When a bit of your past ….. gently taps your shoulder

 Yesterday I came across my wage slip for 1973 into 1974.

A 70's indulgence

For that first year as a teacher, I earned £1735, which breaks down into £144 .58 pence a month and the staggering £33 a week.

Trying to find how my £33 compared with average weekly earnings has proved a tad difficult but according to a series of Parliamentary questions in Hansard in Octover 1973 in The Minister regretted "that insufficient information is available from which to calculate national average wage rates in manufacturing industries” but quoted from a  a selection of trades which had been investigated that the weekly wage for men was £41.50 and for women came in at £21.*

All of which throws up that observation about dammed statistics, and which offers up the chance for heaps of people to pile in with their own research.

Instead, I have turned up the cost of a basket of things in 1973, ranging from a pint of beer at 18½p, milk at 5½p, bread at 11½p and the Daily Mirror coming in at 3p.

I could have added the big items like a black and white TV £61. 75 or an automatic washing machine [£106] and a Ford Cortina, [£1,075.00].

But these were items we didn’t have.  Our black and white telly was rented, our fridge was a gift.

Now, I am still trying to remember how much the mortgage was on our two up two down in Ashton-Under-Lyne the cost of which we borrowed from the Halifax for the princely sum of £4,500.  There will be someone who can do the sums but just not me.

And that is it.

Pictures; lava lamp, 2007, Saltmiser, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license., 

 * Wages, Hansard Volume 874: debated on Tuesday 21 May 1974, https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/1974-05-21/debates/45c0196a-c200-43fe-8c02-e9ec52c7d30e/Wages

**The Cost of things, https://www.retrowow.co.uk/social_history/70s/cost_1973.php

When comic strips don’t get any better ……… The Perishers

For Lois and Uncle Michael, 1949-2003

 I first stumbled across the Perishers sometime around 1967 or 1968.

They featured in a comic strip in the Daily Mirror, and had first appeared in 1959.

The central five characters consisted of four children and a dog.

Wellington was an orphan boy who lived alone with his large dog, called Boot who was a generally affable and mellow character, given to flights of fancy and daydreaming. 

Marlon was  amiable but not very bright. 

Maisie appeared on the surface as the girl next door but was domineering and a bully, with a tendency to become violent if she didn't get her own way, with a scream that could stun woodworm. 

Baby Grumpling always  spoke  entirely in lower-case letters.*

On the scene occasionally came The Crabs, Plain Jane, who was a friend of Maisie’s, Fiscal: a millionaire's son who always complained about the problems of being rich, and a wealth of other bizarre and funny kids and animals.

And as so often happens with long running comic strips there were a series of catch phrases, of "Go-faster stripes", "Need any help with that paper bag ?" and "Yeuk!!" have remained with me and often fall off my lips at the appropriate moment.

So "Go-faster stripes", were the additional features Wellington attached to the buggies he tried to sell to Marlon, while "Need any help with that paper bag ?" was Maisie’s opening words when ever anyone opened a bag of crisps, all the more annoying because she could detect the sound of the bag opening from incredible distances.

And lastly "Yeuk!!" was always Marlon’s response when Maisie attempted to kiss him.

And armed with these, and a few more catch phrases, our heroes encountered countless adventures, which appealed to a 17 year old, who also followed the Magic Roundabout.

The five followed me north from south east London to Manchester and were quickly embraced by my close friends, to the point where Lois was often seen as Maisie, and Mike as a brighter version of Marlon, and John as the savvy and technically minded Wellington.

All of which left me as Boot, a role I assumed with weary resignation, but which was not without an element of accuracy, given that I like Boot have always been prone to flights of fancy and daydreaming, which in Boot’s case included the conviction that he was in fact an 18th-century English lord enchanted into a dog.

The strip was created by Maurice Dodd, drawn  by Dennis Collins and later by Mr. Dodd and Bill Mevin.

Once I had a whole collection of Perisher’s books made up from the newspaper cartoon strip, alas many have not survived the passing years, although a few have sat gathering dust in a corner of the cellar, and this 1978, 21st edition is one of them.  

Helpfully it also offered up a biography of my five pals, reminding me that Boot’s response to many situations was “By the Lord Harry”, Marlon liked inch thick ketchup sandwiches which invariably burst out of the bread to cover anyone close by, Wellington had been named after his own footwear, Maisie first encountered Marlon because he was too slow to "even get out of the way of an on rushing tortoise” and Baby Grumpling who regularly helped himself to the Sunday collection at church explaining “Why do they keep handing it round if they don’t want you to take it?**

So that is about it, but as I close I am reminded that Uncle Michael would sometimes refer to one of my sons as Baby Grumpling, but my lips are sealed as to which of them he referred to.

Location the Daily Mirror

Pictures; the famous five from The Perishers No 21, Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins, A Mirror Book, 1978

*The Perishers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Perishers

** The Perishers No 21, Maurice Dodd & Dennis Collins, A Mirror Book, 1978

Chicken bryani in the Plaza on Upper Brook Street on Saturdays in the 70s

For those who were born around the mid 20th century who queued to see the film Spartacus, remembered with profound sadness the death of Ottis Reading and raged at the Vietnam War it is more than likely that if you were in Manchester during the late 60s into the 80s you will have eaten at the Plaza on Upper Brook Street.

I had almost forgotten my beery nights out which always seemed to end at the Plaza until a post about breakfast on my friend’s Lois’s blog brought it all back.*

I have yet to meet anyone who ate there who does not have fond memories of the place, and has their own story. Mine are many.

 I remember the night of the Milk Snatcher’s Ball at UMIST** when we fell into the cafe with our baby doll nightdresses which we had borrowed from two flatmates securely hidden under our jeans and tee shirt or the night of the vivid conversation between a man with a broken hand and his girl friend about the relative merits of an A &E unit in down town Berlin.

I am sure there were many things on the menu but I can only ever remember eating the chicken or meat bryani, half of which cost 3/6d in 1970 and was more than enough for two.

The chicken arrived on a pile of yellow rice and raw onion with a small pot of the curry sauce and after vast quantities of cheap student union beer it went down well.

Now our friend Mike had never taken to curry and so at 3 in the morning on Upper Brook Street he would ask for a roast dinner which he got, with everything including the roast potatoes, chicken, gravy and just possibly Yorkshire puddings too. It was as my friend Lois said that "everything was possible at the Plaza."

Sometime around 1972 I stopped going. I suppose it was a mix of things really. My girlfriend of the time wasn’t over keen and by the end of that year we were living off Grey Mare Lane and soon after that out in Ashton, which meant that Upper Brook Street was a serious trek.

I suspect we were also playing at being grown up and grownups eat sensibly at places like the Bella Napoli off Albert Square and on Sundays in China Town. Looking back it was my loss.

And then it had gone. When exactly I don’t know, although I have friends who still went there in the early 80s for Sunday dinner.

Now I know that with age comes a rosy nostalgia about the past, and no doubt my sons can talk of their own food dives and late night experiences but for my generation the Plaza was special, even if it was hard to remember much of the night the following day.

Picture by kh1234567890 posted on flicker photostream

*http://loiselsden.wordpress.com/2012/04/14/breakfast/

**My friend Marc always referred to it as the Tech but he went there while I and my friends Jack, Greevz, Mike, Lois and John slummed it across the road at the Poly which we always called the College of Commerce which had been its pre amalgamation name. There were other things we called it of which the College of Knowledge was one, but mercifully never Colcom which really put you out with the nerds in the dustbins.

The Art of the 1970’s ….

It’s one of those decades that doesn’t always get a good press.

Floral tea tray, circa 1974

For some it is the time of loons, lava lamps, messy wars in the Far East, and “The Winter of Discontent”.

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.

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

Loons, lava lamps and growing up ............ the 1970's

Larva lamps I have known

Now it is odd the way that some decades get the thumbs up and others are relegated to the dustbin of history.

So the 1960's will always be the “Swinging 60’s, the 1890's will remain the “Gay 90's” and the 1920’s will be forever the “Roaring 20s”

And by contrast the following decade which began with a world depression and ended with a world war will never be remembered for the advances in technology, much that was innovative in design and culture and a growing prosperity in some parts of the country.

All of which brings me to the 1970's much berated by  journalists and second rate historians who are content to fall back on the lazy stereo types of striking workers, questionable fashions and larva lamps.

Of course those shallow titles, often coined on a slow day in a newsroom do contain much that is true of a period.

For my generation the 1960's was an exciting time in all sorts of ways while for my mother the 30's would always be the Means Test, mass unemployment and the slow slide to war.

Still a student, 1970

And any history of the 1970s does have to take in the three day week, the widespread industrial conflict and plenty of very grim wars from Vietnam and Cambodia, to southern Africa and the Middle East.

But nasty wars and equally nasty dictators along with strikes, tasteless design and awful fashions can be found in any decade during the last two centuries.

So it’s not that I make a special defence of the 1970's but just that like any time in history it was a mix of the good and bad and the happy and sad added to which it was the decade I passed from being a student into the world of work and along the way got married and bought a house.

All of which are reckoned to be pretty big stages in anyone’s growing up.

And set against the dismal days of the three day week and later the bin dispute there was the legislation to address equal pay and some aspects of discrimination in the workplace, a determination to challenge racist attitudes and a whole range of exciting new ideas in fashion and popular culture.

Down at the eight day loolkng for loons and strawberry perfume, 1973

At which point someone will cite the underlying issues of our economic decline, the continuation of the huge disparity in wealth, the persistence of racism and sexism and some very dodgy TV programmes.

But all of these could be found in the 60s and in the decade that followed but alas tend to be ignored.

So with this in mind I rather think I will set off on a new series exploring the 1970s and include a few of the things that were special to me including the lava lamp which despite everything my kids will say I still think was pretty neat.

Pictures; lava lamp, 2007, Saltmiser, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license., Andrew Simpson, 1970, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and ; On the Eighth Day, 111 Oxford Street, in April 1973, m00173, y H. Milligan, H.,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

Shopping the years …… with Habitat

The blog doesn’t do nostalgia … it’s a false and dangerous place, where the sun always shines during summer holidays and Wagon Wheels never lose their size.

But just sometimes it worms its way into the blog and in the case of these Habitat catalogues it is allowed.

If you are of a certain age to have thrilled at the first time you heard “She Loves You”, felt the light go out at the news of the death of Otis Reading and trembled during the Cuban Missile Crisis, then Habitat will resonate.

It was the go to place for those of us rebeling at our parents taste, and wanting to set up home with the exciting designs of the 1960s and 70s.

Much of what they sold was relatively cheap and allowed us to think we were chic, and different.

And even if after an hour of wandering through the show room you came out with just a set of wine glasses or ceramic pot advertising “Dripping” you felt you were up there with Conran, Quant, and heaps of forgotten pop stars.

These catalogues were sent over by my friend Ann in France.  

I had finished a story on design and history with an appeal for anything Habitat.*

Ann replied with “In response to your request, I have an assortment of these, from, I think , when the Habitat shop opened in Manchester.

It was when I was at Art College, and our tutor took us on a visit.

After having to search for good design in large stores, it was wonderful to find that everything in the same shop was well designed.

I have long been a fan of Conran, and much of our first and second home was based on what we saw in the Conran House, and Kitchen books. And later on his book on France.

I laughingly said to Howard, what Andrew needs is a couple of days over here, with a small van.

Then I went to look for the Habitat magazines.  I have about 20 dating from 1972, which was the year after we got married.

Will shake off the vintage dust, and send a couple of pictures, when I've got my breath back!”

And sure enough she did with the promise that some will come back with friends returning home after visiting Ann and Howard.

So there you are …… a little bit of 60s and 70s design when we were all so young.

And yes I suppose it is a slice of nostalgia

Next; a wander through the insides.

Location; the 1960s and 70s

Pictures; catalogues from Habitat, circa 1970scourtesy of Ann Love 

*Wendy houses …… and a bit of social history, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2023/06/wendy-houses-and-bit-of-social-history.html

The forgotten picture …… and a heap of stories

Today, with the passage of 45 years I have no idea where the picture was taken or exactly when.

I know it will be sometime between April 1979 and August 1982 and it featured Michael Foot at a demonstration organised by the Labour Party.

In the March of ’79 the Labour Party had been defeated in the General Election and in the following two- and a-bit years the new Conservative Government reduced public spending at a time when unemployment was beginning to rise.

The response of the labour movement was to organise a series of large public demonstrations.  The first was in Liverpool and over the course of the next few years there were more, along with marches against many of the policies of the new Tory Government.

I was at the 1980 Liverpool rally and the one in Birmingham three years later and I rather think this picture is from neither of those events.

But someone will know.

For many years the picture hung on a wall but with the passage of time was moved several times until without its frame it was put away and finally came out of the shadows last week.

I had bought the image from the Morning Star which had covered the event and a requisite of purchasing it was that I had to take out a  £ share in the newspaper.

And as so often happens round about the time I found Mr. Foot I also came across my Membership card for The People's Press Printing Society, which my Wikipedia tells me “is a readers' co-operative with the purpose of owning and publishing a left-wing, British, daily newspaper. 

The co-operative was established in 1945, with shares sold at £1. Originally the paper was titled the Daily Worker, but the publication was re-launched as the Morning Star in 1966.

On 6 January 1946, at the Albert Hall in London, Bill Jones, the leader of the London busmen's trade union, handed over the formal document of transfer to William Rust (editor of the Daily Worker). Ownership of the Daily Worker was transferred from the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) to the PPPS, with CPGB retaining editorial and political control of the paper until in 1951, the Daily Worker Co-operative Society was established to act as the nominal publishers of the paper.

The Daily Worker Co-operative Society became the Morning Star Co-operative Society which later became bankrupt and the sole ownership for the publication of the Morning Star fell under the People's Press Printing Society. 

The People’s Press Printing Society has a difficult financial existence, making a £41,179 loss in 2013 and a £1,137 surplus in 2014”.

So as the society is still going I guess that still makes me a member.

Leaving me just to say that I can date the photograph to between 1979 and 1982, because the address on the card was where I lived during those three years.

And while there I bought heaps of those campaign badges to support and highlight cuts in public services, factory closures and the “great” international issues of the day.

All of which I had an opinion on and would argue the case to anyone in ear shot.

And that pretty much is that.

Others will have their favourite badge and I did have difficulty choosing from my 40 which are all that have survived the four decades and more.

But they are my choice

Pictures; Michael Foot addresses a large open air meeting, circa 1979-82, courtesy of the Morning Star, and badges I wore, circa 1979 to 87, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The People's Press Printing Society, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Press_Printing_Society

Forgotten election campaign posters nu 1 .......... 1979

Now the poster has faded with age.

Once, forty five years ago it sat in our window, moved after the election to a wall in the bathroom and finally got put away, only to be rediscovered today.

The message referred to the industrial conflicts which had led to the three day week during the previous Conservative Government under Mr Heath.

The result of the 1979 election was a victory for the Conservatives.

The history of that election, the subsequent three Tory victories and the final election of a Labour Government will be for another time.

Location; Britain

Picture; Labour election poster, 1979, in the collection of Andrew Simpson

The Art of Habitat ………………

Now if you are of a certain age, the word Habitat means style, exciting designs, and a way of living which marked you off from what your parents liked.*

Added to which during its early years, Habitat was relatively cheap, allowing you to fill your first home with innovative furniture, bold light fittings, a range of kitchen stuff and some “quirky other things”.

And even on those lean months, there was enough smallish inexpensive items for you to splash out a couple of quid on something which was fun to look at and had a use.

No Saturdays would be quite complete without a visit to the store on John Dalton Street, and occasionally out to Wythenshawe, while growing up in Eltham offered up a trip to the store at Bromely.

We still have lots of odd Habitat bits knocking around, but all pretty much come from its heyday in the 1960s and 70s.

Sadly, none of the well-thumbed catalogues survived, although I do have a Habitat head, which Virginia bought for a few pennies as a present for me.

It had been part of a marketing campaign, and with that stunning business acumen after the campaign was over the company sold the  heads off.

And over the years I bought into these silly items, including a set of cardboard Penguins from 1978 and a couple of bizarre looking fish.

All of them proved talking points for years, but only the head has survived.

Perhaps other people have some similar remnants of those Habitat campaigns or perhaps even a catalogue which they would share with me.

We shall see.

Location; our dining room

Pictures; The Art of Habitat, circa 2002, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Habitat, Our Heritage, https://www.habitat.co.uk/help/our-heritage

...... "to be young was very heaven" ..... growing up in the 1960s & 70s

Now I am always wary of giving a decade a title and with it a description.

I grew up in the 1960s and became grown up in the 70s.

The first is always portrayed as the swinging decade and the following as the dismal decade.

And of course there is some truth in both.

To be 14 in 1964 was to be in very heaven.  It began with the music and that feeling that we could all be, "Beautiful boys with bright red guitars in the spaces between the stars" *

And it followed on with the fashions in clothes, furniture and films all adding to that sense that here was something different where anything was possible.

For those just a tad older than me, it meant leaving a job on a Friday and walking into a new one on Monday, and blowing Friday's wages on a set of Ben Sherman shirts, or Quant make up, with an eye on a stylish set of fabrics from Habitat.

By contrast the 70s were one of those lean dismal periods dominated by growing industrial unrest, stack shoes and lava lamps.

That said I liked and still like lava lamps, along with loon trousers, and much else about the 70s.

As for the 1960s, there is something slightly at odds with what I lived through.

I was a boy from south east London, at home on Well Hall Road, Eltham High Street and Woolwich market.

I didn’t have the spending power of those at work and no one told me about the Marque Club until I left for Manchester in 1969.

And so, I saw much of that swinging period at a distance, taking in the films of Michael Cane, and Terence Stamp, watching Jean Shrimpton and Twiggy on the news, and wondering if I had the chance would I be a Mod or a Rocker.

On balance it would have been a Mod, and with the limited money I had that was where I slowly progressed, but in the absence of friends with scooters and Parkas, I opted for the 161 bus or the 8.40 to Charing Cross.

Leaving me starting the 70s in Manchester at The Twisted Wheel and an introduction to what would become known as Northern Soul, and wandering across my newly adopted city, exploring all that it had to offer.

And then by the middle of the decade, buying our first house out in Ashton, getting married and starting the job I did for 35 years.  All of which marked my passage into becoming grown up.

I suspect many who read this story will have similar experiences, and like me cherish both decades for what they offered and what we did during them.

So in the words of Brian Patten, "My celluloid companions, it’s only a few years
Since I knew you.  Something in us has faded.
Has the Terrible Fiend, That Ghastly Adversary,
Mr Old Age, Caught you in his deadly trap,
and come finally to polish you off,
His machinegun dripping with years … ?"**

Which is far too serious, so instead, I will call time with Roger McGough’s Vinegar,
"sometimes
i feel like a priest
in a fish & chips queue
quietly thinking
as the vinegar runs through
how nice it would be
to buy supper for two"***

Location; the far away decades

Pictures; from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Mrs Albion You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter, Adrian Henri

**Where are you now, Batman,? Brian Pattern

***Vinegar, Roger McGough

All three from The Mersey Sound, 1967, Penguin

Wendy houses …… and a bit of social history

Today I leave myself open for a bit of ridicule and perhaps worse, but I can think of no better way to learn about our recent past than to wander around those pretend show rooms.

They offer you a vision of what your home would look like if you bought a heap of furniture, decorative kitchen utensils and that thing you can use to extract the core from an apple.

I wish I had kept all my old Habitat catalogues from the late 1960s and 70s, because at a glance they tell the story of what we thought were new, chic, and must have items.

I say we, but of course it was the designers and the companies who did the thinking and us, or at least me who did the buying and then tried fitting them into rooms full of hand me down furniture.

And in the same way I suspect the latest offerings will provide future historians much to write about.

But I wonder if they will be kind about the orange and brown 70s colour schemes and the uncomfortable chairs which were suspended from the ceiling along with bean bags and wine carafes.

Leaving me just to appeal for old Habitat catalogues.

Location; the past

Picture; John Lewis showrooms, Cheadle Royal, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Is it really 50 years? …….. Tapestry, Decimal Day ... and that seminal haircut

Now I don’t usually do anniversary stories, for the simple reason that once you start ….. everyday can offer an event which it could be argued is worth a story.

New Money Snap, 1971

But 1971 is perhaps a year which shouldn’t go unremarked.

And here I confess it is purely a personal response.

It was my second year at the College of Commerce, or as we called it the College of Knowledge, which was situated on Minshul Street in the heart of the city.

That location proved a pretty neat opportunity to dodge going to the library and instead exploring all that Manchester had to offer, which for a lad from south east London was a lot.  

I got to see the Northern Quarter before it became the Northern Quarter, spent most lunch times in one of the many Chinese and Asian restaurants which offered three course meals for three shillings during the midday lunch rush and explored all the twisty turny streets of character.

And for those who wonder about just what a three shilling meal was, 1971 was the year when the price became 15p, which seems an even more outlandish charge for a starter, main course and pudding.

At the time of Decimal Day there was that widespread belief that businesses would round price up, and that some people would be confused.

I can’t now remember if prices did go up, or just how far people were baffled by the new currency and its relation to £.s.d.  

But I did recently come across the New Money Snap game which was to be played at home by people of all ages as preparation for the changeover.

I had completely forgotten it, but in turning out some old family stuff, I came across our copy.

The instructions point out that “The rules for ‘New Money Snap’ are the same as for ordinary snap with the additional rule that snap can be called where the money value is the same”.

Our pack is still in pristine condition, which rather makes me think that no one was at all confused, or worried about the changeover.

Just whether Julia paid for her copy of the LP Tapestry by Carol King in new money I have no idea, but sometime late in that year I sat listening to it in her room in Fallowfield.

Before the haircut, 1971

It was and remains one of my favourite LP’s and a copy has sat with the vinyl collection from that time.

That said back then, I don’t remember me thinking that this was a seminal moment, although later that year the hair cut might have been regarded as such.

Like most students I had shoulder length hair which on occasion was parted down the middle, but even 50 years ago the warning signs were there that I was on the way to losing it, and on a whim one Tuesday morning I went “skinhead”.

The barber’s was on Portland Street in what is now the Ibis Hotel facing Piccadilly Gardens.  It was one of those where you stepped off the street down a flight of stairs and into the room.  I can’t remember who was more surprised, me or the barber and the assorted other customers, but in a mater of minutes it was gone, and for a short while I was the “skin head student” at the College.

50 years on

Lecturers thought I must have been going for an interview, and friends were baffled.

Now 50 years on, there is very little left to cut, so 1971 marked a moment of transition.

Pictures; playing cards from New Money Snap, 1971, and pictures from an album,  from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Tapestry, Carol King, 1971, Side 1 "I Feel the Earth Move,"So Far Away", "It's Too Late", "Home Again" "Beautiful", "Way Over Yonder",  Side 2 "You've Got a Friend”, "Where You Lead”, "Will You Love Me Tomorrow?" "Smackwater Jack","Tapestry"

The silly story from sometime in the 1970s …. the unforgettable headline ….a pair of loons …. and that lava lamp

I am in a reflective mood brought on by a conversation about the 1970s, which remains one of those unfashionable decades.

So, while the 1960s will always be the “Swinging 60s” and the 1920s “the Roaring 20s”, history and the popular press has been less kind to the decade which will always be remembered for the Three Day Week, the Milk Snatcher and Apollo 13, not to forget the Vietnam War, the Bay City Rollers and Ernie, the fastest Milkman in the West. 

I have fond memories of both the 1960s and the 70s.  

I grew up, went to school, passed my A levels, and had my heart broken a dozen times between 1966 and 69, and then came to Manchester, graduated from the College of Knowledge, started work, got married and bought a house all during the first half of the 1970s.

So with all that in mind, I come to that memorable headline from the News of World, which was required reading, if only because it offered up some bizarre stories, like this one, “Nudist welfare man's model wife fell for the Chinese hypnotist from the Coop bacon  factory”. 

It was coined by the journalist, Monty Levy who was a sub editor at the News of the World, and if you follow the link there is more about him.

Leaving me just to throw in loons, and lava lamps as well as  including the one photograph of me which has survived from the early part of that decade.

The rest as they say is for everyone to offer up their own treasured memories of that period, and for me to be reunited with Mr. Levy’s headline which I could only remember bits of.

But having posted part of it, sure enough someone came up with full wording.

And that is that, or it would have been but for my discovery of this picture where you could buy your loons, along with the sticks of incense, and all manner of vinyl.

By the time this picture of the Eighth Day was taken, I had reverted to short hair, and embarked on the wonderful world of work, picking up a mortgage and house along the way, and marking my own transition from a carefree student to grown up.

Pictures; lava lamp, 2007, Saltmiser, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license., Andrew Simpson, 1970, from the collection of Andrew Simpson, and ; On the Eighth Day, 111 Oxford Street, in April 1973, m00173, y H. Milligan, H.,  courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

*Tributes to former Barrow journalist with talent for headline writing, The Mail, Barrow,February 22nd, 2016,  https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/barrow/16459621.tributes-to-former-barrow-journalist-with-talent-for-headline-writing/

The Golden Egg …….. appeal

Now, does anyone have a picture of a Golden Egg restaurant?  

It must be your own and not taken from the internet.

Added to which is thee any one out there with memories of eating at one of establishments please?

You can contact me via Facebook, Twitter, or leave a comment on the blog.

Thank you

Picture; from the collection of Andy Robertson, circa 1968

Getting prepared ………… Decimal Day ………. 1971

Now for anyone who has forgotten, and for all those who never knew, Decimal Day was February 15th, 1971, and it ushered in the decimalization of our currency.

Out went £sd, or again for those who don’t know, pounds, shillings and pennies and in came the simplified £ and new pence.

Hence forth a £ consisted of 100 new pence, which did away with the historic and wee bit confusing arrangement where a £ was made of 20 shillings, and a shilling was made up of twelve pennies.

In the process coins which went back into the long and distant past ceased to exist.

These included the shilling,  and the Happenny, joining the half crown, threepenny bit and the farthing.

Now most of my generation and although those that went before me, had no problem with counting pennies, shillings and Pounds, but I concede that in creating a decimal system was more logical.

Looking back at old news programmes, there were some who struggled with the change and mindful that it could be confusing, the Government ran a huge publicity campaign.

And out of that came New Money Snap, a game to be played at home by people of all ages.

I had completely forgotten it, but in turning out some old family stuff, I came across our copy.

The instructions point out that “The rules for ‘New Money Snap’ are the same as for ordinary snap with the additional rule that snap can be called where the money value is the same”.

Our pack is still in pristine condition, which rather makes me think that no one was at all confused, or worried about the changeover.

Location; the UK











Pictures; playing cards from New Money Snap, 1971, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

A little bit of our collective past ........ art and the 1970s

Now I know it’s not rocket science to say that the art you see on advertising posters, books and packaging reflects the styles of the period.

My favourites are the images that were popular in the 1950s and 60s, which had a bold and attractive appearance and were used to sell everything from fish paste, railway tickets to newspapers and clothes.

This one dates from 1971 and was the front cover for the Belmont Garden Fete in Cheadle which was the annual event staged to raise money and make people aware of the work of the Manchester and Salford children’s charity which is now the Together Trust.

As part of the research into the history of the charity for the book commemorating their upcoming 150th anniversary, the archivist of the Trust shared this with me.

And I like it, not least because it remains a very familiar style.

Location; Cheadle




Picture; the programme of the Belmont Garden Fete, 1971, courtesy of the Together Trust

*A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust

All you ever wanted to know about cooking the 1970s way

Now cook books are very personal things and they as much about the person who owns them as the period in which they were made.

Most of the ones I own date from the 1970s through to the 90s, and reflect that constant wish to recreate a recent holiday and my love of all things Mediterranean.  So we have shed loads of books on Italian and Greek food a few from North Africa and the Middle East and one from Portugal which I am well aware faces onto the Atlantic.

Added to which there are some from Elizabeth David from the 1950s and two which mother was given and were written in the 1940s and came from the USA.

They sit with those I collected while researching the kitchens of the 18th and early 19th century and have pretty much been unopened for years.

Occasionally I will get one down and leaf through the pages but if I am honest it is more to do with looking at the pictures.

It is something that I my friend Lois often write about on her blog.

But unlike me she explores many of the old recopies and has been known to recreate them.

We both are fascinated at how the books. Manuals and cook cards let you into the history of the period, and there I shall finish with just a sides way look at the 1978 St Michael All Colour Cookery Book by Jeni Wright, which along with the books of the Galloping Gourmet open up the much derided 1970s.

Picture; cover of St Michaels All Colour Cookery Book by Jeni Wright, 1978

*Lois Elsden, loiselsden.com, loiselsden.co.uk

When you still sent your films off in the post ........... another of those lost ways of doing things

Cherrytree Laboratories, 1979

It’s funny what you find on the cellar floor.  

I must have passed this receipt from Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd a dozen times and never bothered to pick it up.

It will have fallen out of a pile of papers long since deposited down there for safe keeping.

But now it is a little bit of history for I doubt that many people still send films off to be processed and await their return as 9 by 7 paper pictures.

Today the digital camera and the mobile phone have all but made the old fashioned process of using film and chemicals almost a thing as dead as the telegram and the VHS recorder.

I can’t of course now remember what the images were that Cherrytree Laboratories processed for me, but as they were black and white they would have been possibly the first I took using that old reliable camera the Pentax K1000.

Already by December of 1979 I was beginning to develop and print my own black and white pictures but because I never got into the more complicated process of colour development this would have been left to the commercial firms.

Paris 1980

And now like most people I use a digital camera, straight to the computer and all that wait to wonder if the pictures worked has gone, for in an instant it is possible to judge the quality of the shot and decide to take it all over again.

All of which has its advantages but there are of course downsides, not least that simple one that fewer and fewer photographs ever make it to become a paper image.

Instead they are locked in a computer seen by a handful of people and in time are just discarded or lost as operating systems move on.

Not that this is ll doom and gloom, for the very technology that has made digital pictures so popular has also allowed people to post them on the net and social networking sites which will reach thousands in a click of the mouse.

So not all bad then.

All of which brings back me Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd of Union Road, Sheffield.  I went looking for them
but could only come up with one reference in the Gazette for 1980 which recorded that  the Health and Safety Executive had announced that the firm along with a string of others “during the month ending April 30th 1980, has made special exemption orders relating to the employment of women and/or young persons.”

Paris 1981

The particular bit of legislation is dense and so I will leave it to others to work out what was meant.

As for the firm I couldn’t find another reference and a visit to Union Road revealed nothing which looked at all industrial.

Someone will no doubt put me right, but until them this is all I have for Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd and a way of making your snaps into pictures for the album.

But like so many new innovations the demise of the film led to the loss of many jobs.

And so I shall the last word to my friend Debbie who remembered, "the thrill when you came home from work and the bulky envelope was on the mat - with no idea what the photos turned out like.  

On the downside of digital, lots of British jobs lost printing chemicals etc no longer so necessary."

Pictures; receipt from Cherrytree Laboratories Ltd, 1979 and Paris, 1980 & 1981 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

* The London Gazette, May 21 1980, https://www.thegazette.co.uk/London/issue/48190/page/7366/data.pdf

The Old Grey Whistle Test, Benny Hill and close by 12.25

Sometimes it is well to remember there was a time when there were only three TV channels, and those of us just about to buy a colour TV thought we were on the cutting edge of home entertainment.

Picture; from the collection of Graham Gill

Beer at 13p a can, and British Sherry from 45p in 1974

This is no way a nostalgic trip down a lane where everything was better, cheaper and in the case of washing machines lasted longer.

On the other hand looking at comparing adverts from the recent past can be a real lesson in how things have changed, even given of course that wages reflected and matched the prices here being advertised in the Winerama.

I tried the telephone, it didn’t exist.

Picture; from the collection of Graham Gill