The Silver age

I was ten years old during the Silver Jubilee in 1977. That perfect, daft summer formed and cemented my view of the country I live in, and still makes me feel a wave of unconditional affection every time I think back to it.

Social historians seem almost contractually obliged to present England during that time as a tatty, shambolic, declining realm, a dreary windswept concrete shopping precinct where everything was brown and orange. But that is not what we ten-year-olds saw. We saw the vivid bright green of Slime (a fashionable novelty toy then) and the mellow purple of our Chopper bikes and the thrilling scarlet from our LED digital watches. And in the summer of 1977, there was a ubiquity of red, white and blue. Streets, shops, schools, the Blue Peter studio — even Smiths crisp packets. It coloured everything.

Certainly there were elements of the Silver Jubilee that were frayed around the edges.