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Things We Didn’t Have in the 1970s

Part Two

Much in the Way of Entertainment

I realise things are relative. When my parents were growing up, there was almost no entertainment at all. People would have had to ‘make their own entertainment’. What that consisted of I have no earthly idea, but no one looked particularly entertained. By the 1970s, things were marginally better but the paucity of decent things to watch on TV or listen to on the radio was still bordering on criminal. For kids, the most wholesome show was Blue Peter. I recently watched a clip from the early 1970s and it featured a woman wearing a football kit (including boots) whistle a song. She was a very good whistler. Why she was wearing football kit was never mentioned. Later in the decade, the most popular kids’ show on BBC TV was presented by a paedophile who made children’s, and no doubt his own, wishes come true. All three TV channels stopped broadcasting around midnight. Most evenings, it was a relief.

We had board games, although the idea of my mother and father playing Cluedo (a popular Whodunnit game) does not bear thinking about. I think even the thought of murdering someone with a lead piping in the kitchen might have given my mum too many ideas. Sometimes we went out. Living in London, there were choices. There was theatre and opera and ballet and probably modern dance if you looked hard enough but we never went to any of them. We went to the cinema once or twice but as my parents couldn’t go five minutes without screaming abuse at one another, we’d barely get through the trailers.