A bag of Monster Munch declares the spirit of the age

Rachel Johnson

25 April 2009

Rachel Johnson celebrates the return to the rubbish holidays, bad cars and basic food of the 1970s. Scrimping is more fun than splurging

‘Nice car,’ said my host approvingly, as he saw me off after Sunday lunch last weekend, as the blossom hung heavy on the bough and all the birds of Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire chorused in the sunshine.

I opened the door with pride. At this point I should boast that the vehicle in question is not some hybrid, some gleaming marque of prestige. It’s my husband’s R-reg VW Passat. I swept the litter off the seat on to the floor with a fine, careless gesture before taking the wheel and accepting the compliment with a smile. The car’s air conditioning is broken, it has many more miles on the clock than Madonna, and it has a sudden tendency to cut out like Devon Loch in the final furlong of the Grand National — in fact, you couldn’t pay someone to tow it away, but none of this matters. All this makes the old Passat, as Vogue cover lines like to say, ‘right for now’.

So the fact that we don’t have a Prius but a Passat actually counts as a plus because — you must have noticed it too? — everyone is absolutely loving going back to the Good Life we remember when we were children: days when all cars, especially those made here in the UK, were basically crap and broke down over long distances, so at some point, any given journey featured a trudge to a telephone box to summon the local garage, and generally ended with the whole family squashed into the cab of a tow-truck, fighting over the last Rolo, listening to Donny Osmond.

When all holidays were basically rubbish, too, of course. Emma Kennedy, the writer/presenter/whatever, has a hit on her hands with a memoir called The Tent, The Bucket and Me, which is all about growing up in the 1970s, and peeing al fresco, when no one had mobile phones and the Sony Walkman hadn’t been invented yet, when a summer holiday didn’t mean a villa in Tuscany or theme park in Florida — it didn’t mean flying, period. It meant heading to a caravan park in Rhyl in the rain for a week (or two if you were really unlucky), or to a B&B in the Lake District.

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Patricia

April 23rd, 2009 1:32pm Report this comment

I remember the late 1970s very well; driving a battered, oil-dripping Rover 2000, bangers and mash with no wine on a Saturday night, buying clothes from the Thrift Shop, counting the cost of every item in my head as I walked around the supermarket and then there was the year the baby didn't have a Christmas present. I don't recollect having much fun in those days, I just remember feeling that life was a drag.

Scrimping is only fun when you don't really have to.

Roger Carr

April 24th, 2009 9:42am Report this comment

"Scrimping is only fun when you don't really have to." (Patricia)
But Rachel tends to make one forget that whilst reading here... Enjoyed it!

anna

April 24th, 2009 10:09am Report this comment

I love the Michael Fish quote! Only in The Spectator could you find someone thinking that poverty means struggling to pay TWO sets of prep-school fees.

David Short

April 24th, 2009 10:20am Report this comment

This Polly Filler stuff does not belong in the Spectator, even if she is the sister of a former editor.

Roger Inkpen

April 26th, 2009 10:32am Report this comment

"This Polly Filler stuff".

Presumably Ms Johnson is trying to get into Private Eye with "old is the new new"

David Short

April 29th, 2009 3:10pm Report this comment

Roger Inkpen, yes, I noticed that 'new new', too. Very PE.

I have created a list of what you'd expect in a Polly Filler column. The background always is a 'sort of' female journalist (one who has never been a reporter, has no journalistic qualifications or experience, and has probably never been anywhere more dangerous than the wrong end of Notting Hill), she works from home, is married to someone who can support a privileged middle-class lifestyle with a wife working from home (therefore a banker or somesuch), and has a nanny.

She will mention some or all of the following in her column: husband (often disparaging said person), nanny, children/babies, Tuscany, Cotswolds, and so on.

Which is how the Polly Filler column came about. But now it's beyond parody. It reflects reality.

This column ticks the husband, Tuscany and Cotswold boxes, thought to be fair to RJ, she has worked for a newspaper. She got taken on by the FT straight from university.

But then again how many non-metropolitan, unconnected, comprehensive-educated, strove and won an Oxbridge place, woman graduate ever achieved that?

Harriet Harman, you know nothing.

Sara-Jane Brown

April 30th, 2009 1:38pm Report this comment

Loved the article, it's so true.
I would list the bands from eras past that are re-forming but I don't think there would be the space.
And as a Butlins employee I can tell you that our sales are significantly up. Although I would disagree that it's just to do with nostalgia: We've invested millions in our Resorts over the past few years, to give families what they want from thier holidays.

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