I consider myself an authority on surviving the 1970’s, everyone thinks their childhood was the best, but as in highlander, “there can be only one” and anyone that lived through this decade, knows it was them. Just like living in Australia, the dangers were many and not everyone made it, for those that have no idea, let me talk you through it.
In the Uk, the risk began at primary school with the bottle of free milk you were given. The crates were delivered into the classroom about 2 hours before you got to drink it, warm doesn’t even begin to describe the taste, sometimes it was like drinking the sweat from a welders armpit. If someone was off school the next day with “stomach problems” you counted yourself lucky you didn’t get yours from the row closest to the radiator.
Corporal punishment was still in force, so when you got to big school, the chances of going home with a few lumps and bruises was the norm, actually forget just big school, while only 10 years old a teacher threw one of those heavy wooden blackboard dusters at me, luckily I was sharp and ducked, not so lucky for the girl sat behind me.
Toys weren’t exactly designed well either, many ended up being banned, one that spring’s to mind is something we called clackers. These was two heavy pool sized balls, threaded together with a bit of rope. You then held the top of the rope and by moving your wrists up and down, they clacked together, the faster you moved, the harder they went. Sometimes the rope snapped and kids would be hit in the side of the head, more often than not though, the A & E departments were full of children with broken wrists after they got the timing wrong and the balls smashed into their bones. Don’t think that got you time off school, learn to use your other hand.
Playgrounds weren’t the happy safe places they are today, slides were huge, skyscraper style things, with no edges and made of metal. If you managed not to fly off, in sunny weather the hot metal burnt your legs. If you fell from the swing there was no nice bouncy foam to land on, just some rough tamped concrete that scrubbed your thighs and knocked out your teeth. As for the roundabouts. if you were lucky enough to stay on and not get flung across the playground, there was the chance your foot would get trapped underneath then snapped your ankle like a twig.
It’s a miracle that any of us made it out alive, it wasn’t that our parents didn’t care, times were just different, but do you know what, I wouldn’t have changed a thing, well,…….. maybe the milk.
"Fat to Fittie" 
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