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We survived the 70s and that was no easy feat

Last week I wrote about accompanying my photographer dad on his various missions. I’d pass him various bits of equipment - but mainly my purpose was to mooch about in front of a building to give a sense of scale.

Arduous work, right? And without unionisation or pay! But I didn’t mind really because it was fun hanging out with Dad. The best part was, when work was finished he’d often treat us to a fantastic tea at The Golden Egg.

Remember these places? Unlike Little Chefs they weren’t perched at the roadside, filled with truckers. However just because they were generally found in city centres doesn’t mean The Golden Egg was posh. I mean, we were hardly talking the ‘small plates’ of virtually everywhere you go to eat these days. Back then it was BIG plates of breaded haddock, greasy sausages, gammon and chips garnished with tinned pineapple and - of course - eggs in many guises as long as they were fried.

When I think of the 70s I wonder how the heck we survived them. It was against the law to have natural fibres next to your skin - even when asleep. Everything was nylon back then. Even our bedding because we bought it from places like this:

We know those sheets aren’t really cotton

How did menopausal women cope? I have friends in their 50s who can’t bear to sleep in pyjamas or even nighties that go ‘up to the neck.’ It has to be a scrap of the lightest cotton, with the thinnest spaghetti straps. Our poor mothers were basically going to bed under - as Wikipedia puts it - ‘the first commercially successful thermoplastic polymer.’

That’s what you want when the oestrogen is surging out of your body, isn’t it? To be fully encased in thermoplastic, apart from your face. No wonder my mum was a bit snappy sometimes. Her bedding was made out of crude oil. She was literally buzzing with static electricity and then had to get up and tell me to stop swinging on our full room height synthetic net curtain.

We lived in the country, you see. A tiny dot on the map in rural West Yorkshire. You might think 70s country kids spent all their time blackberrying and gathering conkers. In fact most of it was spent swinging - no, not that kind. I mean swinging on farm gates and curtains, the latter being the more exciting option as (being nylon) it might create enough static to set your hair on fire.

Me, circa 1974, taking a short break from curtain swinging

So yeah - the 70s were pretty hairy times when every second stranger was a potential flasher and even our puddings came with a dollop of innuendo on top. Go to a small plates restaurant now and you might finish your meal with burnt hazelnuts, a minuscule tart made of gravel and a single gooseberry. The Golden Egg was all Knickerbocker Glories and Brown Derbys, which I seem to recall were doughnut-based and definitely sound on-brand-70s-pervy. Or is that just my warped mind?

‘I’m not going out with Kevin Metcalfe again. He tried to give me a Brown Derby!’

So there you have it - fried puddings and highly flammable bedding. That was our youth and yet somehow we survived it. Here’s to us!

Love,

Fiona xx

PS My new novel, ‘Tis the Damn Season, is out now and gaining some lovely Amazon reviews. You can order here!