What If? Art 1: The History Book That Never Was

Recently I was introduced to a contemporary form of art that I had not encountered before: Book Art. This is not, as I initially thought, about illustrating books, that apparently comes under Print-Making, it is more books made by artists, sometimes, for example binding together collections of their images or bits of text and concertinaed pieces of paper or even scrolls with images on are popular too. Sometimes they just make one copy, sometimes they run off thousands. Some go much further and do not just use paper and card but things like wood or textiles or even metal. There is another strand which is taking existing books and altering them in some way such as cutting shapes in them or sticking in other images and/or text or even objects. A lot of the themes are pretty nostalgic: images, text and styles from the 1930s-1970s or drawing on the memories of the artists' grandparents. One thing about this form of art, which I accept would not appeal to everyone, is that unlike paintings and I suppose most sculpture, you can actually handle most book artists' work. I suppose 'book' defines its scale too, you could not have a book feasibly the size of the 'Black Watch' or even the 'Mona Lisa'.

Anyway, after this, in my search for 'what if?'s and counter-factual material, I came across an art project at the University of the West of England (acronym UWE). They do a lot of book art there apparently and in 2003, I think, asked artists to produce work under the title 'The History Book That Never Was'. The examples of the work can both still be seen and are freely downloadable if you go to: http://www.bookarts.uwe.ac.uk/nevergal.htm

This got me thinking and I wondered what it would be like to produce some of these for myself, with an emphasis less on art and more on counter-factual history, i.e. images of books which if they had actually existed would have implied an alternate history than the one that our world encountered. I do not have a sophisticated graphics package but found an old one I had that allowed me to do most of what I wanted (except write in gothic script which is a shame) and on my first effort I produce these three examples below.

'Mein Leben in der Kunst' by Adolfus Hitler (1967)

I hope got my German correct on this one, please let me know if I slipped up and what it should be. For this one I used a cover of a book that was actually in Hitler's library, it was a historical atlas so seemed to me the right sort of format for a book which would include 'plates' as photographic illustrations were called in books in the past even though it is shown as published in 1967. This was the one that I wanted to use gothic print for, but I guess by 1967 something like this, especially in a world where Hitler did not come to power and so reasserted the use of that script, would have been more likely.

If my German is correct, the title means 'My Life in Art' and the 'what if?' it suggests is that Adolfus Hitler (that was the name he was given when he was born, he had no middle name and always used 'Adolf') remained an artist and lived out his days in Austria (he was an Austrian, born in Linz close to the German border, if the German authorities had not granted him German nationality he would have been barred from becoming leader of Germany later). Wien is the German spelling of Vienna; I made up the publisher it means New World Art, after the initial one I thought of turned out to be an actual publishers and I thought they might sue someone suggesting that they published a book by Hitler. By 1967, Hitler would have been 78 and presumably a rather bitter, maybe mad artist of not large repute who had chafed seeing Germany deal with its problems in the 1920s and 1930s possibly through an authoritarian regime, but certainly stopping short of the Nazi regime and the Holocaust.

'Current Reforms in Seminaries of the Autonomous Russian Region of Georgia'

by I.V. Dzhugashvili (1947)

This one is similar. Josef Stalin's real name was Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. He was born in 1879 in Georgia and attended seminary school until he was expelled in 1899. This book envisages that he stayed on and ultimately became a priest in the Orthodox Church of Georgia rather than becoming involved in the growing Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (RSDLP) which split into the Bolsheviks (who went on under Lenin to set up the USSR) and the Mensheviks (who were pushed aside in 1917-18) in 1903. Stalin did not take part in the October (November on the West European calendar) 1917 revolution which brought Lenin to power, but he was a dominant force in the Bolshevik Party and by 1928 had become leader of the USSR until his death in 1953. His rule saw millions die in engineered famines and from purges which sent them to prison camps and had them executed. This 'what if?' sees Russia having a revolution but probably going no further than that of February (March) 1917 with some kind of democracy established and increasingly autonomy for the different ethnic states of the Russian Empire such as Georgia. Valentin Andreevich Antonieff (1877-1962) in our world was a leading Russian Orthodox priest in Australia, so would have been in a position to translate a book like this if Stalin had turned out to be a reforming priest rather than a ruthless tyrant.

'Selected Speeches of Col. Gamal Abdel-Nasser'

by Professor Anthony Eden (1962)

This one is less wide-sweeping than the other two. It envisages that rather than going into politics in 1922 Anthony Eden who spoke French, German and Russian and got a First from Christ Church College, University of Oxford in Arabic and Farsi (the language of Persia/Iran) stayed on at the university rising to become a professor (for US readers, not all tutors at British universities are 'professors'; there are four ranks: lecturer, senior lecturer, reader and professor, only the highest rank is addressed as 'professor', the others are generally 'doctor' or sometimes 'Mr./Mrs./Miss./Ms.'. Professors are either promoted to being a professor usually having had an outstanding career or are 'given a chair' a special position concerning a particular area of study) and was awarded what I have called the Pococke Chair of Arabic Scholarship. Edward Pococke was a scholar of Arabic at Christ Church in the 17th century, so, though no such chair exists it would be feasible.

In our world Eden became a minister in 1931 and was Foreign Secretary in 1935-38, 1940-45 and again 1951-5; he became Sir Anthony in 1954. When Winston Churchill retired in April 1955 Eden became Prime Minister but his time in office was short-lived after the bungled attempt to re-secure control of the Suez Canal from the Egyptians in October 1956 in conjunction with the French and Israelis. This was seen as a humiliating defeat for Britain and Eden was compelled to resign in January 1957, having held the post for only 21 months. He became the Earl of Avon in 1961 and wrote successful memoirs and contributed to documentaries on the Second World War. Some feel that continued tension in the Middle East stemmed from Eden's agreement to carry out what became known as the 'Suez Crisis'; others argue it was just its failure which meant that outcome. In 1955 Eden did meet Nasser (this is where the picture comes from) who had become president of Egypt in 1952 and was to retain that position until 1967. This book envisages Eden having taken a different career path, possibly one that kept him away from large events and possibly may have led to a more peaceful Middle East in the 1950s, though maybe still turbulent later; one man or his absence could not resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict. This cover is modelled on the kind of political/current affairs books Penguin produced from the 1930s to late 1960s.

Property in the UK 5c: A Twist in the Sale

In terms of my categories of blogging this probably straddles the anger management and the journal type as it outlines, briefly, the latest development in the hassle we have been receiving over the house we have been renting since February. It is astounding that we have reached the halfway mark of our 12-month contract, the pressure makes it feel like many weeks more. Anyway, I am currently on leave and was about to set off for a day in a lovely part of southern England when there was a ring at the doorbell. A late middle-aged man stood there and asked me if I was Mr _____, i.e. the landlord. I said I was the tenant, which surprised him, and in fact that the landlord was in the USA. He then outlined that the landlord was months behind in making his mortgage repayments. I do not know how I stand legally but I know in the past tenants would just be kicked out when the landlord defaulted and the house was repossessed. I am guessing that we have more rights than that these days and hopefully there are a few stages before the house is repossessed, especially as we are close to being able to move out anyway.

This bank representative asked to see my tenancy agreement. However, it takes me half a day to find any legal document I need. I cling tightly to everything that I am sent, and the more precious it is the more securely I keep it, hence my inability to locate it. As it turned out later, my housemate actually had it, so it was a good thing I did not look for it as I would never have found it among my things. In addition, I have no financial relationship with the bank and did not feel compelled to deal with this man. I sent him to the letting agent, fortunately located near to our house, as I assume he can put his hand on all the legal papers needed and anyway, that is his job, I am supposed to be on holiday.

I do not know if this is going to make our situation any easier or harder. I can see now why the landlord was unwilling to come out with any financial incentive for us to leave the property early, but I cannot understand why he simply did not sell the property before he left the UK. Our rent is £1000 (€1480, US$2003) per month (out of this he pays only 7% fees rather than the usual 13-16% because of the agent he uses) and his mortgage payments are £1400 (€2072; US$2842), I guessed he made up the gap from the extra pay he got from his promotion in his work and the posting to the USA which presumably came with relocation funds. It was certainly wrong for him to go ahead and rent out the house defaulting on the mortgage payments; luring us into a property that he did not intend to keep for the duration of our contracted tenancy and, in turn, exposing us to his father and his slimy ways of doing 'business'. Even more than before I feel as a tenant I have no protection, I am just a cash cow that can be slaughtered the moment it is convenient for the landlord.

Gordon Brown says he is going to do more for those who are first-time buyers, but he also needs to help secure the position of those millions of us who rent. We have far fewer rights than people the other side of the English Channel. It must come as a shock for those people coming from France and Poland to work here to find they can be exploited in this way within the EU. So, this is the anger management element as tonight I feel I have absolutely no control over a central part of my life and my future - where I live.

Rubbish Policies - Tactical Dumping

This posting follows on from my one of a couple of months ago, 'Rubbish Policies - the Stench and the Greed' which touched on something which is facing many British people: the move to easier recycling which is a good thing, but combined with a reduction in refuse collection services which is a bad thing. With the UK weather having finally moved from constant rain to some actual sunshine, the refuse problem is getting worse. Rubbish not collected for 2 weeks as is increasingly the case in the UK smells far less when damped and washed down by days and days of rain. With temperatures now reaching the high 20s celsius it is a different issue and even a suburban street can now smell like a shanty town.

The reason why I am posting on this issue again is not solely about the problem being more obvious now the weather has been getting warmer, but because I have faced a side-effect of the increasingly constrained rules around refuse. In the old days and in most towns I have lived in, you had refuse bags. If you had to throw out more than usual, because you were just moving house or had had a party or it had been a child's birthday or Christmas and there were lots of packaging, well you simply filled up more bin bags. These days with more wheelie bins (for non-UK readers these are upright black plastic dustbins reaching about chest height on an adult, with wheels and a flip-top lid) you are not allowed to put more in than permits the lid of the bin to close. There is no consideration for the time of the year or particular circumstances you have encountered in the preceding week (as the students moving out of houses along my street in the last month have found). If the lid cannot close they do not empty the bin at all so leaving you with more than ever to dispose of the next week. To make matters worse, in my town, to encourage you to recycle more they have changed the standard sized bin over to recycling stuff and given you one half the size for refuse. In addition for blocks of flats (apartments) they give far fewer than there are flats on some assumption that flat dwellers generate less rubbish than house dwellers.

So what do you do if you have more rubbish than will fit in your dustbin? Well, I had warned the council that the answer would happen and they dismissed my concerns and now I have suffered it myself. One solution is that people dump it in green areas and woodlands, something that even happened in Milton Keynes where they took away more rubbish than in my current town. The second solution is that people cruise around dumping it in bins outside people's houses. The road I live on leads in to one with many restaurants and bars and workers from one of them came along when my bin was out the night before collection the next morning and they dumped a large bag of rotten yoghurt, beer cans (which should have gone in recycling anyway) and large empty containers that had held things like cooking oil. Of course that extra bag meant our rubbish bin could not be closed and so would not be emptied by the dustbin collectors. It meant I had to drive to the municipal dump (and you can tell how tense things are getting as you have to prove you come from this borough not a neighbouring one as people close to the border prefer to come to this one nearer to their houses than their own one which is at the far end of their borough), so using up more fuel just because of some selfish person picking on my bin.

I cannot really envisage a lockable bin system that would work; dustbin collectors would have have some pass key to access them. Simpler would be for the council to actually properly judge what people need to throw away each year and recognise that people have peak periods for refuse and in this town where so many rent, are likely to have to move 1-2 times per year as we have had to do. They also need to give one bin per flat as well. You do not stop people generating rubbish by taking away their ability to dispose of it properly. On that mentality medieval cities would have been immaculate places. We keep being told there is no hygeine hazard from all this rubbish lying around for fortnights or strewn around some of the nicer areas of town. To some extent the hygeine is a secondary issue, for me the stench or decaying refuse wafting through my window whenever I open it is the more immediate one, one that councils seem to prefer to exacerbate than ameliorate.

Blogging the Blog

Well, I have reached my third month of blogging. The title of this post was prompted by a children's programme of the 1970s called 'Noggin the Nog' which was about a King Noggin of a people called the Nogs, who appeared pretty much like 11th century Normans. In contrast to many children's programmes of that period which have been revived on DVD this one seems to have missed out.

Anyway, what is the significance of the third month of blogging? Well apparently that is how long the bulk of blogs last. In the way that it is said that everyone has 'one book inside them' you could add these days 'and three months of blogging'. Why is this the case? I think it is because blogs fall into three categories. The largest one, is the type that I initially set out to produce here: a tool for anger management. In this world in which it is difficult to get your voice heard even when dealing with companies and utility suppliers who you are paying large sums of money, let alone in terms of the political scene, many people feel immense frustration. We live in an age when anger is a normal part of behaviour and in some ways is a lightning rod to conduct away our sense of powerlessness in the huge and pretty oppressive world. However, certainly in the UK, with on-the-spot fines and ASBOs (Anti-Social Behaviour Orders) becoming so common, it is difficult to express than anger in public. In contrast the internet is kind of 'public' but without that kind of policing. You see anger come out on discussion boards, but even there, there are moderators and other contributors who restrain anger. On a blog generally you are the ruler, you decide what is appropriate. On that tack, I am intrigued by the number of blogs you come across with pornographic material on. They do not have bars the way pornographic websites do. Blogging, at present is incredibly free. So, the prime reason why I started this blog, as my first posting shows, is because of my anger and frustration: at the Blair government, at harrasment from my landlord, at the difficulties of getting a house in the UK, the dangerous way people drive, the end of my relationship and bullying at work. I was unable to do anything about any of these things, so I could blog my anger. I must say it has worked successfully and I guess that is the same for the other 3-month bloggers. You can get all of your anger out in 3 months of blogging and even if new problems arise you have stated your view of the world and what is wrong with it and that is applicable to the new problems. So the blog has served its purpose. It may also introduce you to people across the world who are encountering similar things and a problem shared is one halved. Blogs are a useful tool as they must have saved at least some people from counselling. They do not cost money and you can self-prescribe.

Now, of course many blogs last longer than 3 months. Why? Well, in my view it is because of their nature. This is probably why my blog will continue now I am passed my anger management phase as it is morphing into a different type of blog. I see two other types of blog: the journal and the scrapbook. The journal is probably closest to the original conception of what a blog was about from its full title 'weblog', i.e. like a captain's log on board a ship of any noteworthy events. This is the kind of blog you tend to see on commercial sites recording some trip or exercise that the TV presenters or some celebrity is going through. These things often have a finite life because once the trip or experience is over the blog is over. However, I find that such people then set off on another trip and so revive their blog. Thus, whilst the life of the blog may be erratic it does live on. I do find such blogs very intimidating. The ones in which people log their terminal illness are incredibly painful; those in which people outline their adventures or their court battles or whatever make me feel inadequate as I know I will never experience such things or if I did would be utterly unable to cope with them. Both kinds of blog can be found on this host. You can sit looking at the opening screen and see them flick past and then dive into one or two. As I have said before I am always astounded how blogs on so many subjects and in so many languages sit 'side-by-side' on the system. This kind of journal blogging harks back to earlier eras, these people are the inheritors of Samuel Pepys and Victorian explorers and hopefully not of Anne Frank, but certainly of ages past when keeping a journal was a vital exercise and for historians has provided a wealth of material about real lives and experiences from those times. I can easily see research in the coming years, drawing on blogs to get a rich slice of life in the 2000s. I have kept a diary every day since the year I turned 11, but this blog, with its focuse on the pressures I am facing and my analysis of them, is now providing a supplemental to that written journal. (Un)fortunately my life has not been that exciting so I doubt the world will be too interested in my life in the future. However, with my memory failing rapidly, it allows me to keep touch with my own experience. That is important.

The other form of blog which is equally common is the scrapbook. This often overlaps with the journal as family blogs often outline the adventures that the family has been on and yet also includes photos and other scrapbook elements. Similarly blogs about bands will have the journal of tours and performances inter-cut with images and other elements. However, there is also the scrapbook of the collector. I came across one on this blog in which the blogger listed recipes relating to dates (i.e. the fruit not the calendar dates). My blog has become like that as I 'paste in' things about alternate history. As with all blogging there is a sense of self-importance in the scrapbook type of blog. It is, however, that what you find interesting must interest others and I guess that that is a legitimate thought. In a world of billions of people, you can probably guarantee that there is someone else out there who shares your interest. Over the weekend I read about a website for people fascinated by hiccoughs/hiccups, not my cup of tea as the British say, but for those people who are interested it must be a wonderful source.

For authors internet blogs are so useful. Whereas it would have taken hours or days to find out names of people in a certain country and the habits they follow, these days you can quickly pick up authentic voices that provide depth to your writing. I read a book in the 1990s which was one of hundreds advising you how to write a book. However, it said that with the complexity of the modern world amateurs should not bother writing fiction because they could not get the facts right and this would undermine their books and mean no-one would be interested in them. Of course this is rubbish, great authors have made errors, look at Ian Fleming, he even blundered on things like pistols which made up a central element of his novels. In addition, people can always start writing about what they know before adventuring further afield, especially these days in which 'life writing' (of which blogging is clearly an element) is so popular. However, that book could certainly not be written nowadays when we can access so much about the world and its details without leaving our chair.

So, blogs have a range of functions and they add to the richness of the world the internet has opened up for us. Their key benefit is to the people who write them, but that does not mean others cannot derive use from them as well. My blog seems now to be straddling the different genres, with me blogging the ongoing pressures of work and accommodation like a journal and then using it as a scrapbook for alternate history discussions. I cannot say if I will be here in 5 years time, but certainly I see myself running beyond the 3-month milestone.

P.P. 01/02/2010: The complete 'Noggin the Nog' became available to buy on DVD in 2009.

What If King Harold Had Lost The Battle Of Stamford Bridge?

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘On Other Fields: Alternate Outcomes of the Middle Ages’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436531&sr=1-8

UK readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436579&sr=1-9

Canadian readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.ca/Other-Fields-Alternate-Outcomes-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1375772395&sr=8-4&keywords=Rooksmoor

What If King Harold Had Won The Battle of Hastings In 1066?

My views on this topic can be found in my e-book ‘On Other Fields: Alternate Outcomes of the Middle Ages’ by Alexander Rooksmoor.  It is available for purchase on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436531&sr=1-8

UK readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.co.uk/On-Other-Fields-Alternate-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342436579&sr=1-9

Canadian readers might prefer to access it through: http://www.amazon.ca/Other-Fields-Alternate-Outcomes-ebook/dp/B008LMT9WO/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1375772395&sr=8-4&keywords=Rooksmoor

I Don't Love the 1970s

I have to apologise to non-UK readers as this posting views the 1970s from very much a British perspective. In many other countries I am sure the decade was quite a bit better. As I have noted in previous postings the British public lives in the past and having moved on from the 'good old days' of the 1950s, the 1970s seems to be the focus of nostalgia, in my mind, very wrongly. There were things going on across the world that made the 1970s less than rosy for many people. The Vietnam War did not finish until 1975. The Vietnamese had been fighting the Japanese from 1941-5 then the French until 1954, then the Americans 1965-73 before the Chinese then got a look in by invading in 1979. The Vietnamese in turn invaded Cambodia which had been under the control of Pol Pot since 1975. He carried out the murders of about 2 million Cambodians and an attempt to return the country to 'Year Zero'.

Afghanistan was invaded in 1979 by the USSR and Iran went from a royal dictatorship to a fundamentalist one in the same year. The Middle East which had been plagued by fighting from 1914 onwards saw another round of the Arab-Israeli conflict in 1973; the Arab response to this was an oil embargo stronger than that imposed in 1967, then the more effective tool of simply quadrupling oil prices, which led to inflation across the World and the end of what is seen as the post-1945 economic boom. Chile's elected government was overthrown by American backed rebels and the President Allende was assassinated. Peru, Honduras, El Salvador, Colombia, Ecuador all faced guerilla wars and dictatorhips, something which alsco came to Brazil and Argentina. South Africa remained under apartheid; a war which ran for more than a decade started in 1975 in Angola and similarly in Mozambique, in Uganda Idi Amin came to power in 1971 and lasted until 1979 instituting a horrific regime and leading to the ejection of Ugandan Asians; in the Central African Republic a similarly insane and brutal dictatorship under 'Emperor' Bokassa I ran 1972-9. In total 20 African states were under military dictatorship in the 1970s.

Once the USA had finally left Vietnam, maybe the 1970s appear reasonable for Americans, in the narrow window of detente in the Cold War and before AIDS began to bite. Even with inflation and even in the UK, in the 1970s there seemed to be some prosperity. Despite the petrol price increase 1975 saw the peak in car sales. Clothes were loose and jeans flared, partly stimulated by a glut in cotton production. Yet, even in the prosperity of which some of the world's citizens were benefiting from, there were concerns. There was the worry that we were going to run out of oil and yet no-one really commited to any other fuel. The French went ahead with nuclear power as did the British and Americans to a lesser extent. The accident at the USA's Three Mile Island nuclear station in 1979 was a foretaste of what would come from Chernobyl in the USSR in 1986.

So globally the World was in a mess. However, everyone these days seems to look through all of this to disco and glam rock. These were brash hedonistic cultures mixing fashion and music and a sexual freedom, if you were lucky. As with the 1960s when only a fraction of the population of any country, even in the West, let alone elsewhere, actually experienced the hippy movement, so in the 1970s. I suppose fashions such as flares, tanktops and platform shoes did penetrate to the high street, but you were hardly going to experience glam rock or disco culture to any meaningful level at a dingy local disco or nightclub. The UK in the 1970s and it had been since the 1830s onwards was dreary, drab and only functioning once in a while.

The closest reflection of this rather bitter side of the 1970s seems not to come in documentaries, but in the series. 'Life on Mars' which is about a 'time-travelling' policeman from 2006 who ends up stuck in 1973. The ugly bedsit where he lives and the threat from IRA bombs sums up the experience of the bulk of the UK population far more than renditions of 'Dancing Queen' or 'Ride a White Swan'. Not only were the 1970s drab, something that the brash acid colours of interior design could not conceal, but they were boring. As an aside, you can see two clear segments of the 1970s, probably pivoting around 1975 when the glam of the first half of the decade slowed down, worn out by its excesses and shaded into the lower key second half, for which the faeces-brown shade of Austin Allegro (I kid you not, see if you can find an image online of this appalling car) seemed to sum up the last five years of the decade and began to prepare us for the comfiness of 1980s domestic styles.

The 1970s were boring as the UK only had 3 television channels. These went off during the middle of the day and rarely stayed on as late as midnight. The viewing figures for popular shows topped 20 millon (i.e. about a third of the entire population) indicating how little there was to do. On Sundays no shops were open bar newsagents that closed at 12.30 and pubs which closed 15.00-19.00 and then again at 22.30. The prime entertainment on Sunday afternoon was to walk around towns of closed shops looking in estate agents' windows before coming home for a dreary serial, religious programmes and if you were lucky a nature programme. People turned up their colour televisions (not a universal luxury, many still watched in black & white) so red that blood looked like strawberry jam when it came out of a seal on one of these nature programmes. There were no home computers, music was on records or cassettes, both prone to damage. Music is a matter of choice, so if you like disco or funk or '70s soul or ska or punk or progressive rock or folk, all popular in the 1970s, fine, but in fact much of the music that the bulk of the population in the UK heard was very naff child stars like The Osmonds or Our Kid or singers like Dana and Gilbert O'Sullivan singing sickly sentimental stuff. Though children were given a freer rein to go to the park and run around and vandalise, they were no safer than they were today. The television schedule was filled with warnings to children about how they could be run over (graphically illustrated by a hammer smashing a peach), electrocuted on electricity pylons, drown in canals, drown in manure even, get run over by tractors, be abducted by strangers and so on.

Life in the 1970s was unhealthy. Now smoking is banned even in pubs in the UK. In the 1970s it happened everywhere: in cinemas, shops, on public transport (including underground trains until the Kings Cross station fire of 1987 which killed 31 people) even in the workplace. Everywhere you went in the 1970s stunk of tobacco smoke; cigarette advertising was everywhere. Dog faeces were not picked up in the way owners have to these days and walking down a suburban street was a real hazard; you were lucky if the dog had had a typical canine diet of the time and had white faeces, these were hard and did not squidge when trodden on - these days they eat better. In the shops nothing was sugar-free or contained bran, there was minimal indication of what it actually contained. Bread was snow white and chewy as rubber; cereals were jam packed with sugar and advertising to children was unregulated, no wonder tooth decay in children was so high. The quality of food and drink was appalling from disgusting UK made sherry to whipped up desserts full or artificial colours you had to put up with food that these days would turn your stomach. Driving was equally a danger. Wearing seatbelts was not compulsory and you could drive at 90mph (144kph) on motorways until 1974 in an era when no car had a crumple zone, ABS or airbags.

I have not mentioned the industrial action in the UK. The attempts by the Conservative government (1970-74) and the Labour government (1974-79) to reduce inflation by limiting pay claims led to rising industrial action. The most notable outcomes were in 1974 with the three-day week and in the so-called 'Winter of Discontent' of 1978/9. 1973 had already seen the reduction of motorway speed limits to 50mph (80kph) to conserve fuel and electricity was only made available for 3 days during the 5-day working week. This bumped up unemployment and left household subsisting on cold food and candles for many nights from January to March of that year and limits on industrial use of electricity for even longer. In December 1978 similar issues over pay arose leading to strikes by lorry drivers and local authority staff meaning that refuse was not collected and people were not buried. The cessation of many deliveries meant panic buying of things like sugar and flour, hiking inflation even more; also many petrol stations closed as they ran out of stocks. Railway workers, nurses also went on strike and the Army had to step in to provide emergency cover. The government did not use the powers under Acts passed in 1964, 1973 and 1976 which would have allowed it counter the strike. Though in 1948-9 the Labour government under Clement Attlee had been happy to declare states of emergency and Conservative Edward Heath did on a number of occasions 1972-4, the Labour prime minister in 1978-9, James Callaghan felt inhibited from doing so. The unrest ended in February 1979 but had wrecked Labour's chances of winning the forthcoming election, a 5% lead in the polls had turned into a 20% lag by February and the election in May 1979 brought the Conservatives to power until 1997. [For more on why I consequently don't love the 1980s, see a future posting].

Unrest was not limited to the industrial scene, though it was not until the early 1980s that the UK saw race riots on a scale not witnessed since the 1950s, the 1970s set out the groundwork with the rise of the National Front (NF) and thousands of incidents of racism (seemingly condoned by television comedies which often raised 'humour' from racial differences, especially the series 'Curry and Chips' [shown in 1969 and cancelled fortunately after only 6 episodes] and 'Love Thy Neighbour' [which shockingly ran 1972-6; 8 series]) affected people across the UK, not least the refugees escaping Idi Amin's horrific regime.

So next time suggests you attend a '70s party and dress up in glam or disco fashions, remember that that style was as much a fantasy for the people of the time as it is for you. Whilst the 2000s are not that wonderful, I am certainly totally unwilling to trade them to experience the 1970s.