Category: 70s

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’ve been commuting or forty-five years now and the activities on my journey home have changed considerably.

In 1974, when I first started journeying back to south-west London, having got on at Embankment, I’d have finished the Evening News picture crossword by the Elephant and would have (unsuccessfully) spotted the ball by Clapham Common.

The only time you’d have heard the word wireless on the Underground would have been people telling you what they were going to listen to on it later that evening!

Now papers are packed with things like Sudokus and other things which sound vaguely like types of motorbikes, martial arts or members of the Imperial Japanese Navy! (Ironically, the No. 1 when I first started commuting was Carl Douglas’s Kung Fu Fighting, which is a martial art).

No more do people get the Evening Standard to look for the stop press to see the teatime cricket scores, they can listen on their phones to former public-school types telling you exactly that, whilst throwing in cake recipes.

These days you’ll know in pretty much in advance what the next day’s newspaper headline will be and no longer will reading “Queen Anne, dead” be a surprise.

Futoshiki? Thank you, but I’m allergic to most fish.

 

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.

With Brexit looming does this mean we’ll revert to using Imperial currency?   If so, how many Euros will you get for an old ten-bob note?

I shall look forward to shop windows displaying their clothes’ prices in guineas and going to a greengrocer where there are hand-written cards showing bananas are 1/6 for a pound 😊.

In 1971 I remember buying a set of the “new” decimal coins from a Post Office on Balham High Road.   (I’m assuming they were the real thing as the bloke running the Post Office was Polish and he could have been selling me a set of out-of-circulation Zlotys for all I knew).  They were in a Perspex box and remember thinking how any of those coins were going to fit in a gas meter which only took half-crowns!  (I bought several candles too, just in case).

If this money does return then I’m getting my half-full jar of threepenny bits (insert you own gag here) down from the loft, where it has lain dormant since the bank amnesty ended for pre-decimal coinage.   I shall also be curious to see how much a farthing gets me.

I think I may invest in some sheep too in case bartering comes back and will bird-feeding still only cost tuppence a bag?

In an effort to save the planet from becoming one big plastic bag, everyone nowadays seems to be carrying around a reusable cup.

This is not a new thing and is basically a modern-day thermos flask – only they’re no longer in tartan.

However, these relatively new containers are designed to carry one liquid, unlike the old thermoses, which would hold multiple liquids. They will contain only coffee, water or, if you’re currently reading any Jean-Paul Sartre, absinthe.

Thermos flasks had a different function, but with a built-in obsolescence. Thermos flasks were invariably solely used for picnics but, after several uses, regardless of the historic liquid inside, the contents would eventually taste like oxtail soup – regardless of whether it had ever contained oxtail soup or not.

In the 60s, as a young teenager, I’d often set off on an Orange Luxury coach trip from Balham High Road to a destination I would hate with picnic basket, containing a thermos and two parents.  The problem arose with the lack of cups.  As the youngest in the family, whilst orange squash was ok, drinking chicken soup from my hands was tricky.  They might have been able to do that sort of thing on Kung Fu, but I struggled at places like Hever Castle.  However, the vending machine within A&E at Pembury Hospital did do a nice Bovril.  Or was it Earl Grey tea?

I started commuting in 1974.

Activities within train carriages have changed somewhat over the decades.

These days everyone is in their own space, their own world, together with their headphones, which are now in all shapes, sizes and colours: they no longer just come in orange foam.

Some like to share their travelling experiences: although I realise I’m never going to be a big fan of rap (also, I’m more Alfie Bass than drum ‘n’ bass).

In 1974 I remember people bought newspapers; I got mine from a man outside Balham Station who called everyone “John” – which was why he was selling papers and not writing for them as his attention to detail was poor.

I’d like to say I’d completed the Times crossword by Stockwell, but this is the boy who struggled on most return journeys with the picture puzzle inside the Evening News.

You can’t smoke in trains anymore, plus the luggage racks aren’t made of rope, thus making Tarzan impressions harder as you can’t swing from one side of the carriage to another.

No longer do I sit on trains where there are bridge schools going on, French tuition being held outside the Buffet carriage or Pilates in First Class.

But the good news is that if you want to play Solitaire, you don’t need the entire table anymore!

People still stare at my Walkman (this isn’t a euphemism).

Hiding from the TV detector van was easy if you lived on the fourth floor of a block of flats. I had surmised that the van would not only have never get through the revolving doors at the entrance to my Balham flats, but also, it’d never get inside the lift as the antennae would probably snap off.

There was no warning of the van’s impending arrival – no theme tune from Jaws/Psycho/or the little known Confessions of a TV Detector Van Cleaner.

I’m sure people (whose dwellings were at street level) would hide behind their sofas, a plethora of Habitat scatter cushions or a life-sized cardboard cut-out of a TV detector van – to ward it off like an evil spirit.

This, of course, would be the antithesis of being out by leaving the radio on, thus giving the impression (especially to potential burglars) that someone was actually in.   This stems from the urban myth that burglars have a pathological fear of The Archers, the long-range shipping forecast or stumbling into a house at a time when Sing Something Simple was on.

But sometimes there are programmes on when you want to hide behind the sofa – if there are too many such programmes broadcast on the BBC, could you apply for a rebate?