Category: 60s

I’ve never owned a pair of blue, denim jeans.

I’m probably in that 0.01% of the world’s population where a pair has never been in my wardrobe, but I was never realistically given the option.

Rather than spend money on a pair of Levi’s or Wrangler’s, the only option to me was the Tesco Home ‘n’ Wear on Balham High Road.

As a teenager in the early 70s, I earned no money, so was reliant on my mother as my clothing benefactor. This benevolence sadly only stretched the 500-yards from our flats on Balham High Road to the non-food Tesco shop further down the road – not for me anything from Reno, Nevada or Greensboro, North Carolina!  Tesco Home ‘n’ Wear, Balham was the only choice.  A consequence of this non-option was that I never owned a pair of blue denims from a famous brand.  The only thing shrinking in my bath as a teenager might have been blue, but certainly wasn’t made out of denim.

The same fate struck me with shirts. I so wanted a Ben Sherman shirt; the option I was given was one from Trutex (might as well have been Artex – arguably more fashionable and at least I could have covered my ceiling with it).

Trutex was to Ben Sherman what Hot Hits and Top of the Pops records were to the songs’ original artists.  Similar, but the collar, designed like the hat on The Flying Nun, gave it away that it was not the real thing!

I’ve never been that fashion conscious – probably scarred by the disastrous Haute Couture forced on me as an adolescent.  To me, as a teenager, a Kaftan was a dog known for its long, shiny hair; flares were things you activated if marooned at sea and (until Eurotrash was aired on Channel 4) I thought Jean-Paul Gaultier was the best full back Paris Saint Germain ever had.

I first encountered the Tooth Fairy in 1961.

I never actually met her (or him) (and assumed they lived in my Balham block of flats as you wouldn’t have wanted to walk down the High Street in the middle of the night) but was told that he/she or it carried sixpences to replace missing teeth. I worked out, in a JP Morgan-type of way, that I could stand (or lie, as I was invariably in bed when the Tooth Fairy visited) to eventually gain ten-bob, as I had twenty baby teeth.

This was my first experience of profit and loss as my gain of sixpence per tooth was quickly negated by my mother charging me a shilling to protect me the night the Tooth Fairy was coming from the Bogey Man. By the time I started the juniors in primary school I was heavily in debt to my mother.

Sixpence is worth £1.14 these days. If you haven’t got a note for your child/grandchild then there is the danger of leaving sufficient coins under their Flopsy Bunny pillow to potentially cause copper, nickel and zinc poisoning.  Might this be something the Bogey Man could protect you from?

I was destitute aged seven as Christmas was also heavily taxed: the sledges needed to be hired (there was great demand at Christmas, so the prices artificially inflated); reindeers aren’t cheap to keep and I was told there was a congestion charge for sledges (even though this wasn’t enforced in London until 2003); plus, half a sprout and mince pie crumbs cost several guineas in 1961.

Obviously, approaching 61, I realise neither the Tooth Fairy or Santa exists (I discovered this aged fourteen – as if adolescence wasn’t tough enough) but today, if there isn’t a huge amount of chocolate for me, I shall be a very unhappy Easter Bunny.

1966 is fondly remembered in England mainly for winning the World Cup. For me it was the year I was forced to watch The Sound of Music without my glasses.

I’d been wearing glasses since I was five and now, at nine, whilst I didn’t need them all the time, I did require them for watching TV and any film involving both Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer.

In the summer of 1966 I visited for the first (and last) time, the Isle of Wight. I stayed at the Ocean View Hotel which was a lie on two fronts: there was no view of any ocean (you could barely see the Solent) and it was more boarding house/prison than hotel.  Nearby Parkhurst was probably modelled on the routine there.

One evening’s entertainment was a trip from the “hotel” in Shanklin to the Odeon at Ventnor. We drove the 3.7 miles there and had bought tickets for the blockbuster musical from the previous year.  It was, after we collected our tickets, when I discovered I’d left my glasses back at the hotel.  3.7 miles was deemed too far to return to fetch them and my mother insisted I watch the film and suggested I squint (another reason she never made it as an ophthalmologist) through the entire 174-minutes.  In Germany they had a shortened version for their own cinema-going public which lasted only 138-minutes – I can only assume the scenes involving the Nazis were left out?

Watching the film with very indistinct vision meant I didn’t think the goatherd was all that lonely – I could see three of them; Maria didn’t have a few favourite things, she appeared to have bloody hundreds and in the scene where they sing: “So long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, adieu” I wondered, with ostensibly fifty or more children (several of whom were sixteen going on seventeen) on the staircase, how on earth it didn’t collapse?

Climb every mountain? Which one, I can see a couple?

In 1969 I was destined to be the next Eric Bristow as I won the darts tournament at my local youth club.

Sadly, the promise of being the successor to the Crafty Cockney (I didn’t attend elocution lessons, so was halfway there) was never to be; although my 14.3% O-level pass rate suggests that a misspent youth was evident.

My auntie Vera trained me, from an early age, to regularly hit double top – she’d tried to teach me piano on her Blüthner piano, but realised early on I’d be less Liberace, more Lazarenko. I was a dart prodigy; what Mozart was to symphonies, I was to 160 check-outs.

The youth club met in the hall of my old primary school in Balham. It did seem odd, as a twelve-year-old, a. going back there not singing Hill of the North, rejoice (which we seemed to sing every week during assembly) b. no sight of a recorder or Glockenspiel and c. it was dark outside.

We were fed copious amounts of orange squash in the days when people didn’t realise the dangers of E-numbers – it’s a curious sight, watching a group of pumped-up teenagers trying to play table-tennis as if killing a large rodent.

We’d also play snooker – well, I say snooker – the tables were the size if Fred and Joe Davis had been three-foot midgets, with less felt on the table than a very tiny piece of Fuzzy Felt.  However, it was an escape from parents, homework and Glockenspiels.

The evening of the darts final arrived – which I’d breezed through to, beating several eleven-year-old girls in the process. I’d been practising trickier check-outs with my aunt the previous night only for the other finalist to have succumbed to Scarlet Fever (not brought on (as we all believed) from watching too may episodes of Captain Scarlet).  So, by default, I won.

Although, to this day, I still think oche is something played at posh schools.

During the 60s and 70s, petrol stations started offering gifts when purchasing fuel; this was a relief for those into collecting memorabilia, but living somewhere where a vintage petrol pump might dominate the lounge.

The advantage being that 1970 World Cup coins were smaller than the actual pumps.

(I wrote about the advent of loyalty points last week at https://mikerichards.blog/2018/02/10/stamps-of-authority/)

There was an Esso garage on Balham High Road where my parents would fill up our Ford Poplar. I would as, a thirteen-year-old football fanatic, insist on visiting this garage; it was the only way we’d ever get Peter Bonetti into our flat!

As the years progressed (and you were prepared to queue for days during the 1973 oil crisis) you could collect glasses. I can only assume the principals at Standard Oil and British Petroleum believed that people in the UK, whilst owning cars, failed to possess a drinking receptible and were visiting tributaries of the Thames to drink water with their hands.

Soon many houses I visited had sets of glasses out of which you’d drink your squash; although always mildly tainted with the taste of four-star.

Some garages offered a dream, rather than faux cut-glass beakers, with the gratification of manifold sets of Green Shield Stamps; my parents would drive for miles looking for the biggest multiple.

Although, you’d easily swap several tigers in your tank for quintuple Green Shield Stamps.