what a difference a year or fifty makes

I recently had a lovely chat with my sister about stuff in general and bemoaning getting old, etc when she quoted something along the lines of “it was much more fun being 20 in the 1970s than being 70 in the 2020s”.  And she then went on to say that she disagreed with this analysis.

 

At first, I thought she was referring to being 70 in the 1920s, and I said that if that were the case she should be congratulated on getting that old!

 

Anyway, after a brief explanation I realised she meant being 70 in the 2020s, and with that confusion out of the way I thought I’d see if that quote holds water.  Now, while I am a lot younger than my frankly ancient sibling, I was a teenager in the 1970s and in my 60s now, so while the quote doesn’t exactly fit as neatly, I figure I am qualified to have a stab at this.

So, to paraphrase, was it better being younger in the “old” days than being older now?

Well, firstly of course there’s the age factor.  I would much prefer to be younger than older; that’s a given!  But putting that aside, I wholeheartedly disagree with my old, but still very beautiful sister as I think that the 1970s was a golden period to grow up in.

 

After all we had:

 

-              better music

-              better TV

-              better clothes

-              better hair

-              better weather    

  

to clarify and simplify, we had STYLE!!!!!

On the music front, it is unarguable that the 1970s was the finest decade ever.  Full stop.  After the pop and admittedly rather excellent psychedelia of the late 1960s, we had proper hard rock music with bands like Uriah Heep, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin; we had progressive rock with the likes of Yes and Pink Floyd and we had the emergence of glam rock with Roxy Music, T-Rex and Gary Glit… oh, hang on!

my dad: "get these bloody pansies off my telly!!!!"

Compared to today’s largely computer created, auto-tuned, quantised garbage there really is no comparison.  And that is why the vast majority of folk my age still like listening to their older music on a proper record player.

how does this work dad??????

Looking at TV, we had Starsky & Hutch, the $6 Million Dollar Man, The Old Grey Whistle Test, Fawlty Towers, The Good Life, The Sweeney.  I could go on, but compared to today?  Well, I can’t really make that comparison as outside a bit of sport I don’t watch much of the stuff.  But I’m fairly confident that, like the music, it’s all garbage.

Pan's People from Top of the Pops.  I didn't get it at first... but then one random day I very much did!!!

The clothes we could wear were also much more expressive.  Now I’m not what you would call a “dresser”, but the memories of flares, paisley pattern shirts, lumberjack and denim jackets, proper Adidas trainers and the like, are more than just looking back through rose-tinted spectacles.  Stuff was well made and would last until you didn’t fit in it anymore.  And likely it was made locally at the company’s HQ or own manufacturing site and not in some sweat shop in the far east.

how the f*ck does this work son??????

Same with hair.  No, not that was made locally, but we had style! OK that meant long hair in the main, but it was just, well, better.

 

And we didn’t have global warming.  So, we had proper summers, even here in the UK, with sunny days and soaring temperatures along with properly cold winters with regular snowfalls and lovely, chilly, frosty mornings.  These occurrences are rare here now sadly.

 

What do we have today that can rival that?  The internet maybe?  WhatsApp?

 

OK, so health care is better, and we are living longer.  But that brings other issues with it like pressure on pension funds and the healthcare system itself.  Dementia cases are rising, placing more pressure on the social care systems.  And despite what government statistics would have you believe, crime rates are far higher than they were fifty or so years ago.

oh yeah, baby!!!

I get it, it’s really very easy to look back and remember the good old days fondly, as we probably only remember the best of times and not the worst, like the 3-day week caused by the oil crisis, and regular strikes leaving rubbish mounting up on the streets, open racism and homophobia, but these things still happen now.

So, I disagree with my sister (which is a rare occurrence in itself), and if I could, I would turn the clock back tomorrow and go back to being a teenager in the 1970s all over again.

 

Oh yes, we had proper shops too.  Ones that actually existed on a street!