Saturday, March 01, 2014

A Day Out in 1970s London

You are invited on a day out in the 1970s. The train will be departing at 9:57. Please bring some fish paste sandwiches and a tupperware beaker of orange squash.

No chewing gum.










20 comments:

  1. These are fantastic, thank you. Particularly the tourists in the yellow matching outfits.

    (I am assuming they're tourists; there are people who dress like that living in Shoreditch today.)

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  2. I'm surprised at how many of these photos look as if they could've been taken in Glasgow.

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  3. The yellow shorts. I mean, what?

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  4. BLaCKouT - They're definitely tourists. Either American or German, if I had to guess. I've seen some of those Shoreditch types in Lewes, wearing trousers that look too short for them.

    Kid - I'm not surprised. I think Britain was uniformly tired and scruffy in the 1970s. I remember London as a rather shabby place.

    Tim - And the skirt too. Were they part of a coach party of 60 yellow-clothed tourists?

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  5. Only if it's bloater paste .

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  6. The time that taste forgot....

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  7. Brilliant! Did we really dress like that?

    What are all those people waiting for on the road side, I wonder?

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  8. Absolutely magnificent.

    Trying to recognise that tube station.

    And glad to see teenager attitude hasn't changed...

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  9. Catherine7:51 pm

    First came to live here in the Seventies, but visited as a small child in the Sixties and was offered 'orange juice' by someone. It was orange squash and I spat it out as it tasted foul. I complained to my English mother and she told me not to be so rude! Never got the popularity, but did grow fond of barley water and hot ribena. I remember cheesecloth shirts for both sexes and wrap around skirts for girls in the Seventies.

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  10. The squash. Was it Idris, Kia Ora or Tree Top? My dad had Corona but I think that was all fizzy stuff. Tree top came in tropical fruit flavour. We really knew we had arrived then.11

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  11. @Nota ~ That's Hampstead. Here's an older pic and a newer one :)

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  12. SmitoniusAndSonata - I don't remember bloater paste, only the small Princess pots.

    Charles - I don't think the 80s was much better, particularly as far as women's hair was concerned. It seemed to be dowhill after 1967.

    sustainablemum - I think some of the femail fashions were quite fetching. The men didn't fare so well.

    Nota Bene - If you look on the left, there's a clue on one of the shop front.

    Catherine - My mother used to give me a glass of orange squash every noght, to keep on my bedside table, which is probably why all my teeth are filled!

    Lucille - I used to want Tree Top, but I think we ended up with Robinson's, or Quash. Terrible stuff. All sugar and E numbers.

    BLaCKouT - It's changed less than some places, which is probably a good thing.


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  13. And for a treat, we get to see At the Earth's Core! Great film!

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  14. Having spent the past few weeks watching reruns of "The Sweeney" your post really made me smile. Though I lived through the seventies, it's never been my favourite decade, and sometimes as I watch "The Sweeney," I feel as if I have landed on different planet. I was there, in London, several times during that decade, and have fond memories of the places and people, but I cannot seem to get my mind wrapped around the outrageousness of the clothes! Which make me wonder -- are future generations going to have equally puzzled reactions to the fashions of the 2000's? xoxox

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  15. Until I enlarged it I thought it must be 'Big Ron' Atkinson, back from a month 'bronzing-up' in Benidorm. Then I noticed that both cars were American, and realized that this snap was put in to confuse us.
    Big Ron, eh? What a lad he was....

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  16. Lucy - Something tells me that you haven't watched At the Earth's Core for quite a while. I had fond memories of it until a recent viewing with my son.

    Carol - I drove past a young lad the other day - he was wearing skinny trousers with a ridiculously low crotch - and said to my wife how nothing anyone wears today is as shocking as the fashions of the 70s. Imagine growing up in the Edwardian period, only to be confronted with the spectacle of the Sex Pistols and David Bowie in your old age. No wonder they thought we'd gone to the dogs.

    Mahlerman - Well spotted! I realised that it wasn't London after I'd put the post up and wondered if I could get away with it. Most people were too distracted by the yellow to notice. The original image was filed as a picture of London and like fool, I didn't notice the tell-tale signs - different bins, cars and skyscrapers in the background.

    I feel as if there should be a prize. Perhaps Series 5 of Robin's Nest?

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  17. Thanks - but I'll skip the prize if that's OK? Of course today there ARE skyscrapers in the background...more's the pity

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  18. This set me up for the day, thanks. A kind of psychedelic punk vibe on an only just alternative dimension.

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  19. You photoshopped those men in yellow shorts, surely - or else they were part of a now vanished (one hopes) cult. We watched the final episode of Callan on YouTube last night, which was surprisingly undated (although the plot hinges on a pun that doesn't work in Russian [on the other hand there was a wonderful lack of soundtrack music to tell you when things were getting exciting]) - except for the hairstyles. In the same way, it's mainly the hair and the clothes that leap out at you in your pictures. What was everyone thinking in the seventies? Who was that girl with the machine - is it a cassette player? Speaking as a mother, she looks worryingly thin. I suppose it's a bit late to worry now though.

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  20. Zoe - Re: Callan, I watched Edward and Mrs Simpson recently and noticed how little incidental music there was. Edward Fox's superb abdication scene would have been completely trivialised by the addition of a musical soundtrack.

    I promise that no Photoshopping was involved in the yellow people.

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