by Feeney, Paul
Do you remember all those 1960s television advertisements that will never again see the light of day? ‘Go to work on an egg’, Esso Blue Paraffin, ‘Happiness is a Hamlet’, ‘Radio Rentals’, ‘Tick-a-Tick Timex’, Opal Fruits (‘made to make your mouth water’), Green Shield Stamps, Brentford Nylons, ‘A Double Diamond works wonders’ and ‘all because the lady loves Milk Tray’. Many of these advertisements were better than the programmes that they interrupted. You can’t help but remember popular and well-known 1960s television programmes like Blue Peter, Doctor Who, Thunderbirds, Star Trek and Top of the Pops, but if you dig deep into your memory bank you will recall lots more television programmes that you tried your hardest not to miss when you were growing up. Children’s programmes like Crackerjack, Batman, Stingray and Top Cat. Action programmes like Bonanza, 77 Sunset Strip, Danger Man and The Saint. Dramas including The Forsyte Saga, Maigret and The Fugitive. And, of course, some of the earliest British soaps like Emergency Ward 10, Crossroads and Coronation Street, which were all essential viewing. Then there were the groundbreaking comedy shows that you sometimes had to beg to stay up and watch; shows like The Likely Lads, Till Death Us Do Part, The Liver Birds, That Was The Week That Was (aka TW3) and the inimitable Morecambe and Wise Show. There were also many children’s television personalities that you feel you grew up with, people like Valerie Singleton, Christopher Trace, John Noakes, Peter Purves, Leslie Crowther, Peter Glaze, Johnny Morris, Tony Hart, Muriel Young and Wally Whyton; not forgetting the puppet characters Pussy Cat Willum, Ollie Beak, Fred Barker and Basil Brush. And, who could ever overlook the distinctive ‘Black Country’ accent of Janice Nicholls on Thank Your Lucky Stars, with her familiar catchphrase: ‘Oi’ll give it foive.’ These are just a few of the television memories that surely still linger in the back of your mind.
By 1964, the sixties music and fashion revolution was well under way, but the BBC was playing far too little pop music, and the only way that kids in Britain could be sure to hear the latest pop record releases was by tuning into Radio Luxembourg on 208 metres medium wave. But Luxembourg only transmitted at night-time and reception was very poor in many areas of the country. Radio Luxembourg’s sound regularly faded in and out, and you had to endlessly fiddle with the tuning knob on your transistor radio to pick up the signal. However, all of this changed on Easter Sunday 1964 when the then little-known actor and disc jockey Simon Dee made the first broadcast from the offshore ‘pirate’ radio station, Radio Caroline. The music revolution had well and truly begun when, for the first time ever, you could listen to pop music all day long. Soon, several other ‘pirate’ radio stations were broadcasting from various coastal and offshore locations around Britain, allowing access to endless amounts of pop music for kids all across the country. No longer would you be forced to endure BBC radio programmes like The Billy Cotton Band Show or Desert Island Discs: Radio would never be the same again.
Your schooldays may now be just a distant memory, but there are things you encounter in your everyday life that can suddenly take you back there. It could be a smell that reminds you of your old school bag, a textbook or the inside of your old pencil case. Perhaps there is an unpleasant odour that reminds you of the lingering pong around a pile of sand that the school caretaker once left in the corridor outside your old classroom; maybe the smell of boiled cabbage reminds you of all those lovely school dinners you once tried so hard to avoid. In autumn, when you see horse chestnut tree seed pods lying split open on the ground and revealing shiny new brown conkers, you might, for a moment, be tempted to collect them all up as you did back in your schooldays when you used to play conkers with your mates in the playground. Just planting sweet peas around canes in the garden will be enough to stir the memory of anyone who was ever at the wrong end of a caning when they were at school in the 1960s, long before corporal punishment was abolished.
You will have enjoyed playing with so many new toys, more than any generation before. Advancements in plastic manufacturing techniques during the fifties meant that the 1960s plastic toys could be made in all shapes and sizes, in bright colours and with smoothly rounded edges. The toy industry began to mass-produce metal and plastic toys in response to the huge demand that was being created from new television programmes like Doctor Who and Daleks and Thunderbirds, and by cinema heroes like James Bond. Also, children were starting to be greatly influenced by the promotion of new toys through television advertising, such as Sindy Doll and Action Man. All sorts of games and toys could now be bought at affordable prices. Boys’ old cowboy cap guns were soon replaced with new toy space guns, and girls’ trusty but staid old toy dolls were upgraded to new highly fashionable talking dolls with interchangeable fashion accessories. Children’s toy boxes and cupboards were quickly filled with all sorts of new toys, from pogo sticks to space buggies.
Children and adults enjoy a ride on the small road train and in chair lifts at Butlins Holiday Camp in Filey, Yorkshire, c. 1965.
The way we took our holidays and the destinations began to change. The traditional seaside, bucket and spade, stick of rock and kiss-me-quick hat sort of holidays were still very popular, but access to many of the smaller seaside and rural holiday destinations was becoming increasingly difficult by train, and the old romantic notion of a holiday train journey was turning into a thing of the past. From 1950–62, over 3,000 miles of British railway lines had been closed for various reasons, and in 1962, the then chairman of British Railways, Dr Richard Beeching, instigated what was called the ‘Beeching axe’, which resulted in the shutting down of a further 4,000 miles of railway and the closure of 3,000 stations in the period from 1963–72. More modern diesel and electric trains were replacing the old steam locomotives, but the reduced train services coupled with increasing car ownership meant that more and more people were now travelling to the seaside by car rather than train. However, that same age-old question could still be heard, only now it was coming from the back seat of a car: ‘Are we nearly there?’ But the familiar British seaside resorts were no longer the only holiday destinations. There was an extra added bonus of growing up in the 1960s, in that you were the first generation of children to experience the luxury of foreign travel. The new charter airlines enabled ordinary people to take ‘cheap package holidays’ to exotic foreign destinations – to go abroad, just like film stars and royalty.
On a sourer note, it was a time when even children were aware that the world was in danger from dreadful wars, particularly in the early sixties with all the talk of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the possibility of nuclear war, with constant references to the Cold War and the ‘four-minute warning’. We heard much talk about Britain’s secret observatories at Jodrell Bank and Fylingdales, but we didn’t really understand what it was all about. We were apparently all under threat from this strange, mysterious place called the Soviet Union. Do you remember trying to work out what you would do in those final four minutes if the warning ever came? There was great rivalry in the school playground to see who could come up with the most outrageous thing possible, but, unfortunately, most of the ideas required more than four minutes, and of course you couldn’t plan for where you would be when the four-minute warning was given. There were also the regular news reports and general talk about the ongoing Vietnam War, and although Britain was not directly involved in the war, we saw all the chilling newspaper headlines and television coverage of the anti-war and ‘ban the bomb’ marches. The shock of President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 didn’t escape children either, with everyone talking about it at home, on the streets and at school. It was a scary time, with schoolboys fearful that, at best, the government would bring back conscription and they would be called up to join the armed forces and fight in wars when they left school. As in every decade, there were some serious world issues to concentrate everyone’s minds, and for students to protest about. But, having said that, there were plenty of good things going on to distract us from the more sombre issues; an overwhelming abundance of exciting new e
xperiences to celebrate and enjoy. There were so many ‘firsts’ in the sixties: the first time you saw an E-Type Jaguar, the first time you watched colour television and the first time England won the football World Cup. You will never forget the first episode of Doctor Who, the first Beatles record you ever heard or the first magazine picture you saw of Twiggy in a miniskirt.
It wasn’t just the kids that were influenced by the ever-increasing slick American-style television advertising on ITV. Our cupboards and medicine cabinets were beginning to bulge with products we had been convinced to buy through television advertisements. Accordingly, mums kept more medicinal treatments for minor ailments in their bathroom cabinets at home. Strong-smelling antiseptics, like Germoline and TCP, were popular for treating little warriors’ cuts and grazes; after all, if it had a strong smell, then it must be good. Such pungent antiseptic smells were associated with the mix of ether and other aromas that permeated hospital corridors, and this provided extra comfort that these products were good for treating wounded children. Kids acquired lots of cuts and bruises, but were generally very fit because of all those exhausting and dangerous outdoor games they played; nevertheless, they still couldn’t escape the childhood illnesses. Chicken Pox, Measles, Whooping Cough, German Measles, Mumps and Tonsillitis: they got them all!
Do you remember those huge needles that the doctor used to stick into your arm as a child, and the anxiety you felt as you queued at school or in some draughty church hall to be inoculated against diseases like Diphtheria, TB (Tuberculosis) and Polio? The reassuring words passed on to you by other kids that had gone before, like ‘It was a really big needle!’ and ‘It really hurt!’ just made you feel so much better. This was a time when, if you were ill, you didn’t need to make an appointment to see your doctor; you just turned up at the surgery during surgery hours and waited your turn. Doctors’ waiting rooms were small, intimate places, simply furnished with rows of upright hardback wooden chairs. There was usually no receptionist to manage the patients and most doctors would retrieve patients’ notes from filing cabinets themselves. Apart from the wooden chairs, the only accessory in the waiting room was often just a bell or buzzer for the doctor to summon the next patient. Some doctors didn’t even have one of those; they would rely on an exiting patient to send in the next person. Doctors did a lot of home visits; if your mum said you were ill in bed, the doctor came out without any fuss, even in the middle of the night or at the weekend. It all seemed very efficient and free of bureaucracy.
Dental treatment improved during the 1960s, but a visit to the dentist was still something to dread, especially for those unfortunate enough to have experienced the gas anaesthetic dentistry of the early sixties. It was the stuff of nightmares. That horrible cube of dry wadding that the dentist would shove under your back teeth to keep your mouth open and the awful smell of the black rubber face mask that was held over your nose and mouth to administer the anaesthetic gas that would send you to sleep and into a world of hallucinatory nightmarish dreams. Afterwards, you drifted back into consciousness tasting the disgusting mix of bleeding gums and residual gas in your mouth, and the nausea inevitably brought on bouts of uncontrollable vomiting. The horrendous experience didn’t end at the dentist’s door because the soreness, nausea and dizziness could last for several hours. Who could question why a child of the sixties would often need to be dragged screaming and shouting to the dentist’s chair? The ever-increasing use of local anaesthetic injections was much more tolerable, but even so, the needles were not as good as they are today, and yes, they did hurt.
Children play with their buckets and spades on the beach at Hayling Island in Hampshire, c. 1961.
Any child that was hospitalised in the 1960s will remember the Nightingale wards, named after Florence Nightingale, with rows of beds each side of a long room and large tables in the middle where the nurses did their paperwork and held meetings. The nurses were always so clean and smart in their uniform, with white starched bib-front pinafore dresses and caps, and blue elasticated belts with a crest on the buckle. Most had an upside-down watch pinned to the top of their pinafore for use when they checked patients’ pulses. The smell of ether was always present throughout hospital buildings, but if you were an inpatient you soon got used to it. There were always loads of bicycles parked in hospital courtyards; every nurse and young doctor seemed to have one. Up until the late sixties, NHS hospitals were run very formally, with Matron’s daily inspections sending every nurse into a panic, but you were very well looked after – and the doctors and nurses were wonderful.
Looking back on that very first morning of 1960, when you were sitting at the breakfast table eating your soft-boiled egg and pondering what the day might have in store for you, could you have possibly ever dreamed of the wonders you would experience over the next few years? A childhood journey that was to take you from crayons to felt-tip pens, gymslips to miniskirts, snake belts to kaftans, Janet and John to The Godfather and from Margate to Benidorm. All of your earliest memories are sandwiched between these, and whatever age you were by the end of the sixties, whether you were still drawing geometric shapes with your Spirograph or listening to Bob Dylan at the Isle of Wight music festival, you will surely have seen improvements to your own overall lifestyle and witnessed at least some of the major cultural changes of the sixties. This was a special decade, in which everything seemed to convert from monochrome to colour. It is hard to believe that so much happened in so few years.
Two
HOME LIFE
It’s very early in the morning on Saturday 17 July 1965. This is the first day of the school holidays and you are tucked up in your warm bed dreaming of how you will spend the next six weeks of freedom. The weather has been improving over the last few days and the forecast for the coming week is good. You are awake but you haven’t yet opened your eyes, instead preferring to snuggle beneath the sheets and delay the start of your day for as long as possible. It was a bit chilly overnight, but you managed to create a nice warm cocoon under the heavy blankets that pin you to the mattress and shield you from drafts. You can hear the faint sound of music coming from the radio downstairs, and can just about decipher the song as being Mr Tambourine Man by The Byrds. You begin to accept the inevitable dawning of a new day, and in doing so you allow your mind to fully focus on the tune that is filtering through the closed bedroom door. Instinctively humming along to the melody, you now find yourself fighting to free your arms from the weight of the bedclothes so that you can strum an imaginary twelve-string jangling guitar in time with the music. By now you are fully awake and venture to slightly open one eye to welcome in the day. The early morning sunlight is streaming through the thin cotton curtains and projecting a beam of light onto the Bob Dylan poster that is stuck to the wall next to your bed. The curtains are completely useless at keeping out the daylight and serve only to deny prying eyes. Still scanning the room with the one halfopen eye, you turn your head and lift it slightly off the pillow so that you can see the time on the bedside alarm clock. It’s only just approaching half-past seven, but the welcoming sunlight provides you with enough courage to bravely creep out from under your blanket-laden cocoon. With both eyes now fully open, you lift yourself up onto one elbow, throw back the bedcovers, and slide your body nearer to the edge of the bed. Having swung your legs over the side of the bed and settled both feet on the floor, you stretch your upper body and rub the sleep from your eyes before lifting yourself up and making your way over to the window to pull back the curtains, flooding the room with daylight. The sudden movement has provoked extra pressure on your bladder and you are now desperate for the loo. You quickly skip around your prized Dansette record player and a pile of records in the middle of the floor, but can’t avoid stepping on a neglected purple-haired troll doll as you make your way out of the bedroom and down the hall to the bathroom. On the way, your ears are filled with the fabulous sounds of jangling guitars and melodic harmonies that are wafting up the stairs at full volume. Thank goodness
for Radio Caroline!
While sitting on the toilet, you unroll a few sheets of the Izal soft toilet tissue and revel in its luxury, thinking back to just a few months earlier when mum was still forcing you to use those shiny, slippery, individually folded thin sheets of Izal medicated toilet paper that came in a small cardboard box dispenser. They weren’t absorbent enough and were really uncomfortable and messy to use. You needed to use about a dozen sheets, and even that wasn’t enough to do the job properly; mind you, it did serve as a useful alternative to tracing paper when drawing pictures. Continuing to ponder away the time, you reflect on how fortunate you are to be sitting on this modern toilet when several of your friends are still having to make do with outside lavatories, and some even have to share an outside lavvy with their neighbours. Outside lavvys are quite scary places for kids, usually dark, damp and draughty old lean-tos at the back of houses, with the chilling sound of dripping water echoing from inside high-level cisterns and condensation running down exposed pipes – reminiscent of the lavatory blocks in school playgrounds.
Still seated on your comfortable loo, you lean over the bath to examine the removeable rubber shower hose that has been left attached to the bath taps, and you wonder at the ingenuity of someone inventing such a thing. Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a proper shower, like in the shower blocks at holiday camps or, better still, like the posh ones you see all the time in Hollywood films?