Life in London in the early 70s

Bedsits

In 1973 and 74, Sherry and I lived in bedsits. The first of these was in Swiss Cottage, on Belsize Park Gardens. A bedsit consisted of a single room with a bed, some chairs and a rather basic piece of cooking apparatus (a Baby Belling, in this case, with two hot plates). The bathroom facilities were shared with others, and were often rather unpleasant to use, because the owner of the property was never very keen on keeping all common areas clean and tidy. We used to have to clean out the bath before running water for a new one, and the water always took ages to fill. The bedsit was heated by an electric heater, running off an electricity meter which had to be fed with coins. We were young and carefree and the limitations of the accommodation were compensated for by the excitement of living and working in London. We paid about half of our combined weekly take-home pay in rent. On one occasion a friend of mine from Mexico days turned up with two friends of hers in tow, and expected to be put up. It meant that five of us were sharing a single room for a number of days, which led to tensions!

We eventually took our landlady to the rent tribunal because of the unacceptable state of the common areas. It all felt rather nerve-wracking, but we made our case and the tribunal found in our favour. It was a pyrrhic victory, though, because all the tribunal could do was to reduce our rent, which it did, but the landlady didn’t improve the service, which is what we wanted. So we looked around for another bedsit and ended up at the top of Netherhall Gardens in Hampstead. A great location, and a much nicer house, but still a very small amount of living space. At Netherhall Gardens we learned to love the music of Billie Holiday, which was played a lot by our neighbour upstairs and came through the ceiling. We called our neighbour ‘Asseswoir’ because he used to have lengthy conversations with various girlfriends on the communcal phone which happened to be right outside our door. He would end every conversation, it seemed, with a breathy ‘A ce soir!’ I eventually ‘fell out’ with Asseswoir because he would have noisy parties during the week. After there had been hours of raucous laughter and alarming bumps coming from above our heads, I went upstairs and complained. A rather drunk Asseswoir looked at me and solemnly said ‘Michael, we have fallen out!’.

We enjoyed living at Netherhall Gardens, but when we moved the landlord refused to pay us back our deposit, not for any reason, but by simply disappearing and not answering his phone. This was a sour note to end what had otherwise been a good tenancy.

Food

My childhood and youth in Mexico set the stage for becoming a bit of a ‘foodie’ in later life, but I have to admit that I could hardly apply that term to myself when I was at university or living in London in the early 1970s. Of course, the term ‘foodie’ was unknown at that time in any case!

London in 1973-4 may well have been full of gastronomic delights, but I have to say that Sherry and I were not participants in many of them. The gastronomic highlight of those days was probably eating at John and James’ in Ashchurch Park Villas where the food was always excellent and interesting. We were not wealthy enough to eat out at restaurants very much, although as a treat on special occasions we might have supper at the Amalfi on Old Compton Street in Soho, where we would invariably order a bottle of ‘Est! Est!! Est!!!” which I think we enjoyed for the story behind the name rather than for the sophistication of the wine. We would also eat at a Chinese restaurant in Hampstead after or before seeing a film at the Everyman cinema, and that felt like the height of luxury for an evening out. We would also occasionally meet Chris Calnan and Lynne Oliver for supper at another Chinese restaurant, the Phoenix in Camden Town. The only other restaurant I remember patronising was the Greek restaurant ‘Anemos’ (as I think it was called) on Charlotte Street, where we went for a supper in honour of my birthday and which I didn’t enjoy much, having become extremely intoxicated at lunchtime in an ill-advised drinking competition with Sherry’s sister Lisa (Lisa was still a teenager, and I have to day she won hands-down!).

At home we had little opportunity for creative cooking. The facilities were primitive in the extreme. At Belsize Park Gardens we had a ‘Baby Belling’: a miniature oven with two heavy iron hotplates above it, which resisted attempts at any kind of sensible temperature control. I think we used to eat a chop or a lamb cutlet with vegetables, and I’m sure we ate a lot of omelettes and scrambled eggs. Sherry and I can’t remember much about the bread, but while we certainly didn’t eat any pre-sliced bread, we probably had loaves from one of the chain bakeries. We drank good wine, though. Uncle John gave me a membership of the Wine Society, and we used to enjoy their inexpensive but excellent house wines. Milk and butter was delivered to the door by the neighbourhood milkman.

There was no equivalent of Starbucks or Pret-a-Manger in those days. Commercially produced sandwiches tended to be insipid and lacking in flavour, although there were some reasonably good sandwiches to be had at shops in the vicinity of Dillons, where I worked. The presence of a large and multi-national student body undoubtedly helped. Sherry remembers taking pre-pared lunched to work. I think I sometimes did, but was more likely to buy a salami sandwich or a sausage roll at a shop in Torrington Place. Occasionally I ate a fearsome doner kebab from a shop on Tottenham Court Road. They seemed delicious at the time, although I hate to think what was in them!

One of our winter-time treats was to go for a walk on Hampstead Heath and then to stop at a tea shop on Haverstock Hill where we would enjoy steaming mugs of blackcurrent tea. Otherwise known as ribena-and-hot-water. We would eye the wonderful pastries in the windows of Louis’ Patisserie, but seldom felt able to afford one.