A 1970s Childhood – Derek Tait

Many shops would have booths in them with headphones so that you could listen to new records before buying them. I remember the Boots shop in town had a whole floor that was dedicated to selling records, and every Saturday we would go there and listen to the latest releases. I think in those days a single was about 50 pence and LPs were £2.99, although you could get the cheaper ‘Music for Pleasure’ albums for £1.99. The MFP albums were always advertised with well-known names on the cover, but when you got them home they were sung by someone else.

We used to love getting a new album and looking at the cover; it somehow seemed a lot better than the later, tiny CDs. There must be lots of people around today who miss those old scratchy vinyl records. I certainly do. The 1970s was also when flexi-discs really became popular. These were very thin plastic singles that were often given away with pop magazines or newspapers.

Smith’s Crisps gave away a selection of them for a while, featuring acts like Slade, the Bay City Rollers, Gary Glitter and Status Quo. The single shown is a flexi-disc, which was given away free with the long- since-disappeared pop magazine, Popswop. As the seventies moved on, Alan started getting music papers like NME, Disco 45 and Sounds. They often had pullout posters which would go straight onto our bedroom walls.

Alan eventually moved out of our room and had his own room, which was covered in Pace posters of Marc Bolan. Pace posters were the best you could get at the time. I think I had Alias Smith and Jones posters on my walls. This photo shows Noddy Holder appearing on stage with Slade in the early 1970s.

Noddy shouting ‘It’s Christmas!’ seems to have kicked off every Christmas ever since, and must have brought in a fortune since it was first recorded. By then, Alan had the latest stereo record player, which included a built- in radio; this was very modern back then.

Most of the photos that appear in this book are family photos or images of items that I’ve collected over the years. Thanks go to Brandon Coombes (Radio One Roadshow photo), Janice Drew Crotts (the platform shoes photo), Alan Gold (1970s checked trouser advert), John Hudson (the Tom Baker photo), Klaus Hiltscher (for the Noddy Holder and Hugh Cornwell photos), Georg Holderied (photo of calculators), NASA/courtesy of nasaimages.org (for the Apollo 14 patch), Steve Johnson (various photos taken around Plymouth in the 1970s), Jason Liebig (the Fonz sticker), Gillian Long (for the Silver Jubilee photo), Mike McCarthy (for the Planet of the Apes poster) and Matt Sefton (for the skateboarding photos).

I have tried to trace the copyright holders of all photos and illustrations used and I apologise to anyone who I haven’t mentioned. 1kitap1.com/en CONTENTS Acknowledgements One At Home Two School Three Friends Four Cars, Buses and Petrol Five Holidays Six Activities Seven Music Eight Fashions Nine Sweets and Chocolate Ten Household Shopping Eleven Comics Twelve Television Thirteen Adverts Fourteen Movies Fifteen Toys and Games Sixteen Memorable 1970s Events Seventeen Whatever Happened To?

Copyright 1kitap1.com/en One AT HOME It seems odd that 1970 is over forty years ago now and yet I remember exactly what I was doing on 1 January 1970. We were still on our Christmas holidays, it was a sunny day, and my brother Alan and I went out for the day to see what we could get up to.

I was 8 at the time and Alan was 13. In those days, dogs just wandered the street, many with no collars, and then returned home in the evening for their tea. As kids, we got to know most of the dogs in the area. Anyhow, on this day we came across a dog while playing on the nearby football pitch and he followed us around all day.

Some other kids told us that his name was ‘Skip’ and he regularly played with kids in the area. We spent the day playing in the nearby fields, close to the school I attended, got some sweets from the local shop and ended up eating them in our den which was built from material taken from the local building site.

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 021ebfa1c572bb5b
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 6,652,057 bytes (6.344 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 151
• Language: English (en)

Reading & Word Statistics

• Estimated Reading Time: 195.15 minutes
• Total Words: 39,030
• Total Characters: 215,905
• Average Words per Page: 258.48
• Average Characters per Page: 1429.83

Most Frequent Words

one (203), remember (159), many (129), kids (126), school (124), time (124), like (121), also (112), back (108), seemed (101), popular (96), always (87), get (86), got (81), included (75), around (70), still (69), day (69), went (67), never (67), every (65), loved (64), see (63), first (62), alan (61), made (60), later (60), came (59), mum (59), lot (56), show (55), days (50), even (50), much (50), used (49), featured (49), film (49), home (48), didn’t (48), year (48), think (47), including (46), shows (46), new (45), old (44), everyone (44), became (44), man (44), long (43), played (43), away (43), end (42), favourite (42), christmas (41), people (41), took (41), free (39), well (39), kid (39), years (37), another (36), we’d (35), now (34), world (34), cars (33), it’s (33), called (33), things (33), ones (33), summer (32), david (32), dad (31), today (31), ever (31), films (31), wasn’t (31), teachers (31), adverts (30), lots (30), love (30), shown (30), teacher (30), bought (29), early (29), make (29), i’m (29), course (29), chocolate (28), comics (28), games (28), local (28), shop (28), appeared (28), two (27), three (27), toys (27), playing (27), quite (27), big (27), set (27).

PDF Download