It’s one of those decades that doesn’t always get a good press.
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| Floral tea tray, circa 1974 |
And maybe that explains the lack of an all defining title.
So, there are “The Swinging Sixties”, "The Roaring Twenties" and “The Gay Nineties” [1890s] to which the Great Depression and the build up to war has framed how we see the 1930s.
But the journalists and pundits with all their superficial and instant descriptive labels don’t seem to have bothered with the 1970s.
Now I am a child of the 60s but it was the following decade that marked out my passage from student to a young married man, with a job and mortgage, and a hot potch of a stereo, with a Pioneer deck, Wharfdale speakers and that iconic Sony receiver with its large single dial set in a wooden tower.
And I retain a fondness for that ten years and like others of my generation I have a soft spot for the ephemera, like this tray.
It was sold by Marks & Spencer’s and we bought ours sometime in 1974. It travelled with me for the next thirty years from East Manchester out to Ashton-Under-Lyne and to Chorlton, before it finally gave up the ghost.
But it’s bright floral design and heavy yellow and brown colours bring it all back.
I can’t remember how much we paid for it was a lot less than the one I came across in pop boutique on Oldham Street.
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| Tasteless Chicken soup advert, 1979 |
At which point I could wax lyrical about the loons I bought from On The Eight Day, the larva lamps in the Pit and Nelson or that Sony receiver which was the only item we lost from a burglary in the 1990s but I will stick with the tea tray.
But instead chose that tasteful advert for Chicken Soup seen in Chorlton and a promotional song for Leicester called “It’s a Leicester Fiesta" which has it all.
Location; the 1970s
Picture; the tea tray circa 1974, courtesy of Sue Hampson, and Chicken soup advert, circa 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson
*It's a Leicester Festival, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNUZIWce3cE
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