Born on 1 January 1970

Back in 1970, life felt a bit more textured, didn’t it? If you’d popped into this very pub back then, you’d have been squinting through a blue haze of cigarette smoke while the jukebox rattled out Mungo Jerry’s "In the Summertime." It was a year of real change; we were all carrying around those heavy old pennies and half-crowns, dreading the "D-Day" decimalisation everyone was fretting about.

On the telly, you didn't have much choice, so we all sat down for *The Basil Brush Show* or gripped the sofa arms during *Doomwatch*. I remember that summer being a cracker—properly hot, paved with the sticky smell of melting tar—while we watched Brazil dismantle Italy in the World Cup on a flickery screen. If you were lucky, you were cooling off with a Lyons Maid Mop or a cheeky Watneys Red Barrel.

The kids were obsessed with those clippety-clop Space Hoppers in the garden, and if you went to the pictures, it was all about *The Railway Children* or *Love Story*. It wasn't all sunshine, of course—the news was full of the Apollo 13 "successful failure"—but there was a warmth to it. You’d head home for a bit of Vesta Curry or a Fray Bentos pie, feeling like the seventies were going to be something special.