Mindset
13 Things Every Woman Who Grew Up in the '70s Will Remember (Number 9 Still Makes Us Laugh)
From the phone attached to the wall to the smell of a freshly cut Spirograph, here are 13 things every woman who grew up in the 1970s will remember. Warm, funny, and best read with a cup of tea. Tag the friend who lived it with you.
By Carol Nwosu — features writer and unofficial keeper of the group chat's nostalgia file. Last updated 13 July 2026.
Pour a cup of tea. Get comfortable. This one's not a review, a warning, or a to-do list — it's a little time machine, and you're invited. If you were a girl in the 1970s, at least ten of these are about to hit you right in the childhood. We're not counting the ones that made us slightly emotional. (Fine. It was three.)
There's a particular kind of joy in remembering something you hadn't thought about in forty years — and then realising a hundred other women remember it exactly the same way. That's what this is. No lesson at the end. Just us, back in the good bit. Ready? Right then.
1. The phone was attached to the wall — and so were you
One phone. In the hall. On a curly cord that stretched just far enough for you to sit on the bottom stair and whisper, but never far enough to get properly private. If you wanted to talk to your best friend about a boy, you did it six feet from your mother pretending to dust. And when someone rang during dinner, the whole house froze like a wildlife documentary. You knew every friend's number by heart, because you had to. Quick — what was Susan's? See. It's still in there.
2. Waiting a week to find out if your photos came out
You took the picture. You had no idea if it was any good. Then you finished the roll (all 24, agonisingly), dropped it at the chemist, and waited a WEEK — sometimes two — to discover that in eleven of them, someone had their eyes shut and your thumb was a special guest star. And you paid for the thumb photos. You paid for all of them. The gamble was the whole point.
3. The smell of a freshly opened tin of Quality Street at Christmas
Close your eyes. You can smell it, can't you? That pfft of the lid coming off, the crinkle of the wrappers, and the immediate, silent, ruthless family politics over who got the purple one and the green triangle. The toffee pennies sat there until March. Some things are eternal.
4. Making an entire mixtape by hand, live, off the radio
You sat by the radio-cassette player for HOURS, finger hovering over the red REC button, waiting for the DJ to finally play your song — and then he'd talk right over the intro, the monster, and ruin the whole thing. When you nailed a clean recording it was the sweetest victory of your week. Then you'd draw the little track list on the inlay card in your best handwriting. That, ladies, was Spotify. It just took four hours and a lot of shushing.
5. Space Hoppers, Chopper bikes, and playing out until the streetlights came on
"Be home when the streetlights come on" was the entire parenting app of the decade. You bounced down the road on a bright orange Space Hopper with the ears for handles, or tore about on a Chopper with your friend balanced on the back, and nobody wore a helmet or, frankly, knew where you were. And it was glorious.
6. Getting dressed in front of a two-bar electric fire
Central heating? In this economy? You got dressed in a freezing bedroom, sprinted downstairs, and toasted one side of yourself at a time in front of the orange glow of the two-bar fire, turning slowly like a chicken on a spit. The specific fear of a sock touching the element. The smell of warming dust. Character-building, they called it.
7. Your mum's specific, non-negotiable "going out" perfume
Every mum had The Scent. Charlie, maybe, or Estée Lauder Youth-Dew, or a mist of something in a gold bottle you were absolutely forbidden to touch. When she leaned in to say goodnight before a night out — pearls on, lippy on, that cloud of perfume — you knew everything in the world was, for that moment, exactly right. Smell one of those today and you're seven years old again.
8. Blue Peter, Nationwide, and the actual pain of only having three channels
Three channels. That was your lot. If you missed a programme, it was gone — no catch-up, no "I'll watch it later," just grief. You waited all week for one show. And when the telly said "Programmes will resume shortly" and put up that test card of the girl playing noughts and crosses with the creepy clown doll — you stared at it. For the whole gap. What else were you going to do?
9. Trying to draw a perfect circle with a Spirograph and losing your entire mind
You KNOW this one. You had the little box, the cog wheels, the coloured pens, and a dream of a perfect hypnotic flower — and then, two-thirds of the way round, the pen would slip out of the cog and slash a great biro scar clean across your masterpiece. The rage. The specific, incandescent rage of a nine-year-old betrayed by a small plastic gear. We're laughing about it now. We were NOT laughing then. (Told you number 9 would get you.)
10. The Grattan catalogue as the internet, the shopping mall, and the wish list
The big catalogue landed like a sacred text. You folded down the corners of the pages with the things you wanted, you learned to read a size chart, and in the run-up to Christmas the toy section was pored over with the intensity of scholars. It was also, let's be honest, the closest thing to a screen you had — and the models' hairstyles are still, somehow, seared into your memory.
11. Roller skates with a KEY, and the knees to prove it
Metal skates that clamped onto your ordinary shoes and tightened with a little key you wore on a string round your neck like a tiny queen. The pavements were cracked, the wheels had no give whatsoever, and every single one of us has a faint scar on a knee as a receipt. Worth it. We'd do it again tomorrow (well — we'd think about it).
12. Cheese and pineapple on sticks, jabbed into a foil-covered potato
The height of sophisticated home entertaining. A grapefruit or a potato, wrapped in tin foil, bristling with cocktail sticks like a delicious hedgehog, each one bearing a cube of mild Cheddar and a chunk of tinned pineapple. Possibly a cocktail sausage if things were fancy. Vol-au-vents if things were very fancy. This was a party, and it was perfect.
13. The very specific sound of the TV being turned off at night
That soft electronic whump as the picture collapsed into a single white dot in the middle of the screen — and then that little dot glowing for a few seconds in the dark before it faded. "Right, bed." The end of the day, every day. If you can hear that sound in your head right now, congratulations: you are officially, wonderfully, a woman who grew up in the '70s. And honestly? What a decade to have been a girl in.
So — how many did you remember?
- 11–13: Certified '70s girl. You probably still have a key on a string somewhere in a drawer. We salute you.
- 7–10: Solidly there for the good stuff. You definitely fought someone over a purple Quality Street.
- 4–6: A little younger, or a lot lucky with central heating. Welcome anyway — the tea's still warm.
- 0–3: Either you're fibbing about your age (we'll allow it) or you're reading this over your mum's shoulder. Hello!
Which one got you right in the heart? And what did we miss — the ones we couldn't fit are the ones you're shouting at the screen about right now, so tell us in the comments. We add the best reader memories to the list, with your name on them.
Tag the friend who bounced down the street on the back of your Chopper. She remembers the streetlights too.
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Written by a human who genuinely misses the Space Hopper, with a lot of help from the group chat. See our Editorial Standards.
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