The Haunted Generation

Fragmented, fading memories of tinsel-laden Christmas trees from Woolworths, and the tantalising tower of luridly-wrapped presents stacked beneath. The impossible wait for dawn, then the frenzied ripping of paper, all soundtracked by an austere Christmas Morning service on BBC1. The whiskered relatives daintily sipping Harvey’s Bristol Cream at 9.30am; the waft of childhood dogs and cats mercilessly circling trays of steaming, home-baked mince pies. For many of us, recollections of our earliest Christmas Days remain just that: recollections. A receding, mental mish-mash of much-missed grandparents and long-abandoned toys, of wide-lapelled light entertainers giving their all to wake snoozing fathers from the post-turkey torpor.

Andy Heggs, however, has something much more tangible. Growing up in 1970s Cheshire, his childhood was expertly documented by his dad, Olly – an amateur enthusiastic photographer who captured the minutiae of Andy’s formative years with an unerring eye for the tiniest, most affecting detail. As a special Haunted Generation Christmas treat, I’m hugely grateful to Andy for sharing a selection of his dad’s most delightful pictures from the Heggs’ family’s 1970s and early 1980s Christmas Day celebrations. Over to you, Andy…

“It’s not an exaggeration to say my dad was never without, or far from, some kind of recording device – most of the time his trusty 35mm Olympus OM10 camera. There are precious few family photos that actually include him, such was his propensity for being behind the lens. This was, most of the time, a source of frustration – particularly for my mum. This was pretty apparent in her refusal to smile on 99% of the pictures I’ve got of her, bless her. 

It’s a double-edged sword. On one side, we’re really fortunate that he documented nearly every family occasion and milestone on 35mm slides. On the other, it left me with about 20,000 slides to deal with following his death in 2005. Stupidly, I stored them in a cellar for half a decade – which reduced them by a good 5,000, as I discovered transparency film really does not like the damp. Once I realised this and moved them to the attic, so began the monumental task of scanning the remaining 15,000 slides. I purchased a decent flatbed scanner which had the ability to do four slides at a time. Many an evening was then spent diligently hunched over it, scanning around 100 slides a night – and I was getting somewhere until the hard drive I’d been storing them on died. And so did a part of my soul.

I did get the drive recovered, but sadly lost details of the filing I’d been doing, so I ended up with a few thousand slides in a disordered mish-mash. Still, they are all there. Since then, I’ve revisited the capture method and – thanks to the assistance of a friend, a lightbox and a DSLR – I’ve romped through another couple of thousand. This time, they’re backed up in several places and carefully catalogued!

So the following slides are a very tiny selection, all focused around 1970s Christmases… and my lucky hauls of presents.

Me and Basil Brush. 

I’m guessing I’m about three years old in this picture. so it’s 1973 or ’74. Basil is one of my earliest TV memories, and I was rarely parted from the Wendy Boston Playsafe soft toy I’m looking at longingly here, perched atop the bonnet of our car. I adored Basil and I still love watching clips of him on Youtube. Whenever I hear his voice – well, Ivan Owen’s voice – I get real flashbacks.

One of my earliest memories is clinging onto to Basil when I went to hospital to have my tonsils out. I pulled one of his felt teeth out in the waiting room, and asked the nurse if he could stay in the bed next to me while he got it fixed. 

One totally unrelated memory trigger from this picture – the brick wall behind Basil’s left hand was the scene of some lasting cosmetic damage to our family home. Tinkering in the garage one afternoon, my dad was tasked with keeping me occupied (a rare occurrence) and provided me a bucket of water and a paint brush to ‘paint’ the wall. All was fine until I tired of the tiny brush he gave me, ventured into the garage and picked out a bigger one before returning to my given task. Unfortunately it was a brush that had just completed a round of decorating and the resulting huge, gloss white stain on the brickwork never came off.  

I’ve no idea who the girl is in this picture – and neither do my much older sisters. I imagine she’s the daughter of one of my parents’ friends? 

Lego featured a lot in my childhood – starting with the basics in this picture and moving onto Space Lego in the 1980s. I was obsessed with that. It never leaves you does it? I used my son as an excuse to play with Lego again in the early 2000s, and now the tables have turned – he’s nearly 21 and he buys me Star Wars themed lego for birthdays and Christmas! 

Other notable observations in the picture; My outfit! Wow, look at the checked trews and Mary Jane sandals. And the gas fire! I used to ‘toast’ bread on that whilst watching Sunday TV. There’s a lone Matchbox military car, too – a tiny part of the huge collection I had already amassed at this stage.

I’m a little woolly on the year here, but I’m going to say around 1977. I’ve got a really vivid memory of that Christmas tree and the baubles. I really miss them, and would love to have them on our tree every year! I get proper vintage vibes from those.

There’s a lot to take in here. Firstly, my three pals. I’m completely ignoring both them and my dad to focus on my Space 1999 lander! But they are Jamie (with the Action Man outfit and Manchester City bag), Mikey (the youngest, in the middle) and Cub (the eldest, at the back – clearly very pleased with his model BA Concorde). Jamie had suddenly appeared as a new pupil in my primary school class in 1976 and we quickly became good mates. He and his family moved to the UK from the States because his dad was a big cheese at ICI – who had a headquarters in our area – and he had been enticed to work and live here. As I recall, they were only in the UK for a few years but my mum and dad became good friends with them and visited them a couple of times when they all moved back to the US.

I completely forgot I owned that Space 1999 lander, but when I saw this photo again it suddenly became a much more vivid memory. I remember playing with it, constantly removing the cargo while eating crumpets and watching the show eagerly on TV with my mum and dad. I’m sure this all happened on a Sunday, but a cursory google says it was broadcast on Thursdays in 1975, so who knows…

Check out the telly in the background, too. I think it had a remote control… well, a box on the end of about 15 feet of wire anyway. And a single button that cycled through the three available channels. There’s a box of Just Brazils on top of the TV, too. Classy…

Onto another year. I was convinced these figures, in their mountain hideout, were from the ‘Action Force’ range, but a bit of Googling suggests they’re actually Matchbox’s ‘Mobile Action Command’. I bloody loved that. I can recall making up scenarios on our handily-coloured brown living room carpet and playing with it for hours. Also in this pic: a Snoopy mirror, a Wombles annual, a Mr Happy soft toy and a horrific bedspread.

I’ve included these two photos purely to highlight the toy with surely the most limited playability of that particular year – the Matchbox ‘Cascade’! Literally minutes of fun, as illustrated by my then brother-in-law’s face. Good pic by my dad though – on closer inspection, he managed to get catch six of the ball bearings in mid-flight! No wonder the flash was on, he must have had the camera at a very high shutter speed. Other booty featured here includes Othello, Doodle Bug and… Motormaster? Also note – it’s the same Christmas tree. I think it lasted until I was about 12. There was none of that expensive real tree frippery in our house…

And to finish, me aged 11, in 1981. Where to start? With the brown and beige Christmas Day outfit, maybe? Apart from weddings and funerals, I’ve never worn a tie since leaving school – so clearly I had little control over my sartorial choices here. The living room, though! The poo-brown carpet that matched my outfit, the fireplace constructed by my dad’s own hands, the gas fire and… what’s that in the corner? That, my friends, is our first VCR – a Betamax, of course. My dad had to be among the first to buy one of these lumbering hunks of new technology, and Betamax was the first format out of the traps. Great… but you try finding a rental shop in 1980s Manchester that stocked Betamax tapes rather than VHS. Mind you, my dad – through some dodgy contact, I imagine – did manage to get hold of a pirate copy of E.T. All the kids in the road gathered round our TV to watch it one Sunday morning – after they’d been sworn to secrecy about where they’d actually seen this revelatory piece of movie-making. 

My presents here are pretty dull, though – probably indicative of my interests at the time. Mostly toy cars and lorries, Lego and a remote-control car. I’m looking a bit too longingly at that, I’ll grant you…

And, for good measure… me, sitting with my late godfather, Derek. He and his wife were the most eccentric and lovely people you could ever hope to meet. Permanently stuck in the 1960s, they were a fixture in our house every Christmas and I loved them both to bits. Check out Derek’s clothes – the matching tie and trouser combo – and his elaborate facial hair. And our sofa, which matched the carpet. And my outfit, obviously…”

Thanks, Andy. And, indeed, thanks to everyone who has contributed to, commented on or just quietly enjoyed this strange corner of the internet in 2022. It’s been a delight as ever, and I’m hugely grateful to everyone. If Christmas is your thing, then I hope you have a lovely time… and even it it’s not, the same sentiment applies. Like the ageing hippy I am, I’m simply wishing peace and love to all.

Best wishes as ever…

Bob x

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