Did anybody grow up in the 70s?

[floraloctopus]

The 50s and 80s threads are fascinating. Can anybody shed light on the 70s please?

[DisgraceToTheYChromosome]

Racism and anti-Irish prejudice everywhere.
Brut 33 (I'm male).
Beefburgers were mostly gristle and bone.
Citrus fruits were non-existent except at Christmas.
Strikes, the 3 day week, inflation running at 25%.
Car journeys over 20 miles were a massive deal.

[LemonMousse]

Trying yoghurt for the first time!

I still remember a neighbour turning up with an open pot of strawberry Ski saying 'Got one of those things they advertise on the telly. The kids all think it's disgusting!' And me and my Mum trying it and wholeheartedly agreeing that it was 'sour' and horrible. Not sure how we adapted our palates to liking it!

The birth of 'freezer shops' (not that we had a freezer - just an ice compartment in the fridge but you could cram a pack of Findus crispy pancakes and an arctic roll in there and eat like kings!)

[BikeRunSki]

Spider plants
Cheese plants

[AdaColeman]

The massive programme to convert every gas appliance in the country from compatibility with manufactured town gas to natural North Sea gas. It took eight years in total and was completed in 1976.

[Daysofpearlyspencer]

Family planning clinic made me sit separately from the married women...
Vosene shampoo, no conditioners
Power cuts, strikes, IRA bombs, food shortages, joining the EU, massive sex discrimination at work, not all pubs and clubs serving women, no women's rights, single women couldn't get credit or mortgages, little recognition for domestic violence, Yorkshire ripper victims were 'asking for it', Gary glitter, Jimmy saville, Rolf Harris, PIE, fabulous music, fashion and clubs and despite all that the decade was just the most fun

[Daysofpearlyspencer]

There was a perfume called Tramp!
Aquamanda, smash instant mash, Ford escort Mexico the best car ever

[WitsEnding]

Everything shut on Sundays. No entertainment or organised activities for under 18s except scouts/guides and school sports, unless the funfair or circus was in town.

Most children's clothes were homemade and/or passed down. TV was black and white - Monty Python was the big thing and we would receite whole sketches at school.

Limited range of food, salad was seasonal. Curry was made with onions, mince, apple, raisins and curry powder. No-one ate out, cafes sold instant coffee.

Endless gossip about anyone cohabiting or pregnant outside wedlock.

[LemonMousse]

Vesta beef curry was our Saturday night treat - just me and Dad, it was far too exotic for Mum!

[Davros]

3 day week
Strikes
Rubbish piled up
Grunwick
IRA
Bomb scares
Fuel shortage

Glam
Soul
Disco
Punk
Two Tone

Fabulous clothes
Great TV
Brilliant music

Best decade ever

[checkoutno3please]

Starsky & Hutch !

[BikeRunSki]

People had less stuff in general. Stuff was more expensive that it is now (in relative terms, if not actual cost), and purchases far more deeply considered. New clothes were a big deal, not something you threw in with the groceries.

[checkoutno3please]

Everything shut on Sundays

Often shops closed on a Wednesday afternoon too

[checkoutno3please]

This may be through rose tinted specs but we had proper distinct seasons. Hot summers and always snow in winter

[BackforGood]

Powercuts
No bread (strikes)
No sugar (strikes)
Rubbish piled up on streets (strikes)
Inflation was about 75%
3 day working week

I know it is very fashionable amongst people who were not born at the time to hate Mrs Thatcher with a passion, but I'm guessing most of those people don't remember / haven't researched quite what a grip the powerful unions had on the Country in the 70s

On a lighter note :
nylon sheets from which you could get an electric shock
flannelette stripey sheets
disgusting 1/3 pint bottles of milk at school that sat in the sun and all the fat rose to the top, boak

[BikeRunSki]

Fibreglass mideksbif chikdren holding collecting tins for charities outside shops. There was a girl with blond hair, I think she was for guide dogs, and a boy with polio, and his legs in callipers.

[Mac47]

I had a playing card pegged onto the wheels of my bike so it flicked when I rode.

Medical people came in a van and all the kids had to line up and they gave us a polio drop on a sugar cube .

I wore my only pair of shoes (brown, tbar) to every event, even with a floor length, smocked party dress. My clothes were made by my mum or nan.

My mum used to send me to the shop with a pound note to buy her cigarettes. She wore vest tops with no bra! And scholl sandals. Her face always smelt of oil of ulay.

[wannabebetter]

Andy Pandy
Mary, Mungo & Midge
Fingerbobs
Magic Roundabout
The Herb Garden

I was quite little at the time....

[MadamePompadour]

There used to be fairly regular medical exams at school. A dr would come and you'd be called one by one into the room. You'd have to strip down to vest and knickers and be weighed, measured and prodded. Chest listened to.

My childhood GP had a big jar of lollies on his desk and you could have a lolly after an appt.

[Mother87]

Boring Sundays... no tv in room/one phone in house/lots of brown and orange clothes & textiles/not a lot of food choice/people smoking EVERYWHERE... Bay City Rollers/Slade/Bowie/Davids Essex & Cassidy/everyday sexism was the 'norm'

[Mother87]

Backforgood - yes orange juice as a starter

[MenstruatorExtraordinaire]

I was born in 1969

I remember having complete freedom as a child to roam around with my friends. We just used to have to come back in at bedtime or for meals occasionally

Meals were cereal for breakfast, school dinners and meat two veg and potatoes for tea. Angel delight for pudding or an apple.

Chocolate once a week on a Saturday night. Take aways once or twice a year. Always Chinese. Only fast food we had was a fish supper on holiday at the seaside.

Remember lots of power cuts which were exciting when you were a child. We never really had any new clothes they were always handed down from cousins.

[ineedaholidaynow]

We had a portable black and white tv, with an aerial on top you had to move about to get a signal, and then every so often the picture would go and you would give the tv a good thump to get the picture back.

Was very excited when we got our first colour tv, especially as we didn't have to hit it!

Also remember Pong the first game you could play on the tv.

I remember the green cross code man, not tufty the squirrel. He came to our school, think we were more excited that he played Darth Vader. I also remember at least 3 children in my class over the years getting knocked down by cars and getting broken bones. A boy in a different class but same year to me, got knocked down and killed . There were also those horrible public service warning films eg playing on the railway tracks, the dangers on playing in a farmyard. They gave me nightmares.

I lived in a village with no shops and only one bus a week. If I wanted to get sweets from the post office in the next village I had to walk across a dual carriageway (a main A road). There was no pedestrian crossing, just a staggered junction, with no lights.

Children may have had more freedom, but I wouldn't necessarily say it was safer.

[christinarossetti19]

Nylon sheets. Nylon nightie. Nylon pretty much everything.
'Sunrise' powered orange juice for a treat.
Queuing at the phone box.
Filling the coal bucket.
Swingball.
Bejams opening in town.
Traipsing around the market and Hillards every Saturday.
Mum paying 30p and leaving me and my sister in the local swimming pool by ourselves as non-swimmers for 3 hours while she did the food shopping.
The Pools and Saturday afternoon football results.
Going to Sunday School just for something to do on a Sunday. 'Selling' picture of poor, black children in a little book to raise funds for the wealthy Church of England.

Yes, the strikes, powercuts, food shortages etc, but not the vast wealth inequalities there are today.
Plentiful social housing.
Rents and mortgages that bore some relationship to pay packets.
Getting GP and hospital appointments really quickly.
Going to school without ever having a level, target or 'even better if'.
Leaving home and being able to claim Housing Benefit at 18.

[EnthusiasmIsDisturbed]

Public Information Films. Not much thought was given to psychological damage to young children they may cause fear was the best threat (and did seem to mostly work)

Grease I remember people dancing in the isles

Bejams and lots of people having those huge freezers

Playing out for hours in the disused allotment and the disused sewer

Green grocer man coming to our door

My nan having a box of necessities under her bed just in case war broke out

Nylon - how we didn’t all set alight is a mystery

Val Doonican and his cardigans

Davilels (?) ice cream parlor and the delicious bubble gum ice cream. if you grew up around Wimbledon you will know it

[Ohyesiam]

Spam
Every Christmas we’d have a ( glass) bottle of lemonade, and one of coke.
Angel delight
Going to school alone on the tube from age 8, and loving it.
Those weird Saturday night shows on bbc1 that was like music hall. Mike yarwood doing impressions , a few big show numbers. It’s like tv hadn’t worked out it wasn’t theatre.
Crazed in the playground. My favourite craze was French skipping, but there were different ones each term. Hand clapping rhymes in pairs, tennis balls thrown against the wall rhymes. cats cradle. And of course rude songs.