DO you remember going for the ‘big shop’ with your mum on Saturday afternoons? I’ve only limited and partial nostalgia for the 1970s. I recall my childhood freedom to run wild in the fields with my friends with great fondness.

However, most kids back then were fundamentally survivors. Adults drove us home from visiting auntie pie-eyed on booze, blowing smoke in our faces. Grown-ups in the seventies were dangerous, either by design or accident.

Despite my protestations, I was forced by my Primary Four teacher to write to Jimmy Savile asking to go on his show. A programme and presenter I hated as a child. I’ve never trusted flamboyantly dressed mavericks - to me they’re walking, talking red flags. Thankfully, I didn’t make the cut.

That teacher though, she enjoyed punching kids to the head with her diamond ring. For the seventies, she was merely an average brute.

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So to kids, the 1970s were both wonderful yet weirdly dangerous. Perhaps explaining why Generation X grew up a feral mess.

There were, though, certain traditions and foibles from the Seventies which remain warm and fuzzy in my heart, like those trips to the supermarket on Saturday afternoons with my mum.

After Swap Shop (Google if you’re under-45), we’d head down the town. In a mere hour, she’d buy enough food to feed a family for a week. Nobody seems capable of such feats of domestic calculation these days. Certainly not me. Seemingly powerless to remember my own needs when it comes to eating and drinking, I end up shopping nearly every day.

Mum worked all........

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