Hamish Champ: Nostalgia; it ain't what it used to be
Following the Campaign for Real Ale's recent announcement - that six out of 10 people prefer the pubs of today to the hostelries of 30 years ago - there has been a lot of talk about how much better pubs, indeed life, was in the Seventies.
People of a certain vintage look back fondly on that decade, arguing we didn't have the Nanny State, or people telling you what to do all the time. We had bobbies on bicycles two-by-two (no, wait, that was the Sixties), kids never got into fights and always obeyed their elders, no-one got drunk and fell over in the street, gardens were rosy, and the country was a nicer place overall, as was the world in general.
Is this really how it was? Of course not.
There was a lot about the Seventies I liked. What crystal-clear recollections I have of the decade are limited, but ranked in order of occurrence the good ones would be: Chelsea beating Leeds United in the FA Cup Final replay; discovering the music of Deep Purple; buying my first beer in a pub; having long hair; the hot summer of '76; punk rock; listening to John Peel in my bedroom, and meeting girls in a deep and meaningful way. Happy days.
But other stuff wasn't so good: my school milk being stopped by education minister Margaret 'Milk Snatcher' Thatcher; the three day week; power cuts; Terry & June; bonkers pub opening hours; Crossroads; platform shoes; pub bombings; mountains of rubbish piling up in my local park during the Winter of Discontent; 'A' levels and the aforementioned Thatcher coming to power and putting the mockers on the UK's manufacturing base.
Plus there was Vietnam; the Iron Curtain; the Middle East oil crisis, etc...
The Good Old Days? It's all relative. Like I said, I had a pretty good time, but it wasn't all great. And back then my dad used to harp on about things were much better in his day. It's clear that what one remembers and how one feels about a period depends on the colour of the lenses in one's spectacles - and in what decade one was young.
No doubt today's 'yoof' will look back on the 'Noughties' as being a Golden Time, just as there are those adults today who say that things have gone downhill since they were nippers.
It's a sad fact, but nostalgia ain't what it used to be.
