A happy memory photo for the more mature MN poster

[MargaretOfAnjou]

Not the real Hovis lane ...,but just as emotive.

Grab your loaves and remember happy carefree 1970's days gone by.

#derbyshire

I was expecting the Mumsnet bat!

@NomDeQwerty my mum made me a particularly ugly flammable and particularly
molly long dress for my 8th birthday party in 1979. She made it using fabric from Bentalls department store and her sewing machine. Fortunately the dress and sewing machine were kept in the cellar which flooded in 1980 and everything was damaged/binned. There is a surviving photo which i have hidden there is no record of the dress or me wearing it as was all damaged in the cellar flood and lost.

I’m 80s but seem to remember quite a lot of things the shows. Maybe there were just lots of repeats.

And you weren't even allowed to own the phone in your house

I'd forgotten that. The set was rented and when you picked up the handset to make a call you had to make sure nobody else on the same party line was making a call at the same time or you could hear them. I think they could hear you breathing if you were naughty and listened in. I remember my mum shouting 'bugger off, I know you're listening'

Did anybody else in those unheated houses (a single bar gas fire in the living room being the only heating - how I looked forward to ice on the inside of the windows, as it blocked the draughts and made it much warmer) get told 'the airing cupboard's in your room - you don't need heating/an extra blanket' despite no warmth coming out of the thing because it was stuffed full of all the extra blankets ?

nobody believes me, but there was a freezer shop in our village that had actual penguins in the car park, in a white-painted concrete enclosure thing. they always looked sad.

i have never met another soul who remembers the sad penguins behind the freezer shop.

i’m fairly sure i haven’t imagined it.

@MitziK what in blazes!!! It was the 1970's not the 1470's. We had central heating, colour tv's and Nutella !!!

Shang-a-Lang 😬

MitziK Oh yes... you were a right spoiled brat if you complained about the cold whilst have The Airing Cupboard in your bedroom! Me and my sister used to crouch in it, pulling the million blankets and towels over ourselves.

@MitziK nothing wrong with Mellow Birds I still drink that. . One cheeky mare you!

Mitzik our airing cupboard was on the landing but had it been in one of our bedrooms it would definitely have been involved in a ‘you don’t need heating’ argument.

We didn’t have a colour tv or Nutella and our parents couldn’t afford the oil to properly use the central heating. It were bloody grim up north I can tell you. We used to wear about 6 layers of clothes in bed and every morning the bedding that was against the wall was wringing wet from the damp. I’ve had a thing about not being cold ever since.

Central heating?! We had a Super Ser calor gas heater in the living room. That was it other than a single radiant bar heater in the bathroom. My best friend lived in a council house and they didn't have a flushing toilet. It was a wooden bench with what was really just a bucket underneath.

Talking about phones , my dad used to put a lock on ours. My sister and i discovered if you tapped the numbers , morse code styleee, on the two black bits on the old style handsets, you could call 150 or 160 ( cant remember) which was the pop music number where they played the top 40! We got the better of my dad there ....until the bill came...

and then he wooden spooned the holy bejusus out if us!

...,we still did it again though.......

I also thought this was going to be about our Terry...

@Awks stop singing Scottish tartan wearing lyrics

Where in gods blazes did i ever say this thread was about Terry Wogan. It's about the 1970's!!!!!

Jesus Mary and Joseph!

Oxford bags with patch pockets.(sheepshit green)
Tank tops (patterned, orange)
Massive collared shirt (any colour so long as it clashed with both of the above)
Massive knots in ties.
Cheesecloth halter neck gingham maxi dresses.

You left out hot-pants! My mother made mine on her Singer. I was so delighted.

And also posh, it seems, as I remember uncomplicated central heating all through the 70s. But also doing my prep by candlelight in the common room at boarding school during the strike.

Sorry, miss

I remember the phone locks. You could pick them with a bent paperclip.

No central heating until we moved house when I was ten. Paraffin stoves, coal fires, ice on the inside of the windows. Must have been hell for my poor mum.

For all my old people expecting Terry Wogan fans.

@GeorgeTheBleeder yes we had central heating AND black outs ! Still had central heating 👍👍

Down with the poor who had no gas central heating in the 1970's. ❄️❄️❄️☃️❄️

@Chopinaround ❤️❤️

If you did have your own phone line you were only allowed to buy handsets from phone company and it was noted on your account. DF managed to get a second handset from somewhere else and I remember the phone company querying it and when a phone engineer came to the house DF had to hide the handset!

Radio 2 was on every morning. Playing a continuous loop of Chanson L'Amour (rat-a-tat-a-tat), as far as I could tell (I hated that bloody song). As soon as I had watched my big brothers doing it, I worked out how to tune the radio to a local station that played stuff that was actually popular.

@ineedaholidaynow fair play to your DF!

...Except when R2 was playing the frickin' Floral Dance, of course...