Just when you thought it was safe to come out of your Ealing comedy...

[srb7677]

My childhood was mostly experienced in the 70s. In the 60s I did not exist as an entity seperate from my mother until she popped me out in June 1965. I ended the decade still only 4 and a half years old, though I can remember the moon landings of 1969. I can also remember laughing at the news when some hippy bloke in the background stripped naked. As a 4 year old I had no clue what it was all about but the notion of seeing some guy naked in the background on the news with the reporter apparently unaware seemed hilarious to my young mind, hence my recollection of it. Of course now I realise it was probably some peacenik anti-Vietnam War demo, populated by hippies.

[johnofgwent]

I was two and a bit they started, and twelve and a bit when they ended.

I remember at the end of the 60s finding my passport with my baby photo in it. I remember back then asking why I had one when my friend had just gone to Spain with just his name in his dad's. I was told it was so I could fly out anywhere with either mum or dad and fly back with either mum or dad.

I didn't think any more of it in 1970


In 2005 I realised it was so we could be flown to West Germany as a family and then mum and I would fly on to Rhodesia because dad would be weaponising the avro Vulcans of our nuclear strike force.


In 1962 Ian Brady attacked his first victim.


But he bungled it.


But the streets were a lot safer weren't they ...


But one night of the sixties I do remember


July 20th 1969. It was mum's birthday the day before.

[srb7677]

There was no internet back in the day, no netflix or amazon prime, no multi-channels.

And yeah some things were shit. Teachers tended all too often to be feared rather than respected. Hompphobia and racism were rife, sexism was considered normal. And you were liable to spend your time with the family sitting around playing cards in candle light due to yet another load of power strikes. And if anyone in school ever dared complain about a bully, they'd be called a puffter or a nancy boy and told to just hit him back,lol.

But there were many happy times too, blissful carefree days of fun on the beach, a plethora of christmas day gifts that did not require a computer. And I can remember growing up reading comics like 2000AD, Battle, and Action. I collected many hundreds of them. We were mostly happy without the internet. We never knew it and so didn't miss it. I can remember with fondness my favourite TV programs - the original Star Trek, Grange Hill, Starsky and Hutch, The Bionic Man, The Bionic Woman, Space 1999, The Sweeney, Dave Allen at Large, the Goodies, Fawlty Towers, Kojak.

And I look back with a wry smile about how it was imagined that by now we'd all be travelling amongst the planets on space holidays, driving flying cars, and having intelligent humanoid robots doing all the work for us. No one I knew however ever imagined anything like the internet. Climate change and global warming were not on our radar at all. We were far more worried about nuclear war, though most of us preferred not to think about it too much. We tended to think the Cold War was a permanent fixture. I remember in 2000AD comics Judge Dredd on a moon colony having problems with Soviet colonies. The collapse of the Soviet system was wholly unforseen by most of us.

But I guess every age has it's good points and bad points, truth be known, and different people with different perspectives might well differ on what were the good points and bad points.

[Barry]

1962
I was living in a council house in Northants and I was at a junior school. I am the youngest of three brothers and I learned as much from them as I did from the school. Some of the teachers at school were mentally and physically abusive, it wouldn't be allowed now. I got into some fights at school but stood up for myself.

We had a b/w TV when it was working. The valves didn't seem to last long and we were always trying to tweak the horizontal hold to get the picture right.
We had no telephone.

We had no money. Dad earned £20 a week working over 60 hours a week driving a lorry and repairing them for a firm that made road emulsion. How they paid all the bills and fed 3 hungry boys, I don't know.
Dad had a Norton motorcycle and he adapted a sidecar to fit us all in. We soon out grew that.

I wanted a bike. My brothers had one but I was too young. My grandad taught me to ride a bike in his back garden in Finedon.
He also taught me about beer, roll-ups and playing darts. My gran used to meet him out of work on pay day to make sure he hadn't spent all the money before getting home.

Society was palpably cohesive. We inhabited neighbours houses and they came to ours with total comfort. No invitation - just expected. Borrowing a cup of sugar, or flour was common. We trusted our friends and neighbours. They seemed more caring in those days.

If I think of anything else relevant or interesting I'll be back.

[Sheepy]

One thing for sure which it seems most people have learnt the EU were never the answer just more of the same problem. Some people are slow learners for sure. But then some people love an Ealing comedy so what can one say.

[HDQQ]

Obviously because of Covid things aren't as good as they were beforehand for society in general. Also it's looking like Brexit is having a gradual detrimental effect. I'd say Britain was in a 'better place' before the EU referendum was announced. If there's been no referendum we'd still be in the EU, we'd have been spared two crises - the one we're entering now because we're no longer in the EU and we've been through because of the Brexit process. Boris Johnson might still have been PM, but he'd have been a pro-EU PM. On the downside, Nigel Farage would still have been a spanner in the works.

[T00ts]

What a super thread. Pure nostalgia! These posts have reminded me of so much more. Great!

[DeppityDawg]

Like Tootsie I can remember going into the city centre on the bus and it costing like pence. And there being buses about every 15 minutes too. And Cromwell, yes, stuff made out of any waste or left over materials, like carts and "trollies". Buying sweets by the quarter (if you had the money, someone usually did), and later 10 Embassy or Player No6 from the wooden vending machine on the newsagents wall 

Clothes. People wearing hand me downs from their brothers or sisters. And the Police, yeah, generally when they were round our estate they were after someone or other, but they were usually cheerful to the kids (at least, until we turned 16 or so)

When "historians" write books like this, theres a temptation to buy them for the nostalgia value, but in my experience, the past seldom gets a fair shout when left to people like this, who are selling not just copy but agendas too. But the past doesn't just belong to left leaning writers, it belongs to us all. I don't much like Hitchens, but again he is right. We may be richer in material wealth, but in so many other ways we have lost so much that can't ever be measured.

[cromwell]

Well I'll attempt a good sneer

It wasn't heaven but certainly not hell either but though we had little in the way of toys and games we made our own entertainment and played out for hours on end going home tired and very mucky,my old dad "look at the tide mark on the bath you scruff."

Playing marbles in the street (stay away from those grids you'll catch a fever )
We were pretty much left to our own devices till called in at the end of the day which was interspersed by visits home (anyone's actually) for some scran and liquid refreshment.

Most the games we played cost pretty much nowt,stilts made from some old wood by your dad,a cricket bat a lump of wood cut to shape.

We used to bike for miles too,once attempting a far too long trip up in to the hills of Derbyshire where we stopped knackered and some old bloke on his Reg Harris bike stopped to chat to us,he was a real old biking anorak gave us all some cash to find a shop to buy some lemonade and sweets.

Today he'd be put down as a weirdo get reported and questioned by the police,parents weren't as paranoid as now just the odd warning not to talk to any strange men, "what's a strange man" ......."oh don't talk to anybody" but people did and this was in the days of the moors murderers so the reality was avoid the strange woman.

Was it all wonderful?,no being the youngest got hand me downs but we were generally happy.

[T00ts]

Since my name came up in the OP I'll give a female point of view. Was it perfect? No. Some idiot brought out the pill for one thing. The blurb is now familiar - it will empower women! Did it heck. It took away their last reservation and gave blokes carte blanche. It empowered men in actual fact. Which is the comment many of the girls I knew were saying. If a woman said no then it tended to mean something. If nothing else the blokes were worried about the shot gun ceremony. The change started I believe in the last war but the pill really suited the male plan.

Having got my sexist rant out of the way - at 12 yrs I was able to take an hours journey by train and bus to central London on my own every Saturday for a Ballet scholarship class - in safety. Would you send your 12 year old daughter now?

Life was generally seen as safer. I don't remember worrying about terrorists back then. My mother could still put the money for the milk deliveries on the door step overnight and expect the milkman to pick it up in the early hours.

Oh yes we had super fashion but it had quality and didn't fall apart after the first week. In fact I seem to remember that most things didn't fall apart. Politics? Before I was really involved or interested but I don't remember MPs being threatened in the streets as a rule.

Was it all rosy? Of course not but I remember it being more respectful, more polished somehow. Money went further and a big bonus was more or less empty roads, and it being ok to drive down the centre lane on the first motorway!   

[DeppityDawg]

...theres this 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-9980737/Why-Id-living-1962-smoking-ghastly-PETER-HITCHENS-revels-youth.html

Of course, Hitchins is well known for being a gammon/fascist/sexist/racist/backwards thinker/etc/etc, but isn't everyone who doesn't take the knee or tear down statues now?

People sometimes mock my view of the past as a Ladybird Book idealisation of a Britain that never was. 

No never? People wouldn't do that would they?

People who believe all movement is forwards and upwards, and that all change is progress, such as David Kynaston, will find misery in the past, but miss the happiness and the contentment. They need to do so to justify the endless messing about they inflict on us.

Thats one for Toots I think 

To understand this properly, you must see the difference between how much richer we are in goods and gadgets and things, and see how much poorer we are in areas not so easily noticed or measured.

Hmm. That needs some thinking about, but if material wealth is all that ticks your box, you'll never understand this however hard someone tries to explain it

So, Cromwell, were the streets of Salford heaven or hell?, Thomas were the estates of Glasgae happy or horrendous?, everyone, was the past a happy dream or a terrible nightmare? - how do you remember the 60s - or whichever decade you grew up in come to that?

Let the sneeri...erm...memories commence 

It was all shite back then, but at least you didn't need a f*cking mortgage for 20 fags"