Harry’s Place

I saw these photos about 6 months ago and was utterly floored by the wave of nostalgia that hit me. They’re just incredible. Look at them all.

Yes, I did have the blue hooded parka with the orange lining. Clarks commandos too.

In the 1980s, it was replaced with a Lord Anthony padded ’ski’ jacket.

Yep , those photos are fantastic

(and nowadays the photographer would get marched away by an ignorant PCSO or some other self-appointed vigilante bully-thug and accused of being either a potential terrorist or paedophile or assistant thereto or both)

Yes, I did have the blue hooded parka with the orange lining

Me too. (Albeit when I was at primary school, not staging some misguided Shoreditch art-naffness-revivial thing)

I can’t believe there STILL isn’t a railway line to the ‘Mead (or even plans for one)
Nice birds in Thamesmead

Remember the Budgie Jacket? Thankfully in a rare act of taste I was more a crombie chap (tie pin in hankie pocket!), on the tick from Kays catalogue.

Flared Levis and a multi horizontally striped multi coloured tank top, absurdly long collars with round ends.

I’m a little smug that I never succumbed to platform shoes, but I did have some wooden clogs with leather tops though.

Here’s me in 1977.

(Left to right: Andrew Ravenscroft, Nancy something, Lianne Jeffreys, me. The picture was staged)

Gosh, yes, I used to have a parka. Based on photographic evidence, far-future historians will assume that 1970s Britain was undergoing an ice age due to the fact that children wore arctic clothing. Used to be great fun zipping them all the way up to get that tunnel-vision effect.

I’m anticipating mentions of Spangles, white dog poo, Outer Spacers in _3_ flavours (remember chutney-flavour starships?) and the first time you heard “Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick”.

P.

“A New Fashion” by Bill Wyman (find it on youtube): second single I ever bought. Sounds (and the video looks) almost comically dated (1982) but very much a period piece

White dog poo is what you get if you feed your dogs what they’re meant to eat (i.e. scraps, raw meat with bones in it) rather than what they’re not meant to eat (i.e. mechanically reclaimed meat mixed up with cereal).

Feeding dogs on meat and scraps gives you hard, non smelly poo which goes white after a few days.

Feeding dogs on processed dog food gives you squashy, smelly poo which gets stuck to your shoes.

In that case proof either that Milton Keynes is stuck in the 70s or has the healthiest dogs in the land. Recently we followed some members of the family doing a half marathon in Milton Keynes, and the 5 or so miles we walked were a perilous negotiation of the minefield of white dog poo which densely dotted the grassy verges.

Us furry-parka wearers were proto-hoodies.

I never got flares - the Elton boots (which really existed) were my first article of fashion (and went out of fashion a week after I got them, thankfully for my ankles.)

They have never replaced the “amazin” bar (it’s amazin what raisins can do” ) or the swisskit and even the amazon bar (which I think had a comeback) has gorn…

The seventies was surely the best decade for chocolatey comestibles.

Pacers

Anyone got any photos of Boris in the 70s?

I can’t be totally sure but:

http://www.billyidol.com/images/genx2.jpg

Isn’t that Spike from Buffy?

Oh my God they killed Kenny!

God, the nylon parka with fur-fringed hood. The great thing about them was the little pointless loop and buckle on the hood. When a parker-wearer was sitting in front of you on the bus this could be quietly undone and tied around the bar across the top of the seat so that the victim found himself temporarily fastened in place at the moment of arrival, often long enough for him to miss his stop.

Ah, the innocent days when you could victimise classmates on buses without fear of getting knived (did such days exist in Thamesmead?)

Obviously issuing every teenager with a big and sharp knife, to be carried discreetly about their person at all times, would be the best way to combat such anti-social behaviour. Ain’t that the way?

I’d almost forgotten just how ubiquitous the fur-lined hood parka was in the early-mid 70s. As I recall, the dull green variety was more common where I lived than the shiny blue version. I wore a green one for several years. It wasn’t too bad at keeping the cold out but as a protection against rain it was a dead loss. The thing soaked up water like a sponge. After walking to school in the rain I’d have to leave it draped across the radiator, giving off steam all day in the hope of getting it dry enough to wear on the way home.

About the same time where I lived (inner-city Liverpool) there was also a craze for ex-army shoulder bags made of some tough khaki canvas material, with huge brass buckles to hold the flap closed. They made great weapons for playground fights, as once weighted with books you could swing them round by the strap like mediaeval maces and the buckles would do a lot of damage if they hit.

I don’t know why all this ex-military stuff suddenly appeared in the shops or why it stopped. I think most of it was Dutch or German as sometimes the national flags would still be sewn onto the material.
Ah, happy days!

I don’t know why all this ex-military stuff suddenly appeared in the shops or why it stopped. I think most of it was Dutch or German as sometimes the national flags would still be sewn onto the material.
Ah, happy days!

Such things were very popular at my university in the mid 1990s, particularly among the peacenik hippy brigade. They were generally teamed with a garish handknitted jumper, holed tights and 8-hole DMs, along with honky dreadlocks and a general aroma of laundry basket.

My observations on the irony of pacifists in army surplus gear did not go down all that well.

I hold my hands up, however. I did own a pair of cherry red 8-hole DMs and I did indeed pair them with a flowery dress. There were however no holes in my tights and everything was freshly laundered.

On someone taller, perhaps, it would have looked OK but I think I probably resembled a lesbian Munchkin.

I must admit that I still have my mid-seventies army surplus shoulder bag - and that for a number of years it has housed all the bits of wire and kettle leads that you don’t exactly need but don’t want to throw away either.

My parents wouldn’t get me a fashionable snorkel parka, however much I pestered. I was given a peter storm cagoule instead… Probably explains a great deal about the subsequent direction of my life really.

I knew someone who moved there and said it was the biggest sh*thole they’ve ever lived in.

Why do we specialise in creating these soulless, life-sapping, centres for vandalism?

For the same money something perfectly pleasant could be produced.

I think they must look great to town planners in model format when they’re looking down with the eye of god view of the estate.

mind you high rise housing often seems to work better in other countries, perhaps it’s something cultural.

Some people think the Parka’s greatest moment was ‘Quadrophenia’, but in my mind that is beaten into second place by the goings-on that followed Ronnie Radford’s goal in the famous FA Cup Tie between Hereford Utd and Newcastle. Within 20 seconds the pitch was covered - I mean absolutely covered - with small boys wearing parkas trying to jump on Radford. Because it was raining heavily they all had their hoods up. ‘Doctor Who’ has never come up with anything quite as scary and alien as that.

Superb photos by the way.

It was felt that inner London needed housing after the war (and in truth I can remember folks living in prefabs)

Sir William Fiske (who was some sort of GLC bigwig of the sort Boris will probably bring back) wrote: “It would be hard to exaggerate either the challenge or the opportunity which this three-mile stretch of London’s riverside offers to all those concerned with the planning and execution of its development. From land which has for centuries formed the marshes of Plumstead and Erith and in part has been given over to the munitions of war, a community of 60,000 will rise over the next 10-15 years. Between the broad reaches of the Thames and the hills of Abbey and Bostall Woods, a desolate scene will be transformed for the well-being of Londoners.”

Others thought the plan ridiculous primarily because of the problems involved in land reclamation and building on peat:

The architect Richard MacCormac appraised the project in the Architects’ Journal in 1972 and made reference to this, stating how absurd was: ‘the decision to build a new community at Thamesmead, on 20ft of peat, next to a major sewage works and under an umbrella of pollution from Barking (on the north bank) and Belvedere power stations, which is obnoxious enough to prohibit building above 200ft’.

At the moment they are really selling it hard as cheap accomodation for Canary Wharf flunkeys.

Why do we specialise in creating these soulless, life-sapping, centres for vandalism?

I think it was naive idealism on the part of the architects in the 1950s onwards. I have always wanted to ask them whether or not they would have chosen to live in the places they designed. I suspect there was a certain amount of paternalism going on, and that they thought the flats would be quite acceptable to the lower orders.

Orwell (in The Road to Wigan Pier) observed a similar attitude in the period between the wars, where there was some resistance to clearing the slums because, it was argued, the poor were quite content to live six to a room in tiny fetid terraces. It was as if the poor were a slightly different species.

Last week’s New Scientist had a piece about designing neighbourhoods to cut crime, and how crime can be tracked in the same way as an outbreak of disease:

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/being-human/mg19826541.000-sin-cities-the-geometry-of-crime.html

(subscription needed, I’m afraid).

Back in the 70s I was once photographed wearing a polyester leisure suit.

Then in the mid 80s I was blackmailed and had to spent half a years salary buying back the negatives.

1. Wasn’t the original Jubilee (Fleet) Line ’sposed to go out there?

2. It ain’t a parka it’s a snorkel. Parkas are what Mods wore.

I don’t know anyone on Thamesmead but some people I do know are actually very happy with high rise flats… people without kids. Course it also helps if you’re in a good block i.e your neighbours aren’t psychos, piss artists or druggies.

perhaps the mistake was one size fits all provision - high risers aren’t as flexibile as ground level houses.

Yes I had the crombie on tick from Kays and wore Brut aftersahve (before i shaved).

Following the Slade route from mod to glam Rock I had the green parka with ‘rabbit fur’ trim although everyone said it was cat and now I am tempted to think there may have been something in that (have you ever seen a ginger rabbit?)

6 button wasteband two tone flares (that always got caught in the chain of my bike)

And platform shoes that were lethal in the snow, rain, on bicycles running up or down stairs, when running from gangs, or dancing to ‘chirpa chirpa cheep cheep’.

I swapped them for monkey boots and flirted with the army surplus thing and had one of those bags for years (Graham I am determined to throw away all those cables and plugs and bits of wire and coaxialcable and bits and bits, on the grounds that you can never find them when you need them but I probably won’t be able to find them to throw them away).

But all that went when I saw the Sex Pistols on ‘the old Grey Whistle Test’ and started improvising heavily with a charity shop substrate.

I became one of the first Punks in Town and i got a girlfriend and a moped and we would meet in a car park on a Saturday morning, pull our costumes for the day out of our bin bags, chain ourselves together, and walk up town ,making noises.

Our walk always talk us past the shop where my Mother was working and despite my Gibbon like calls she never once acknowledged me.

I stopped wearing denim in 1976 and didn’t relapse until 20years later.

The pictures confirm it. I knew I remembered the 70’s as being in black, white and grey. Colour only came into life in 1979 when I joined the VIth form of my comp, just when too much of it came into elsewhere in life. I’ve still got a black ex surplus bag, used occasionally even with the holes, bought from the former surplus place in Liverpool opposite the Adelphi. The parka (snorkel) was blue and orange but the childhood deprived as I never had a pair of monkey boots or any shoes with a compass in the heel.

Wasn’t the original Jubilee (Fleet) Line ’sposed to go out there?

Yep, went to Stratford instead.

I am a terrible hoarder of junk Metta. I think Freud would have something to say as to why, because the day after my father died my mother was neatly bagging up his clothes to be taken away by the charity shop.

Anyway - anybody need several bits of wire with plugs on one end and nothing on the other?

There is one colour picture amongst them - he must have really liked her.

(Now I have a song by Sting going through my head….)

Thamesmead mostly isn’t high-rise, apart from those blocks to the east side. The rest of the first bit is medium-rise (strangely Soviet-like, actually), and the 2nd bit is more low-rise (but just as aggressively concrete) and the newer bits are more desirable private houses that will get flooded because unlike the older buildings they have living accommodation at ground floor level.

The lack of social facilities (of almost any kind) , questionable social mix, and geographic isolation are big problems

Yeah the middle rise are probably worse, never heard any one who liked living in one of those. Perhaps they were more badly constructed or maybe it’s the depressing way they block the sun from the ground for the whole day.

My grandparents gave up a very nice little house (not even council so far as I remember - I think they rented) in Bowes Park to go to a brand new flat in Thamesmead, in Binsey Walk. I was too young fully to understand but they seemed excited and pleased at the move. For a year or two….

I can remember the journey to Abbey Wood station followed by the extremely long walk to the estate. After a few years the whole place turned into a sort of war zone and my grandparents spent their last few years expressing gratitude and pleasure if they made it to the chippy and back without being assaulted or having their door kicked in.

Graham - great post.

David - poo? Spot the middle class early parent.

Ah, the innocent days when you could victimise classmates on buses without fear of getting knived (did such days exist in Thamesmead?)

I think they did - if you look at these pictures of kids they may be living in a shit housing estate but they appear to have some hope. the same photos today would see scowls and contempt written all over the faces.

What changed I wonder?

anybody need several bits of wire with plugs on one end and nothing on the other? Graham; You could always advertise them on freecycle, that’s the kind of thing that gets snapped up there. I have disposed of stuff there, and it is fascinating how 3 pea sticks will attract a surplus of eager takers. Whereas I have still not been able to get rid of the oversize coffee table which occupies practically the entire space of our tiny living room. (Shipped over 20 years ago from our more roomy privileged living space in SA.)

Good idea Ami. Mrs Graham (who uses the internet for far more useful stuff than commenting on political blogs and buying CDs on ebay) has got rid of stuff before on freecycle. However, as she has an entire cellar-full of things downstairs (which seem to include life-size shop dummies which she dresses up and takes photographs of)I think I can hang onto my plug-wires for a little longer.

Ah yes Brut. We all drowned ourselves in that, despite not shaving. We all smoked players No 6 and wore suger top tassle loafers. I had a tonic suit with over check. Them were the days. Then I grew my hair longish, then a Bowie cut and stack boots……then punk happened!

What language are you people using?

Here in Canada I’m sure we had some of the same trends but called it different things.

My most regrettable purchase was a pair of olive green flares so infeasibly extravagant they could have done with bridesmaids holding them up.

Almost every item of clothing I bought in that dark interregnum was vile and tossed out immediately after the bad taste tsunami ebbed away. The music was largely crap as well. Bryan Ferry pretty well defines the zeitgeist.

Didn’t all that surplus military stuff come from the Army and Navy Stores?

It’s all coming back! Never mind the Raleigh Chopper redux (in effect a cheap travesty), I saw a bloke the other week with his racer’s bars turned up 70’s style.

Graham

I didn’t know you were married to Cindy Sherman!

What changed I wonder?

The idea of hope itself!

The idea that you might strive for something, because there was something you could actually gain that you might want and others might respect, could come from your own effort.

Hope became replaced with want and need and things.

Deferred gratification was killed by instant gratification.

Admiration for the character a person might be was substitued for the things they have.

Things that people have either because they feel they are so very entitled to either because they know they will get them because they are priviliged;

or things that they know they should be entitled to because they exist so they will get them because they will be given them ‘because they are worth it’ and they will win competitions and get on big brother and be famous and be given things.

and if they don’t get the things they are entitled to, when they know ‘they are worth it’ well then its going to get ugly.

Remember the BBC longitutinal documentary 7 up (14, 21, 28 etc etc) starting in 1967?

well it is an incredible study of the English Class System (a frien of mine in the US uses it as a ‘text’ on class for college students).

But in it the working class kids at aged 7 when asked what they wanted to be when they grew up? said things like fireman, ambulance driver, train driver etc etc (as opposed to something in the city, a lawyer or a ‘missionary’).

when the study was repeated in 2000 not one of the kids 9of all backgrounds) wanted to do anything.

They all wanted to be film stars or pop stars, or simply famous.

Oh my dear God I thought. We are in for a lot of trouble as dissapointment turns into angry, frustrated , bitterness, for a whole generation.

No wonder they are all scowling and angry (or smugly pleased with themselves).

You know I remember when i first started hearing the words ‘winner’ and ‘loser’ in England and it came with reality TV in the 90s.

“I can remember folks living in prefabs”

So can I. I can also remember their well tended gardens. I can also remember them writing to the local newspaper to say they wanted to stay in them.

Of course our island is far too crowded to provide decent housing without concreting over all our green spaces but what are we doing? Adding millions to our population…stamp STUPID on your forehead Mr. Brown.

Certainly decent housing and urban environments should be part of any radical political agenda. It’s time to start tearing down the worst examples of brutal housing and creating decent environments. They won’t create decent behaviour overnight but they will help.

So can I. I can also remember their well tended gardens. I can also remember them writing to the local newspaper to say they wanted to stay in them.

Some did. Some were ashamed and couldn’t wait to get out. In the sixties it was considered rather downmarket to live in a prefab but the later it got the more people who had lived in such prefabs got used to them and by the late eighties the residents were often clambering for preservation orders. I often pass the Excalibur Estate of prefabs in Southern Lewisham which was battled over for years (all the roads are named after Knights of the round table)

http://flickr.com/photos/nakedcharlton/1470753091/

My parents still live in a prefab! (the 2-storey version, of which quite a substantial number remain, having undergone several major life-extending refurbishments)

I didn’t know you were married to Cindy Sherman!

Cindy (I think) dresses herself up and takes photographs. Mrs G, having taken delivery of a big German doll, dresses THAT up and takes photographs.

We live in close proximity to Goldsmiths College but I doubt there is any artistic aspect to this behaviour.