Skinned knees and washing-line swings

I was born as the hippie culture was at its height, and grew up in the glorious 1970s, a time of polyester clothes and the Purdey hairstyle, Star Wars and ABBA, Chopper bikes and cars without seatbelts.  The world had never heard of HIV, computers were in their infancy, and TV had three channels.

We children of the 70's had two options for entertainment - stay home and read a book or play a record (or if you were lucky, an 8-track cassette), or go out on the street and play with our friends.  I would get home from school, have a cup of tea, then straight out to play.  I lived on a nice council estate in East London, and there were always 8 or 10 kids knocking around the streets playing games like run-outs or it or Bulldog.

Mum would call me in for tea, then I might watch an hour or so of telly before bath and bed (no showers back then).

I invariably got sunburned in the summer.  I am cursed with skin that turns bright red then peels to reveal a total lack of colour.  I've never had a tan in my life.  Sunblock was unheard of; mum managed to find Piz-Buin oil in some ridiculously low factor but I still burned and peeled every year.  On our few holidays abroad, I blistered - not the tiny 5p-sized blisters you get on your heels, but huge water-filled blisters covering my entire shoulders, and on one memorable year, my face too.

During the summer holidays, six weeks of running wild and being left to our own devices all day long, we quickly tired of the little local park - three swings and a sandpit - and devised our own entertainment.  A favourite was a washing line, strung in a loop from the first floor railings of our flats, forming an excruciatingly painful swing.  You could either sit in it and have it cut into your bum, or stand in it, which was less painful but with the added danger that it was further to fall.  Onto concrete.  Which we invariably did, as washing line isn't really up to that sort of strain and would snap at the moment of greatest height or velocity.  Nobody actually broke a bone, which is a miracle in itself.

One of our neighbours took pity on us all one day, and piled us into the luggage bit of his Cortina estate car, with the back seats folded down.  There was a car park in front of our flats about 50 yards across, and he floored it at one end and screeched to a halt at the other, with about six of us tumbling about in the back screaming with laughter.  Then he did it in reverse.  Over and over again, with every kid from the nearby streets lining up on the kerb clamouring for a go.  Harmless fun...

These were the days when whisky was routinely rubbed on babies gums to ease teething; when the cure for a cold was being sent to bed with a large mug of milk with loads of sugar and a shot of scotch (at age four!), when butter was good for you and yogurt was for weirdo health-food hippies.

If someone bullied you, you were told to hit 'em back.  If a teacher told you off, you hung your head and hoped to hell she wouldn't tell your parents.  If your parents smacked you, you'd cry, and say sorry, and five minutes later have forgotten all about it (but hopefully learned how to NOT earn another one).

We had permanently skinned knees, from the concrete or tarmac under the climbing frames and swings.  We never washed our hands before dinner, we played marbles on drain covers, we made go-karts out of old wheels and milk crates.

Good times.