I was 18 years old in 1970, and 25 when I got married in 1977.
By the end of that decade, I was already an EMT in London.
It is easy to look back with fondness at some things from that era.
But I am also reminded of what was not so good in Britain at the time..
State of the Art portable televisions.
What was on those televisions for most of the day, and after midnight.
Some of the sweets.
(Mostly good)
(Mostly not so good)
The ‘long-bonnet’ British Leyland Mini.
Police Officers getting off the beat, and into silly-looking patrol cars.
Limited options for ‘eating out’.
The 1960s were pretty cool, as well as ‘Swinging’ of course.
But something went badly wrong on the 1st of January, 1970.
I absolutely loved this post! I love learning more about different eras.😀❤🌟 I use to hear that I belonged in the 70s by quite a few people. I wear the flowing vintage skirts, some of the jewelry, and am all about the free love. 😆 Thanks for sharing this with us, Pete! Xoxoxoxo.❤✌💃
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You would have fitted in very well anytime from 1967-1979, Dani. The Summer of Love, Flower children, Woodstock, Long dresses, Kaftans, and lots of beads. You missed your ‘era’, honey. 🙂 x
Glad you enjoyed reading this one.
Best wishes, Pete. x
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I know! I love all of those things!😍 I still wear kaftans, loads of stones and beads on each wrist, sandals year around, long flowy dresses and skirts(I have skirts that our made from vintage patches put together that spread out 5 feet wide so flow A Lot!), and even hairbands with flowers or ones that dangle with feathers. Everyone always says I looked like a flower child or hippie but I am who I am. I definitely missed my era! *sighs, how awesome it would have been to go to Woodstock and hear Jimi Hendrix.❤🎶 I also love over music from around that era. CCR & Fleetwood Mac. If only I had a time machine and could visit that era.😍✌
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The music from the 70s almost makes it all worth it!
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The music and most of the films made it all worthwhile. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Thanks for the smiles and the memories.
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There were good things too of course, but not these. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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🙂
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The seventies for me were an interesting time as I worked abroad in Geneva and Norway, travelled overland to India and ended up in South Africa. I had three children in that decade and two husbands! I wore mini skirts, platform shoes, loons, maxi dresses, smocks and velvet coats. I missed a lot of TV (didn’t exist in SA) was more into modern Jazz than the glam rock stuff, lived 5 minutes walk from a fantastic surfers’ beach in Cape Town, saw whales, lived in Kent for 9 months of the last year of the decade and moved back to SA on the 31st December 1979. Remember listening to Capital Radio, having a B&W TV in England, seeing punks for the first time in London with piercings and Mohican hairstyles in 1979. And didn’t make it to Australia… my one regret.
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You packed a lot more into that decade than I did, that’s for sure.
Thanks, Jude. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete. x
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The 70s were rubbish. Unfortunately they coincided with my teenage years so I had to wear the awful fashions – and worse still go out with men with awful haircuts. The only good things about the 70s were David Bowie and Roxy Music. Bowie was the only guy who could get away with a Bowie cut.
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Music and films were very good during that time. Sadly, not much else was. 🙂
Thanks, Annabelle.
Best wishes, Pete.
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I’m with you on a lot of those, but there were some fun times in the 70s, too!
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There were indeed, Angela. These are just things I don’t miss about that decade of course. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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You could have been in America were you got everybody’s version of the Leyland Mini…the Renault Le Car, the Honda Civic, the Chevrolet Chevette…I could go on. But at least those all had four wheels unlike those god-awful Reliant Robins.
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Thanks, J-Dub.
I loved the original Austin or Morris Mini, and learned to drive in one. But the later big bonnet’ versions produced by the British Leyland amalgamation were just ugly, and horrible inside too.
The reason for the 3-wheeled Reliant Cars, and the later Bond Bug, was because of a loophole in driving laws here. If a car has only three wheels, it can be driven on a motorcycle licence, so no need to pass a car test. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Ahhh, the 70’s – my era. It is always strange to look back and see the fashions and surroundings of such pivotal times in our lives. I enjoyed looking at the picture of the candies and seeing which I could identify although the American names were different. E did not have many of those you showed.
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They later renamed some of our sweets in line with US names.
Before it was called ‘Snickers’, we knew it as ‘Marathon’. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Hey what about the crazy hair styles.
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I thought they went without saying mate! 🙂
‘Big hair’!
Cheers, Pete.
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I was 16 in 1970, too young to have fully engaged with the Swinging Sixties so the 70s were my growing up years and I have some good memories. I quite liked bell bottom jeans! Some awful things from then were man made fabrics like crimplene and nylon sheets. And worst of all, at the very end of the decade we got Margaret Thatcher!
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Yes, I don’t miss Maggie. By a strange coincidence, despite hating her with a vengeance, I ended up working for the department of the Met Police that supplied her armed protection in old age. I used to often speak to her daughter, Carol, once the nasty old woman had become senile. Carol was much nicer than her Mum.
Best wishes, Pete.
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It wouldn’t be difficult for Carol to be nicer than her mum!
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The Sony Trinatron portable TV I bought in 1975 lasted for ever. It was only thrown out a few years ago because the push on button needed a piece of wire to hold it in.
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We bought a Sony portable as our main TV, in 1977. It was very expensive, but very reliable, like yours. I wanted a much bigger screen, as watching films seemed pointless on the tiny set, but my ex-wife didn’t want the TV to ‘dominate’ the living room. When we spit up in 1985, she still had the Sony, and I bought a 21-inch screen TV as soon as I moved into my new house. Within six months, I was regretting not paying more for a 24-inch screen, at that time the biggest screen available in mass-market products.
Now I am typing this onto a 24-inch monitor, and watching TV on a 40-inch flatscreen that still feels a little ‘small’. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I could write a separate blog post about every one of those things.
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Send me the links when you have. I will enjoy reading those posts. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I found the ’60’s a lot of fun, but it’s also when I started making the wrong (not so much bad) decisions.
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I made wrong decisions in every decade of my life, GP. It didn’t seem to matter what number was in front of the zero. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Those first ones though are what caused the following ones.
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You got that right!
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Our first piece of furniture was a ‘corner suite’ in brown and orange stripes!
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Ah, all that orange and brown! We had dark brown crockery at one time, with orange stripes around the rims! My first wife loved brown dresses by Laura Ashley, and had a few in different shades. 🙂
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I preferred purple Laura Ashley dresses. They were great maternity wear.
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It’s a wonder I got married in 1977 because I seem to recall Wimpy being a prominent feature of eating out with boyfriend/ then fiancé!
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I didn’t mind the Wimpy Bars, but it wasn’t too long before lots of other dining options began to appear in London. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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I was 13 in 1970 and loved the whole decade. We didn’t know it was cheesy at the time! Heavy rock came out of that decade and some wonderful films (The Godfather is my favourite film of all time). I was the disco queen of Sidcup in 1976!
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I might have walked past you in Sidcup High Street! I lived in Bexley Village until the summer of 76. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Remember the Marlowe Rooms? There was a disco there every Sunday evening.
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I do remember that venue well. But I usually went back into South London in my teens to socialise, as my girlfriend and all my mates still lived in Bermondsey.
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They had a big 70s glitter ball on the ceiling too. One night I was dancing to ‘Rasputin’ in my platform shoes and fell against my friend, who also fell. A line of us went down like dominoes!
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I see all the ‘good’ sweets involve chocolate and the ‘bad’ sweets don’t 🤣. Also fashion may have been pants, but AC/DC, Queen, the Eagles, Thin Lizzy, Roxy Music,
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Oops hadn’t finished, but you get my drift, so much great music in that decade.
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Drift received! 🙂
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A lot of the music and films were great, which is why they are not listed. 🙂
(I’m not including AC/DC in that comment, naturally. 🙂 )
I put the Spangles in as ‘bad sweets’ because of the awful flavours they started to bring out at the time.
Best wishes, Pete.
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Hah, philistine. 😉
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I actually loved the Old Fashioned spangles! Don’t remember some of the others but then I spent most of the ’70s abroad.
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It was those ‘funky flavours’ Spangles brought out at the time, Jude. Some of them tasted horrible. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete. x
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Is that a Morris? I liked the fashion better then than now….skinny jeans are just silly. Eating out around here was Chinese or Chinese…chuq
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I never had bell-bottoms, and now don’t have skinny jeans, obviously. 🙂
I was a ‘suit and tie’ man back then.
Yes, the car is a 1969 Morris Minor, 1,000 cc engine, 4-speed manual gearbox.
Police forces used various small cars at the time, known as ‘Panda Cars’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panda_car
Best wishes, Pete.
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I remember getting some of those trousers as hand-me-downs. Maybe they are back in fashion again now 🙂
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Not yet mate. (As far as I know) But give it time…
Cheers, Pete.
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I have seen pics of my dad in those fashionable clothes. The image in burned in my retinas. 🤣🤣🤣
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I am happy to say that I never wore any like these, Shaily. Though I confess that my 1977 wedding suit had stupidly large lapels! 🙂
(By the way, you survived my last serial!)
Best wishes, Pete.
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🙂 I really missed reading that, Pete. I try to read the short nuggets you share everyday. Committing myself to a serial that I cannot put down can cause turbulance in my daily life. During your last serial that I read, I was accused of not sending my work projects on time, delaying my daughter’s bath… 😀 Once I am in, I get all crazy with the stuff you write.
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If you ever get time to read the whole story, you might enjoy the ‘role’ your character has. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.,
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That police car is so cute! But maybe it sends the wrong message…
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They were called ‘Panda Cars’, Audrey. Various types of small car were used, and they were supposed to be less ‘intimidating’.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panda_car
But taking police officers off the beat caused a huge surge in crime. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Thanks for the link; this is new to me. Cops walking beats has never been much of a thing in western North America. I do see police on bicycles downtown, but everywhere else, they’re in cars.
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Are you sure it is all gone? Some of those sweets look suspiciously fresh. 🙂 Warmest regards, Theo
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Many of the sweets in the top photo are still sold today. Some have had name changes, but a Kit Kat is still a best-selling chocolate/biscuit bar. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Oh God! There was so much I hated about the 70s! Ugly fashion. Ugly colors: remember that orange/red, mustard,and avocado green everything came in? Shag carpeting, disco…I’m stopping now. Let’s just say it’s not my favorite decade.😒
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I felt exactly the same way, Kim. Though I didn’t mind the music that much, and the films were good. 🙂
(You must have been at kindergarten)
Best wishes, Pete.
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I was 5-14 during the 70s, and was so happy when the 80s came with new wave, ruffles and bright colors.😁
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Bell bottom pants? Don’t remember much about the early seventies, I was in high school then.
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Yes, bell-bottoms, Arlene. They used to almost cover most people’s shoes. I didn’t like them. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Up north we called them ‘Loons’ and you forgot to mention platform heels!
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I didn’t wear platforms. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete. x
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Haha… some of those guy shoes were horrendous! BTW have you read a series of books by William Shaw – THE BREEN AND TOZER SERIES -set in 1968-9 in London.
I think you’d love them. http://williamshaw.com/the-breen-tozer-series/
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Thanks for the link, Jude. I had never heard of them. x
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Very much ’60s books. I like them, but you need to read them in order! I think you’d really relate to the descriptions of the people and the places.
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I bookmarked the link, but there are so many! 🙂
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Only four in this series.
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Ah, good to know. 🙂 x
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Oh my. I was 18 in 1972 . I had graduated from high school early. Started college. Got married. And sure everything from the 70 was cooler than any other decade. Youth can be blind when it comes to common sense.
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Although I wasn’t much older than you, Lauren, I thought everything about the 70s was pretty tacky and awful. The best thing about it was the films. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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Pete, that lighter is pretty swinging!
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John, that is a ‘Ronson Varaflame’, a gas-filled lighter with an adjustable flame that was a ‘premium’ product’ from the late 1960s, until this very day. It is still available, and now costs £90 to buy! It was my Dad’s lighter of choice, and my parents bought me one when I was 19. 🙂
Best wishes, Pete.
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It looks so classic, like someone in “Man From UNCLE” would use!
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Certainly a ‘masculine’ lighter, John. 🙂
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At least some very good films came out in that decade.
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True, except for these awful British ‘comedies’.
https://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/group/confessions_films/
I was going to include them, but they are ‘rude’.
Best wishes, Pete.
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