The 1970s
Pop and Crisps is a blogsite run by author Josie Henley-Einion. It is dedicated to snapshop memories of the 1970s, when Josie was a child. My fond memories of the 70s gave me the distinction of being ‘Top Guest Blogger’ on Josie’s blog.
Want to read more about this unique decade? Go to Pop and Crisps for a fascinating read.
My posts to Josie’s blog are reproduced here, not all at once though. I’ll feed them to you one at a time. Here’s the next:
Seventies work and life
As fashion changed I tried the ultra-tight hipster style flared trousers, with tank tops and Budgie jacket. Adam Faith had made these trendy in the TV series, Budgie, with Faith as Budgie Bird, recently released from prison. The jackets were very short bomber style, tight sleeves and lots of zips.
The decade skipped along and in 73 I got married; well we all make mistakes. By then I had completed my apprenticeship – a real one, before the modern era. I was a fully fledged Telecommunications Technician with Post Office Telephones. It was the time when it changed from the General Post Office (GPO) to The Post Office. The vans were dark green but were replaced by bright yellow ones – mostly Morris Minors, but all made by the British Motor Corporation (BMC, later BLMC, later still Austin-Rover or Leyland-DAF, now gone).
Talking of cars, my first was a green Austin Mini, a gift from my absent father. I soon changed it for a Morris Traveller, the one with the wooden framework. It took me miles up and down the country, I remember a particularly hair raising drive through Hardknott Pass in the Lake district. The pass is an old Roman road with winding gradients of 1:3 and rises to 1290 feet above sea level – brakes would have been useful! After the Traveller came a Hillman Minx, a bit of a mover this one, she was one of the first with the big 1725cc engine. Married life brought along the grown up and sober Vauxhall Viva HC Estate.
Like all sensible young men, I thought I could do better and in 74 I left the Post Office and started working on the production line in the local Ford Motor Company factory. I had never seen industrial sabotage in action until then, but boredom and ceaseless repetition have a strange effect on men. If someone felt they were working too hard a large bolt in the works brought things to a halt for about half an hour. It was there I met my first Buddhist, I worked with a member of a UFO cult and saw trade unionism at its worst.
These were dark times for British manufacturing. James Callaghan, Sunny Jim, was Prime Minister and took us into the Winter of Discontent, 1978 -1979. This period was marked by Callaghan’s Labour government restricting pay awards to below 5%, strikes ensued followed by food shortages, and power cuts. During the latter part of 78 I spent nine weeks on strike with 57,000 other Ford employees, with no pay, and no other financial assistance. Tight times, but the father-in-law and I rebuilt his Bedford Dormoblie during our idle weeks. The government had become so unpopular that in March 79 there was a vote of no confidence, and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives won the ensuing election. I wonder if history is repeating itself?
After four years painting Ford Transit vans, each one was allotted four minutes as it travelled along the endless chain, I was overwhelmed by a need to do something useful. In January 79 I joined Hampshire Constabulary. I was whisked away from home and a pregnant wife to the Police Training College where, for 13 weeks I was educated in the ways of the British Bobby. This was the beginning of a new era, not only for me but for Great Britain with its new Prime Minister. Roll on the 80s!
(c) 2012, K Patrick Moody
Hair, Fashion and Metric
I had hair then! Well, I had only recently left school. I let my collar length locks flow in the wind as I rode my Lambretta Li150 round the streets of Southampton. Crash helmets were not compulsory then. I painted the scooter orange and white, a super custom paint job using Dulux gloss. Don’t laugh, it turned out better than I imagined. Unfortunately the Lambretta was not as reliable as I had hoped and I seemed to push it farther than I rode it. Eventually it was stolen and dumped in the river Itchen.
I never had one of those ex-army parka coats, but I did wear bleached Levi jeans and checked Ben Sherman shirts with button down collars. We would lay out our new jeans on the lawn an sprinkle bleach, straight from the bottle, to ‘age’ them. This was the era of platform shoes, too. Stacked wooden heals made even us blokes teeter around.
A quick splash of Brut 33 aftershave from the dark green bottle was all a guy needed before a night out at the Top Rank suite, or occasionally the Royal Pier. Ah! those plastic palm trees! These were called Discotheques or Discos and popular music of the day was by Mungo Jerry, Free and Desmond Dekker and the Aces. Away from the disco my friends and I listened to Motown, Stax and Atlantic records with artists like Sam and Dave, Otis Redding, Four Tops, Wilson Pickett and Jr Walker and the All Stars. One of our group was into different music and I remember him playing a lot of Jethro Tull.
On 15 February 1971, Britain went ‘decimal’. All our real money was changed for strange coins, and a pound that only had 100 pennies. It was a challenge for my generation to make the switch, there used to be 12 pence to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound, many pensioners never really got to grips with it. Prices seemed to double overnight, a Mars bar went from 3d (three old pennies) to 3p (three new pennies, just over seven old pennies) within months of the change. In 1972 we were ‘metricated’ too. Measurements were changed from yards, feet and inches to metres and millimetres, volume from pints and gallons to litres. What was the world coming to?
(c) K. Patrick Moody, 2011
