Category: 60s

The nights are drawing in and with that the advent of cold weather.
I look back to my childhood in 1960s south-west London and wonder why I never had hypothermia more frequently?
My winter attire was a mac (I’ve seen thicker veils) with a belt which, when my mother put it on me, acted as a tourniquet; a yellow and black school scarf which itched so much it was like having Scarlet Fever permanently; and gloves, which were attached to a long loop of elastic, taken, I think, from my Nan’s knickers as she coincidentally never left her flat during winter. I refused to wear a balaclava as I found the thought of messing up my hair abhorrent and one of the major reasons I never joined any terrorist organisations.
Everything was marked “Michael Richards Class 7” and all this whilst wearing shorts! Captain Oates had more protection!
Nowadays there are so many German-sounding layers of clothing to keep you dry, warm and to cheat the wind. I was not allowed to wear such things as my Nan thought there was a danger I’d look like Himmler. Given his uniform was made by Hugo Boss, I fear she may have missed a trick; still, I enjoyed the sanatoria which were located by the seaside!

I remember vividly the first Pippa Dee party I ever attended.
My mother would throw such parties for her friends in our Balham flat.
The invitation was never officially extended to me as I’d have been sent to bed earlier after a mug of warm milk, a chocolate digestive and above the legal limit dose of Gripe Water (I can never drink Ouzo now without conjuring up scary bedtime stories).
I can recollect entering a lounge through a fug of Embassy cigarettes, the bouquet of Blue Nun and witnessing rather a lot of Innoxa make-up to see several women holding up Baby Doll negligées.
The nights were drawing in and my practical, eight-year-old brain, calculated that the length of this garment wasn’t practical and probably wouldn’t have been for the guests’ daughters’ Barbies.
My stay (before I could be offered a fag or a sip of Black Tower from a glass procured courtesy of the local Esso garage) was short-lived and my return to my bedroom was threatened with less Gripe Water the subsequent evening!
I’m assuming that Pippa Dee parties were replaced with Ann Summers parties – with even shorter negligées, although probably more fire retardant?
Whatever happened, a Baby Doll night dress nor a vibrating rabbit could never replace a container which kept food fresh. But then, there’s nothing sexy about a Tupperware box and certainly wouldn’t make you smile quietly to yourself!

Once a year, during the summer, in the sixties and seventies, I would leave the safety of my parents’ flat on Balham High Road and temporarily set up camp with my paternal grandparents in a rented house on the coast somewhere.
For several years, we rented a house at Greatstone, on the Kent coast; we were so close to the Dungeness nuclear power station, I’m surprised I never grew a third arm.
Money was tight and our humble abode reflected this (even the squatters had given it a bad review on Trip Advisor) and for our evening meals we were given a budget of 8/6 (42.5 new pence for my younger readers).
As we sat, waiting to order our evening dinner at a cafe in New Romney, mathematical juggling was the name of the game. (8/6 in 1970 is worth £6.24 in today’s money). Being good at darts as a 12-year-old stood me in good stead!
However, my dilemma was that I wanted sausage, egg AND chips AND cassata siciliana – the combined cost of which was ten bob – one and six over my allotted allowance.
Did I go the high cholesterol route or a lump of multi-coloured ice cream with random bits which’d stick in your teeth most of the holiday?
New Romney is famous mainly for smuggling during the 18th Century. I bet Dr Syn, the fictional anti-hero who operated around these parts, had more than eight and six to spend for his tea? I couldn’t even afford sherry trifle, let alone anything with brandy in it!

I could never have made a career in campanology.

As a teenager I sang in a church choir which would perform two concerts a year.  As I lived in the flats next door to the church on Balham High Road, my task was to call on the 600+ flats to sell tickets.

I didn’t know, in the mid-70s, that so many different doorbell chimes existed.

The task of selling tickets to hear Handel’s Messiah or Mendelssohn’s Elijah was hard (the residents were more likely to listen to “Chirpy, chirpy, cheep, cheep” than Chopin, “Ernie” than Elgar or “Shang a lang” than Shostakovich).

We thought we’d have more luck with people whose door chimes played a sophisticated tune, sadly they had the sound because they liked the tune in a cigar advert!

The most worrying noise was the bark of a clearly dangerous dog. Either the dog behind the door had trained at Wandsworth Prison or had three heads, and therefore guarding the gates of Hell (I was in my mid-twenties before I realised that Hell wasn’t on the fifth floor of my block of flats).

Many doors had spy-holes and the chances of the door being opened to a long-haired git in a cassock and surplice was never going to happen unless the Archbishop of Canterbury had moved county.

However, the most disturbing thing for a shockingly naive teenager, was the sound of “My ding-a-ling” playing as Mrs Robinson, the siren of the third floor, opened her door.  I could have died and gone to Heaven – bit like Elijah!

In the 1970s, when foreign travel started to take off, access to information at home was limited to your daily newspaper, News at Ten or a set of reliable homing pigeons; the lack of news, once abroad, was frustrating and people would scour kiosks in Spain and France hopeful of a two-day-old Daily Telegraph sent from Blighty.

Your holiday would be ruined, not just for NOT drinking the water or failing to take your Enterovioform three-years before your trip, but if you weren’t up to speed with the Test or County Championship cricket scores.  You wanted to be that person, like the major in Fawlty Towers, who goes back to the (almost built) hotel and announces that “Hampshire won!”

But was there that same demand in this country?

I remember the man who sold newspapers and magazines outside Balham Tube station, who called everyone “John”; was he visited by people who’d wandered off the beaten track (as Balham rarely gets a mention in any Michelin guide) looking for a copy of Paris Match (seeing how the latest strikes were going), Süddeutsche Zeitung (sending off for the deck-chair-sized towel offer) or El Pais (how many Brits had drunk the water?) and if he was, did he call them Jean, Johann or Juan?

Chalky White, whom you’d could identify and win £5 if you were carrying a Daily Mirror on holiday (invariably in Shanklin), is alive and well and waiting to be spotted in Bali.   Hope he’s taken his tablets!

I was never destined to become a civil engineer with the toys I was given as a kid.

In my Balham flat, growing up in the 60s, there wasn’t a sniff of Meccano; although my mum was constantly hoovering up discarded pieces of an Airfix ME110 I’d scattered in a fit of pique to the four corners of my bedroom (mum was careful hoovering as she thought she might find a miniature Rudolf Hess, although may, in the sixties, have been more constructive looking for Martin Bormann!).

I only had one rectangular piece of Lego – with which I could pretend was a table, a sentry box or bench depending on which side I laid it.

So, my creative construction juices were never encouraged as a kid.   I did have a Willy Wombat glove puppet but, as anyone who’s ever watched the National Geographic TV channel will know, marsupials aren’t renowned for their construction skills (although very good at transmitting urgent messages).

So the much-needed bridge over the River Wandle was never going to materialise with me as the project manager.

I did, however, play with my Spirograph a lot, which might have been the cause of my myopia 😊

 

 

 

 

 

In the early 70s I discovered that Aramis wasn’t just a third of a band of musketeers, but was a brand of after shave available in Balham Boot’s and something to daubed on in the unlikely event a girl might talk to me. (I could have owned Estee Lauder and girls were unlikely to talk to me).

I was a massive fan of Aramis and Paco Rabane (having not studied 17^th Century Spanish literature in any great depth meant I never thought he might have been Don Quixote’s little helper).  These were my scents of choice as a teenager.  I tried Kouros (not one of the remaining 66.6% of musketeers) but always came out in a rash – not a good look unless the girl you fancied took an inordinate interest in dermatological problems.

As my taste in after shaves became increasingly more sophisticated, I was appalled one Christmas when my paternal grandmother gave me a bottle of Avon’s Windjammer.  If I’d have wanted anything to jam my wind, I’d have bought a packet of Carter’s Little Liver Pills.

Whilst my perennial search for the perfect scent continued, I often admired the girls’ perfume selection. I was fascinated by the elegance of the packaging of YSL’s Rive Gauche – arguably one of the best right back Paris St Germain have ever had.

Whilst the shop assistants in Balham Boot’s were quite persuasive, they had nothing on Valerie Leon!

Everywhere these days, a previously bare wall, has been covered in graffiti; usually with uninterpretable hieroglyphics people have tattooed on their upper arm for a bet assuming it’s Japanese.

I blame Banksy (the man with the spray can and mouse stencil, not the Stoke & England World Cup hero).

As a kid in the sixties I can only remember one piece of graffiti in my formative years. As you entered Wandsworth Common from the Balham end, displayed on the first wall, you saw Ban The Bomb.

When I was five, I could read, but not having lived through the second world war, assumed, having been subjected to lots of music as a child, that The Bomb were a group and this message had been daubed by fans of The Beatles; The Stones or The Swinging Blue Jeans.

As I grew older and realised that CND wasn’t a shortened form of the Irish group Clannad, it dawned on me which bomb they were talking about.

Shame it didn’t read Ban The Bombe as I’ve never been a fan of circular ice cream desserts.

Toffee apples, despite purporting to being part of your five-a-day, would not be a food (unless he or she’d been struck off by the BDA and you’d not been informed) your dentist would recommend consuming.

But because toffee apples tend to only be eaten on one specific day (like dates on Boxing Day), and unless you’ve an appointment on the 31st October, this warning will never be relayed to you.

It is odd that toffee apples tend to feature only on Halloween. Whilst studying Macbeth for English Lit O-level in 1973 I cannot recall, whenever the three witches appeared, that they were doing unspeakable things with apples – they tended to stick to frogs and newts.

Apple-bobbing would feature at many of the children’s parties I attended in the south London area as a kid, although, once parents realised this was much like water-boarding, it was quickly replaced with pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey; much safer – small child, sharp object, blinded – what could possibly go wrong?

For me, the novelty of toffee apples stopped the moment the last piece of toffee was eaten. I had no interest in the actual fruit. I look back and wonder, if I’d have known how much crowns cost, should I have opted for candy floss?  No, because that’s bad for your teeth.  Hang on a minute……