Category: 70s

Until the mid-Seventies I thought Dr Crippen was the fifth Beatle.
In 1964 my dad took me to Madame Tussaud’s to see the newly-installed Beatles waxworks.
I was seven and looking forward to seeing the Fab Four.
The train and bus journey from Balham to north-west London was a familiar one as my paternal grandmother lived nearby, so a visit to Madame Tussaud’s killed two birds with one stone – not dissimilar to Dr and the late Mrs Crippen!
Having made our way round the exhibition I remember thinking to myself that George Harrison looked a bit like President Kennedy, when I realised it actually was JFK (who wasn’t the fifth Beatle, either) – the clue being he was on his own, not holding a guitar and wasn’t part of a pop-combo involving Eisenhower, Harry Truman or FDR.
Modern culture box ticked, dad suggested a trip downstairs to the Chamber of Horrors.
I’d watched the initial episodes of Dr Who (albeit from behind a sofa) so the thought of being face to face (or face to wax on this occasion) with a selection of poisoners didn’t fazed me.
Except it did later that evening, as I couldn’t sleep thinking the likes of Crippen, Haigh and Christie were in the next flat! I’ve never had nightmares like it – except when I’d drunk Newcastle Brown Ale mistaking it for Virol.
It took several decades before I visited the Chamber again, in comparison, Hitler seemed quite innocuous; probably because he wasn’t wearing glasses like Crippen or Christie?

During the evening of December 24th 1978, it snowed in Balham.
It wasn’t until after I’d sung the last verse of “Hark, the herald angels sing”, and stepped into a scene from a Bing Crosby film, that I realised the change in the weather.
For a Nano-second it looked idyllic, until I realised that my transport home at one o’clock in the morning to Carshalton, was my 400cc motorbike.
The trains had long stopped running, plus my mother had warned me that travelling on the night bus was how you caught VD, so motorbike, that evening sponsored by Captain Oates, it was.
I immediately regretted not asking Santa for a John Curry annual rather than the Barry Sheene one I’d requested at the Balham Co-op earlier that month.
This was the winter of discontent, an appropriate noun as I anticipated the slowest motorbike ride ever. However, going along the relatively flat Balham High Road was fine until I reached Church Lane, which, at that moment in time, looked like the top of the ski jump at Garmisch-Partenkirchen!
I clung to my bike like Marcel Marceau fighting against an invisible wind, to the bottom, to Amen Corner (famous for its joke shop, which seemed decidedly inappropriate that evening).
From there on it’s flat and got back on my bike, thinking it must already be Easter!
I arrived back safely, only to face the return journey the next day.
I have yet to get the feeling back in many of my five extremities!

As an eight-year-old, at Christmas, I believed there were two ways I could get drunk – like my relatives.
The first was Pimm’s:
My auntie, who also lived in our Balham flats, whilst being sponsored by Embassy before they ventured into supporting snooker and darts, would have bottles of virtually everything alcoholic in her flat except potcheen (and she didn’t have that because of her allergic reaction to potatoes).
It was tradition on Christmas evening to go to my auntie’s and, whilst everyone else got Pimm’s, I had a glass full of half the contents of the greengrocers opposite the flats, lots of lemonade, a tiny umbrella, as used by The Borrowers, but not a sniff of Pimm’s.
The second route, I believed, was with the help of the mandatory Christmas box of chocolate liqueurs.
However, after eating a third, I’d already began to feel nauseous. Given that you need to eat 700 grams (that’s fourteen Picnics!) to get one shot of liqueur, I’d have had to have eaten one anti-emetic tablet every time I’d tuck into a Tia Maria Bounty (never did quite learn the names).
A consequence of this lack of alcoholic intake meant I remained stone-cold sober, although often felt sick and burped a lot courtesy of more than enough chocolate and a surfeit of lemonade!
A third route could have been with Advocaat, but I didn’t like the taste of “Snowballs”, having massive doubts about the colour and felt the texture was like that of blancmange which was past its sell-by date.
So, needing to go to meetings saying, “my name is Michael and I think I have a problem”, was never necessary as an eight-year-old!

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!