Four for Forty: 1970s

Love is in the air. I just had to explain to the five year old why the Sea Monkeys were 'wrestling'. We may have to get a bigger tank. Sea Monkeys were one of the impossibly cool things from America we used to read about in the classifieds in DC Comics in the '70s. Devon at that time was anything but cool, and there was no hope of getting them, X-ray specs or Twinkies, whatever they were.

Imagine a time before ebay or Amazon - unthinkable now. I'm finishing up the research for my next book, and just had a rare copy of the 'Jeu de Marseille' the Surrealists created during the war delivered from Paris via London to the desert in under a week. It's insane how much has changed in forty years.

One of the things I love about this place is how it's such a bizarre cultural melting pot. I was in Daiso last week, (like a brilliant Japanese dollar store/pound shop), and bought a genuine Life cover: 'The Year in Pictures 1971', which I'm going to frame in honour of this - ah- special birthday. The cover lists: hot pants, Sinatra, ski bums, Ali & Frazier etc. (The flip side is a very hip cigarette advert 'Sounds & Kent!' of some dude with a combover smoking and listening to his vinyl with huge headphones a jackhammer operator would be proud of).

With finishing the edits on the Spanish book, and research, and *y'know* the two and a half month long school summer holidays, my idea of forty posts for forty years was a bit optimistic. How does four posts - one for each of the decades sound? Today, let's kick off with the 70s, and enjoy today's clip x

TODAY'S PROMPT: Assuming you are old enough to remember them, what did the 1970s mean to you? What are your memories of that time? Take five minutes and write a stream of consciousness list - anything that comes to mind. You can mine this list for a story, set way back when women were wonderful, men were bionic, and there was enough static from all those nylon flares to supplement the National Grid.

It might go something like this: Saturday Night Fever, Farah Fawcett posters, Sesame Street, sneakers, The Three Investigators, Pop Rocks, Spangles, Tiswas, Stevie Wonder, tank tops, polo necks, Hair, Brut, Denim, Hi Karate, Charlie ... Why not see what else you can come up with?