Did anybody grow up in the 70s?

[floraloctopus]

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

Oh yes and Tuffty the Squirrel I loved the book I had

Green Cross Code man came to our school I was in the local paper sitting on his arm while other children were hanging off his arms he also played Darth Vader.

Do you mean The Good Old Days?
My sister worked st M&S in Oxford Street part time and all the shops in Oxford Street and the West End closed on Saturday afternoons as there was no one around

I lived in Northern Ireland. My dad was a civil servant and therefore considered a ‘legitimate target’ by the IRA. I remember him having to check along the undercarriage of his car every morning for bombs before he could get in to go to work. Other than that:

Nylon bed linen so you woke up full of static and your hair sitting like a halo round your head (see also nylon pyjamas)
Getting burnt AF every summer
Clarke’s brown closed toe sandals
Having to dress exactly the same as your sister
Airports being the height of glamour

Jimmy Savile. Even as a kid I ‘knew’ there was something not quite right. He always gave me the creeps.

Freedom
Power cuts and strikes
Catalogue shopping
Knowing all your neighbours
Walking to infants school
Fabulous schoolyard games
Loads of local shops
Hand knitted clothes
Lots of buses to lots of places
Slips under skits
Jesus sandals
Derry boots
Very few cars
Not much TV
Wonderful music
Freedom (so much more than now)

It is odd knowing the '70s felt so innocent for children but it was chock full of perverts and misogyny.

Girls wanted a ‘Purdy’ cut like Joanna Lumley in ‘The Avengers
Literally every girl at school acting out the Summer Nights song / scene from Grease on the playground
Not being allowed to make phone calls till after 6pm because the rate was cheaper then
Wearing hand-me-down clothes, even from my brother
Giving my dad a ‘2rings’ phone call signal if I wanted to be picked up from somewhere - avoided actually having to pay for the call from a phone box
Local shopping and excitement at the new ‘MacMarket’ supermarket opening
Walking to the Newsagent on a Sunday morning to buy the paper - my brother and I always got a comic each, he the Dandy, me the Beano (later Whoopee and Whizzer and Chips)
10p paper bag of sweets - flying saucers, chocolate mice, fruit salad chews and gobstoppers
Telephones you had to physically turn the dial for every number
Mittens and scarves knitted by your gran
Salt and shake crisps
Wagon wheels
Knee high ‘lacy’ socks gone pink in the wash
Dad driving a big grey Rover 2000 with one big leather seat in the back
Anaglypta wallpaper
Floral bedsheets and curtains where you could always spot faces if you looked at them from a funny angle
Marks and Spencer being King of the High street
Jumble sales
Thatcher
Flares
Gardens always had a rockery
The Test card on the telly and ‘snow’ after ‘shutdown’
Opportunity Knocks
Kate Bush singing Wuthering Heights
Rupert annuals at Christmas

Playing with putty
No snow school days
Walking to and from school calling for friends on the way from infants.
Mum making my clothes from patterns
Highland dancing
Bikes
Going off swimming on the bus
Wasn't allowed clackers
1976 when the tar melted on the roads
Kiss catch
Skipping games
French skipping ( elastic - I made my own with knitted elastic bands)
Tap lessons
Playing on the canal
Mixing the adults' drinks for them at house parties.
Lots of house parties- parents, amd later on ours.
Monopoly
TImeslip
Crackerjack
Bernie the Bolt
Opportunity knocks
Darts with beer
Soda siphons
Playing on building sites
Ouija boards
Taping music from the radio or from another tape
Writing down the top40
Mini, midi and maxi dresses
Clogs

Brentford Nylons adverts
Getting a colour telly for the first time, and eyes being sore because we weren't used to it
No holidays
No restaurant/cafe visits
Bedding was blankets and sheets, the former never washed as far as I know
Radiogram, upgraded later to a music centre in a wooden cabinet
newspaper not toilet roll
no hot water unless the immersion was on NO RADIATORS
sachets of shampoo were a treat, otherwise we had to use washing up liquid
Fine fare supermarket

Comics delivered to the house
Roller skating at a dedicated venue
Complete freedom - home when dark.

St Michael from Marks and Spencer’s being very posh.
Gas fires
Watching Champion the Wonder Horse, White Horses and Black Beauty on tv.
Going swimming with my best friend on the bus alone at the age of 10.
Playing out after dark.

Oh, and waiting outside pubs for my parents, in the car. Completely normal.

Homemade clothes made by Mum, even coats.
Cracked ground in the summer of 1976
Queuing for yeast during the bread strikes
Me and my cousins in the boot of the car for journeys when relations came to stay
Dad fitting seatbelts to the car
Grandparents having square ham
Egg and bacon for breakfast on holiday
Playing out all day
Squash and one biscuit
Curry with sultanas in it
Bowl shaped hair cuts
Hand me downs
A trip to the library was the excitement of the week
No cinema in our town
No swimming pool in our town
Brownie jumble sales being the excitement of the year
No TV in our house
A Sunday dress
A Sunday penny

I just fell into a YouTube rabbit hole of public safety messages 😮😮

Keys hanging behind the front door on a length of string, parcels tied with string, home made go carts and wearing one roller skate and your friend wore the other, posters on my bedroom wall, Grease on the cinema and my idol Elvis passing away 😢 star sky and Hutch, Follyfoot farm, six million dollar man and giving my mum all of my first weeks wages for 'bed and board' and going to TW Records to buy the latest Top of the Pops LP. and watching Sunday night at the London palladium.

Woodley’s Green Apple Shampoo.

Walking down to the phone box to make calls (using 2p pieces). It smelt of metal and wee, the phone directory in it had pages missing, and there were often people waiting outside who had arranged for people to call them at a particular time.

Sunblest bread, frays bento, brains faggots, Vesta, frozen mousses, artic roll, jam sandwiches for tea. Green shield stamps and cardboard boxes for shopping. Advocate as Christmas drink watching Dave Allen who was v sophisticated. Fawlty tower s

Hotpants
Charity shops were a new clever idea and were the Sue Ryder then Oxfam.
Hospices were also a new clever idea
Roots was something every one watched talked about and enacted for weeks after it was broadcast
The national anthem before the TV closed for the night at about 11
And the national anthem at the Cinema and everyone stood up
Hotel California
Pans people and the top of the pops
The Vietnam boat people
Love thy neighbor
Benny Hill
BBC tape computers
Girls shoes being lace up platforms for school
LoadS of teenage pregnancies and abortions
Always several pervie school teachers to avoid and some friend's dad's
Veg cart came twice a week
Milkman every day
Blue Smarties were banned
Hula hoop craze
Skateboards for the first time as a crazy thing from America
Cluedo craze
Neighbours would come round for Christmas drinks
Corduroy trousers and pinafore dresses
Fairfield style cardigans
Duffle coats
Package holiday to Spain
Blue Peter
Black beauty
Upstairs downstairs, Corrie, Hammer House of horror
Then late 70s was the strikes and Thatcher and then no hope of a job and dole queues and waiting for your giro cheque to arrive in the post. Child benefit was a book of tear out yellow papers with the date of each week it would be paid for six months.
Carry cots on the back seat that slid around if you took the corner too fast. Child seats started to come in.
Most people drove for ages before getting a driving licence.
Policeman would clip you round the ear and send you home 😁

I was born in 1959.
The early 70s were utter shit. The hangover after the 1960s.

In the 1970s spaghetti (that didn't come in tins) was exotic.
Yoghurt was Ski - and sugary.
No one knew what Muesli was.
Brown bread was weird.

The British film industry was making crap like Confessions of a Window Cleaner.

The BBC was making 'light entertainment' shows with people in blackface. Not just the abomination that was The Black and White Minstrel Show - even 'educated' innovative shows like Monty Python have embarrassing "Well hello dere, massa boss" moments.

Gay people were nearly invisible or presented as grotesque caricatures and always conflated with paedophiles. 'Bi' people did not exist. you were 'AC/DC'.

Pornography was incredibly hard to get hold of. Trust me, I tried.

People smoked EVERYWHERE. In cinemas, in restaurants. My doctor smoked during consultations! About the only place where people didn't smoke was in primary school or while performing open heart surgery.

Someone saying 'fuck' on TV would make front page headlines.

It was damn near impossible to get a decent cup of coffee.

Utter shit.

The only things I think I would save from a bonfire of the 70s would be the theme music from Shaft, Pam Grier's movies, and a Lamb's Navy Rum advert with Caroline Munro's sweaty breasts in it. That was another thing about the 1970s. To sell anything you had to have a large breasted 'girl' in (some of) a bikini draped over it.

Talking of which, apparently Benny Hill and Frankie Howerd were 'funny'.

But don't take my word for it. I suspect this is what Post Brexit England is shaping up to look like.

Delivery vans milk /bread /meat.
The summer of 76.
So hot

And the national anthem at the Cinema and everyone stood up

..and ran for the door before some officious older twat 'tutted' at them them for being disrespectful.

And (how could I forget!) JAWS

I was terrified to even turn the taps on for months afterwards.

Jimmy Savile. Even as a kid I ‘knew’ there was something not quite right. He always gave me the creeps.

He was even worse in person. I met him a few times (as an adult) and he made my skin crawl. I felt somewhat vindicated when it all came out.

I was born in 1969 so my childhood was the 1970s.

Birthday parties for children were always at home, going to a venue wasn't something that happened.

Walking home along the main road from infant school with friends and no adults.

Coming home for lunch rather than stopping in school.

My Mom made most of my clothes, the sewing machine was used a lot. She'd knit all jumpers and cardigans.

Eating out wasn't done apart from perhaps chips in an eat-in fish and chip shop on a day trip to the seaside. The first time I ever ate out locally was 1985.

The bin men used to come into the back garden to collect the metal bin and then carry it down to the lorry and empty it before bringing it back.

We had a bread delivery man.

The council rent woman would call every Monday and would walk around the streets with the bag full of cash that she'd collected.

The post would be delivered at breakfast time with another delivery coming later.

My first holiday was at Butlins Pwllheli in 1977, just me and my parents (my sister is much older and had already left home) in a very basic little chalet which probably hadn't been modernised since the 1950s. We didn't have a car so travelled by coach.

Walking past the house of a family whose daughter was killed in an IRA bombing every time we walked to my Nan's and my Mom always saying something like "those poor people". It scared me that something like that had happened to someone close to home, especially when it was on the news about letter bombs being sent. I wasn't old enough to realise that they were sent to targets so I lived in fear of the post arriving. For some reason I was never shielded from the news.

I can't remember many details but generally it has a kind of a golden haze around it for me
I do especially remember the summer of 76 of course 🌞