Colour Inspiration - Seventies London Bus

Today’s colour palette has an urban, retro feel. The strong, dirty, colours of a typical London suburb in the seventies with a touch of sunshine to relieve the gloom.

This was the era of strikes, power cuts, bread shortages, bomb scares, mass unemployment and dissent. New political parties were formed. Punk was born. The Sex Discrimination Act was passed and women pushed for equality.

Thousands of roads were closed off to celebrate the Silver Jubilee while people partied in the streets with their neighbours and the Winter of Discontent coincided with one of the coldest winters in years.

This is the decade when the UK joined the EEC (European Economic Union) - the forerunner to what is the EU now. Inflation was out of control and bread was subsidised by the government. Racism and homophobia were ripe and overt.

Political violence in Northern Ireland exploded, the Falls Curfew, Bloody Sunday and the government passing a ruling that allowed suspected terrorists to be held without trial all contributing to The Troubles - familiar echoes of more recent events.

Despite being pretty grim in many ways, we also had donkey jackets (I do love me a donkey jacket!), space hoppers, bagpuss, and Star Wars. We had Butlins and Pontins and we started to take holidays abroad. There was Glam Rock, ABBA, David Bowie and huge moustaches. It seemed that all of my neighbours sported ‘fros and drove VW Beetles whilst blasting out disco music. Ahhh! Quite the golden era of music!

Concord hurtled through the skies, the Goodies did The Funky Gibbon and we didn’t have to wear seat belts or helmets. Saturday mornings were the BEST - shows like TisWas and the Multi Coloured Swap Shop and for, school holidays, ‘Why Don’t You?’. And who can forget the gentle humour of Johnny Morris and his Animal Magic?

Quite the dramatic decade.

(As much as I’d like to credit the photographer, I can’t remember exactly where this picture came from. It shall remain a TBD for the moment.)