The US and Britain in the seventies did not prosper as they might have done and it was not an easy time. The besetting problems were not solved; inflation, unemployment, low productivity, a generally rising crime rate were all with us in 1970 and were still with us (often more so) in 1979.

Coming directly after the white heat of the Sixties (a time of believable dreams and unbelievable disappointments) the early Seventies was the bill with service not included; Unemployment, three-day weeks, strikes, Northern Ireland, poverty. Even the Apollo program blew up in our faces. 

If we had known then what we know now about pollution, whales and the ozone layer, life would have been complete.

Everything and everyone seemed to be out to polarise opinion and the 70s was not a decade for compromise.

The IRA bombed themselves into disgrace with carnage in Northern Ireland and mainland Britain. The CIA engineered a coup in Chile. War eventually shut down in Vietnam but opened in lots of other theatres: Cambodia, Lebanon, the Middle east, Cyprus and Rhodesia.

The Shah fled swiftly from Iran. Idi Amin left Uganda less speedily but just as permanently. President Nixon licked his lips and assured Americans that he was honest, but the sweat broke out again as the facts of the Watergate affair became known.

In Britain, everyone (but everyone) went on strike at some stage or other and Brits called on the 'spirit of the blitz' to get by without electricity, petrol, heating, coal, milk , television and hospitals.

It seemed that everything in the seventies became an 'issue'. Suddenly we discovered that we had been inflicting dreadful harm on our planet. There were protests at nuclear plants, fuelled by the Three Mile Island disaster in the USA. People tried to clean up our poisoned seas, but the wreck of the super tanker Amoco Cadiz in the English Channel did not help . . .

Environmental and conservation groups could claim progress at the close of the seventies - certainly they were being taken more seriously than ever before. Never again could fur coats be paraded without fear of verbal or physical abuse for the wearer!

But the Seventies were also very much about having a good time all of the time. People were too busy having sex, getting drunk and/or stoned, eating fish and chips, smoking Woodbine and posing in front of their bedroom mirrors with tennis racquets to worry about the underlying problems. 

The seventies were definitely about excess. More was very definitely more - more hair, more height, more glitter, more guitars, more drugs, more More (long, thin, black cigarettes favoured by Telly Savalas in Kojak). Moderation had ceased to exist. It was a crazy time.

The key to the Seventies was 'freedom', and some of its bizarre crazes were the first real manifestations of the advancements made courtesy of the social revolution of the previous decade.

People changed their sex, or at least their avowed sexuality. There were gay rights, women's rights, ethnic rights, kids rights and animal rights to be considered, and many found that very hard indeed. Never again could naked models recline on the bonnets of gleaming cars at motor shows without fear of saboteurs spoiling such sport . . .

British women would no doubt have felt it satisfying that by the end of the decade, the incumbent at 10 Downing Street was one of their own number. Conservatives would count it as progress that a decade which began with Labour in power, ended with a Tory administration. Liberals may well have thought it miraculous that their party survived at all.

In the 70s, people invented strange gadgets which crept along the ground or rose perilously into the air. There were moon buggies and skylabs, pictures from Mars, oil from the North Sea, and babies from test tubes.

Woody Allen became a star. George Lucas brought us Star Wars. Marlon Brando and Francis Ford Coppola brought us The Godfather. And Edward Heath took Britain into the European Common Market (seeing as de Gaulle was no longer there to say "Non").

Good taste and fashion may not have made great bedfellows, but it was a fun decade to grow up in. 

If you lived through the 1970s, the events, images and sounds should flood back. If you didn't, this should give you an insight into what life was really like in the decade that bridged Flower Power and Thatcherism. Far out!