Tag Archives: 70s

Trippy Bathrooms #100DaysOfOldDays

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Day 71 #100DaysOfOldDays

Using the bathroom in the 60’s & 70’s was often a psychedelic experience. Everyone blamed the mushrooms, but it wasn’t the mushrooms; it was the interior designers and the parents who went along with it.

If I sat in this bathroom for more than five minutes, I’d experience hallucinations too.

I found this on Pinterest

It was the fashion to have a coloured bathroom suite. And if you had a few pound stashed under the mattress, you might have even ripped out your boring white bath and toilet and replaced them with lovely new ones – in any colour you fancied.

I remember visiting my great-aunt Helen in the 70’s, and I’m pretty sure she had a blue bathroom. The blue ones were very popular!

My aunt Marie’s bathroom was avocado green. Although, to us it was just ‘green‘. I only remember light green and dark green! Did we know what an avocado was in the 70’s? Oh…wait, we had jade green too. That’s three shades of green we had!

I once had a pink bathroom suite and a grey one. I’ve seen them salmon coloured, peach, mustard, burgundy, even brown – Penthouse Brown I believe it was called! We had penthouses before we had avocados.

People were still putting in coloured bathrooms during the 80’s. I remember viewing a house that was for sale (it was built in the 80’s) and it had three bathrooms and a toilet downstairs, and each one was a different colour. That’s where I saw the brown one.

The thing was though, the tiles, the carpet, mats, and curtains all had to be the same colour as the bath and toilet. And…coloured toilet roll.

Look at this. It’s like a bedroom!

I found this on Pinterest.

We couldn’t afford to replace our boring white bath with a coloured one but we could afford a very trendy vanity splashback. There were made from tough plastic and came in different colours. They had a mirror that opened up a little medicine cabinet. Two glass holders and a soap dish. They had five toothbrush holders which would have caused rows in a family of more than five. And you could have one in whatever colour you wanted…it didn’t have to match the sink!

Vanity Splashback

An aunt of mine was very posh with a furry toilet seat cover. Poor mam bought one but with four young boys in the family it didn’t last too long, sadly. I’m sure she was devastated!

Black & White Telly #100DaysOfOldDays

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Day 67 #100DaysOfOldDays

A telly with no internet, no pause, record or rewind, no remote control, and worst of all…no colour! Just a humongous black and white telly rented from Kellett’s electrical shop in town.

Lucy’s drawing of an Old Television.

They were always on the blink and as sure as death and taxes, interference would disrupt a good film or the Looney Tunes. When fiddling with the buttons wouldn’t work, a good thump on the side of it often did.

Sometimes the weather and a dodgy aerial was the problem. It wasn’t unusual in those days to see a man on the roof of his house fiddling with the aerial and one of his children below shouting up at him, “Another bit…turn it to the right…another bit to the left,” as they looked through the window at the telly waiting for a clear steady picture.

And when all the DIY solutions failed, David Kellett would pick up the telly and leave a different one in its place. It was a great novelty getting a ‘new’ telly every few months.

There were arguments about whose turn it was to change the station (there was only about 5) or turn up the volume. It wasn’t a job for the weakest family member because you needed strength to be able to push those buttons!

I’d say it was around the mid-seventies when our neighbours, Anne and Noel Rogers, got a new colour telly and Lynda brought me in to see it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. I was amazed at the vibrant colours and how they lit up the whole room. I wanted to stay all night in front of the blazing fire in the open hearth watching their new colour telly.

We used to look at our black and white telly through plastic coloured wrappers to pretend it was a colour one.

Thank you for the image Beetle

When we eventually got a colour telly, we thought we were brilliant!

I remember thinking we had really gone up in the world the year we got a Nordmende. I have no idea why! Maybe it had a more stylish look to it!

The other brands I remember: Toshiba, Panasonic, Bush, Philips and Sharp.

Thin Arrowroot & Marietta #100DaysOfOldDays

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Day 65 #100DaysOfOldDays

Fancy biscuits were for Christmas time and other special occasions. My mam bought chocolate and cream filled biscuits whenever she’d host a Tupperware or make-up party. The parties were usually on a Friday night, so we didn’t have to be in bed early. We weren’t allowed near the sitting room where the party was being held but we’d hang around on the stairs waiting for the women to finish their tea because Mam would always give us the left-over biscuits. It’d seem like hours before she’d come out with the trays and empty cups. Often we’d fight over the last chocolate biscuit, and argue about who got it the last time.

My sister-in-law Margaret, reminded me of the days when buttered plain biscuits were a treat. Margaret remembers getting Thin Arrowroot biscuits from her grandfather; plain on a plain day, buttered on a good day!

Arrowroot biscuits were/are the plainest of all biscuits. I’m not sure if they are still available in Ireland.

A chocolate digestive was the Roll Royce of the biscuit world and an Arrowroot was the Lada.

However, when you’d sandwich two together with real butter and a blob of strawberry jam, they became a Ferrari to a 70’s child.

My great-granny used to give us Marietta biscuits, but not with butter or jam. We didn’t mind either way. A biscuit was a biscuit and it wasn’t every day we got one!

Thank You Lucy for your Drawing of the Arrowroot Biscuit!