year. ditto - only £60,000 pa.

I'll have to stop here or I'll be going on all day.
The 70s - definitely the best decade of my life - and my wife and I, married over 40 yrs now, still enjoy watching The Sweeney !!

Darning my dad's socks..

Does anyone remember 'jublies'...massive triangular lumps of frozen ice that came in two flavours.: Orange and a red 'fire water' flavour? Ice poles that were about a foot long, heart ice creams and the very first birds eye mousses that came in a little rectangular waxed paper packet? They were only around a short time then out came the first 'pot' type ones with a really strong strawberry sauce...
Also....Saturday morning pictures, the minors ABC club where you went to your local cinema and watched old Flash Gordon episodes and other not very child appropriate stuff!
Playing out all day in roads with hardly any parked cars or traffic......making go carts and rafts to try and float on our local park pond...this was in South London btw..you just can't imagine it now.

What a great thread, how nostalgic, remember it so well as born early sixtes, so a teen through the seventies.

Only shops open on Sunday were newsagents till midday, allowed to sell papers, mags, sweets but not cards etc..

Sainsburys with separate counters to queue and pay at.

Seeing a pepper for the first time in a supermarket

Olive oil only available in the chemist.

First colour TV

Trim phones, party lines.

3 TV channels, not welsh program's or 'watch with mother' available in he morning (when off from school)

Kernockers - until they were banned

Computer studies in school (1975 to 1977) marking punch cards in pencil by hand, each one containing a single instruction.

Punk rock, QE silver jubilee

Oh I'd forgotten Jublies! They never really took off.

I think Olive oil was only sold in chemists as it was meant for cleaning ears out. Nobody ever thought to cook with it.

barbarosa ......no workfare back in the 70s either. Imagine what the unions would have said about that back then There would have been uproar.

You can still buy jublies in ASDA- ready to freeze in the custard and dessert aisle.

I think those Oxford bags were our Birmingham bags.
Were they those things with huge pockets?

Weren't Oxford bags those wide check trousers that the Bay City Rollers were?