Did anybody grow up in the 70s?

[floraloctopus]

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

Lots of strikes and power cuts, yes. Homes were poorly heated.

1976 was the summer of the massive heatwave, and 1977 had the Queen's Silver Jubilee and there were lots of community festivals for that.

Cinemas were single screen and had no AC. Out TV was black and white.

I got the bus to school aged 8, waiting at a remote bus stop on my own - very concerning in retrospect.

Not many mums worked where I lived, and none full time.

School milk.

Green shield stamps! Rag and bone man and jumble sales.

Sainsbury’s having two long counters and taking the handwritten bill to one of the two tills at the far end. Newspaper sellers on the street and the same brewery mentioned by BikeRunSki. You could smell it from our school!

Paedos. Loads of them. We had one in our street, at least one at school and we'd never be alone with Dawn's dad.
Orange and brown everywhere.
Leaflets about what to do in a nuclear war. Programmes on telly about what happened to you in a nuclear war. I remember one particular scene where they talked about a nuclear winter and the bloke's face went really old and he went bald and then my mum told me to go and brush my teeth.
IRA bombing all the horses in Hyde Park.
Tarmac sticking to your feet.
Cords and dungarees. And long party dresses (I guess the grown-ups were wearing maxi dresses so that made sense.)
I am the spirit of dark and lonely water.
Barry Manilow and discussing that he's probably gay.
Val Doonican sat with his legs crossed wearing a jumper.
Terry and June and hilarious hi jinks with Terry's boss.
Men watching the Good Life for Felicity Kendall.

I remember that clothes were very expensive, I'm sure mine were 90% handmedowns and I didn't have any siblings 🤔

Big flares
Nappies soaking in a bucket 😷 (baby brother)
Ugly Clarke's shoes
Heatwave, hosepipe ban
Mary, Mungo and Midge
Pipkins
Getting our first coloured telly
Dad's Ford Capri
Evil Kenevil

Clothes were really expensive. Someone on our Facebook local page shared a 70s advert for a clothes shop and things were the same price as now, sometimes more expensive. Compared to wages the cost was enormous.

I remember the clothes most!
Clothkits
Peddlepushers
Camping in France was exotic!

As others have said bombs and the IRA loomed large
So did the Green cross code man though!

The Tufty Club
The Red Hand Gang
Crackerjack, especially the "double or drop" game
The drought in 1976
When a Knight Won His Spurs
Emu's Broadcasting Company... EBC1
Block ice cream in square cornets
Pampas grass
Prawn cocktail
Avocado bathroom suites
Curtains with massive flowers in brown, yellow, orange, white or purple
Getting a tan was supposedly "healthy"
Wearing floor-length flowery hippy dresses to parties
Space hoppers

Tufty the squirrel and the green cross code
The smash aliens
School inspectors in black uniform with caps
Roller skates to strap on your shoes
Jesus sandals all summer
Jam sandwiches with added sand on the beach
The ladybirds everywhere
Spending summer in the paddling pool
Very strict school teachers
Pirate reading books
Metal climbing frames over concrete

The novelty of Vesta meals.
Getting 2oz of sherbet pips if you hadn’t much pocket money left.
Conductors on buses with crossed leather straps on their ticket machine and money bag.
Buses always finished at the terminus.
Habitat.
Laura Ashley gypsy dresses for parties.
Star Wars
Fuzzy felt every Christmas
Shouting/garbling goodby after the pips had gone in a phone box.
Power cuts
Such hot summers and all those ladybirds in 1976
Gaberdine school coats
Counterpanes and eiderdowns on the bed.
Twin tub washers
Marbled tiles with chickens in them if you squinted
Grange Hill

Sharing a landline - if you picked up the phone you could sometimes hear the 'party line' talking.

It was really really dark in the winter.

IRA bombings.

Power cuts.

Hand knitted jumpers.

Purdy hair cuts.

The 6 million dollar man, on It's a Knockout and Les Dawson on TV.

Standing room only at football matches.

Black and white telly.

Every room in the house was alive with colour! I had a purple carpet in my bedroom. Nothing was neutral.

Woodchip wallpaper.

The Pools man at the door.

The cashiers in the supermarket used to have to put price tags on everything and then put it into the til by hand - no scanning! The noise at the Coop check out was deafening!

I was a child in the 70s, most of my teens in the 80s.

Foreign (as in France, Spain and Italy) holidays felt ‘foreign’, food was genuinely different as was culture. I remember there was a lot of cash around as labour had too rate tax in the 90s and exchange controls, so you had to ‘smuggle’ cash overseas to have a nice holiday.

The late 70s was a real burgeoning of the music scene: Bowie, Queen etc etc. The charts really mattered and TOTP was a must-watch.

The War (as in 2nd World) was still a living memory with holiday pilots often having cut their teeth flying spitfires and it was an accepted tradition that kids were allowed a bit of time in the cockpit if their parents asked nicely.

Power cuts were always fun with candles and gas lamps coming out of the cellar.

Children were actually allowed to take real risks, which was great!

Knee high white socks.
Rag and bone horse and cart horse with feed sack.
Ponchos
Cheesecloth shirts.
Hand me downs.
Shirt collars of fantastic shape and size.
Floppy hair.
Jubilee street parties.
Green shield stamps.
Freedom for kids - out all day on bikes etc.
Dodgy car set ups / rickety old rust buckets. Lack of seat belts. Etc
Hovercraft to France.
Strikes and power cuts.
Good times !

Going to the cinema with my big sis to watch Star Wars quite a few times.

Having handkerchiefs with lovely designs on them like lots of rabbits going camping.

None of my friend’s mums worked.

The “pop man” coming in his lorry to deliver dandelion and burdock and give you 1p for emptys.

Shops closing at 5:30pm and no shops open on Sunday (apart from the newsagent who closed around 1pm).

Penny things. Like pick and mix but you had to point through the glass cabinet at what you wanted and most things were a penny.

The half penny. Seeing things in the co-op marked up as 15 1/2p. The co-op also used to have a strip of stickers that came out of a machine above the cashier with purchases which you licked and stuck in a book to get money off. I vaguely recall green shield stamps.

Space hoppers.

Gary Glitter was popular (urgh).

Alister Burnett reading the news at 10.

A lot of this stuff says 60s to me not 70s. (And the bombing of the horses in Hyde Park was early 80s).

We moved to a three bed semi in a leafy suburb in 1971 and had central heating.

Spent all my spare time at the stables.

Jackie Magazine. Top of the Pops. The chart show on a Sunday and the excitement of finding out what was number one.

Rod Stewart. Heavy Metal. Status Quo concerts at the Free Trade Hall.

Oxford bags. Loons. Two tones.

Buying Green shield stamps, and the Saturday pink, for my Df

Only got new clothes at Christmas, Easter and summer holiday.

Cheesecloth!

First flights available to the common people! My dad took us to Ibiza in the 70s! It was an island with no clubs or high-rise hotels.

Power cuts
onedin Line
Brown and orange
clothkits
one local shop
playing with grass cuttings
Blue Peter, The clangers
Abba winning the Eurovision song contest.
sitting in the car with crisps and lemonade and the radio on while parents in the pub
writing down the top 40, taping it from the radio.
penny sweets
the IRA
making mud figures
We were told it was great that Maggie Thatcher being a woman, had become prime minister, good for women, we were told

Carpet in bathrooms.

the bogey man,
there werent paedos, they were men offering sweets to unsuspecting children, that we should beware of
Z cars

Can't believe I didn't mention smoking, you'd get on a bus and barely be able to see the back seat for all the smoke.

A 'trim phone' being the height of modernity.

'Continental quilts' (duvets) being new and exotic.

The latest in clocks were 'digital' clocks where the numbers flicked over.

TV being on shutdown for large portions of the day, with the test card being shown either side of the periods with programmes.