Scottish Daily Mail

1970s The best years of our lives...

Family tries a taste of life in five different decades for TV experiment

- By Sam Creighton and Joe Cowan

FROM families of the 1950s gathered around the piano to those of today huddled over individual iPads, how we spend our free time has altered dramatical­ly over the decades.

Now a new TV series has charted these changes by asking one family to live a week in each decade, transformi­ng their home, fashions, furniture and accessorie­s to fit each time period.

And after the experience, the Ashby-Hawkins family have sworn off much of the modern technology that dominates our lives and say they long to go back to the simpler era of the 1970s.

They say the Seventies had the ‘perfect balance’ of convenienc­e and family values before households were ‘splintered’ by technology.

The six-part series, Back In Time For The Weekend, which begins on BBC2 on February 2, features child minder Rob, 44, IT consultant Steph, 50, and children Daisy, 16, and Seth, 12, and their home in London.

Miss Ashby said of the experience: ‘It gave us a real insight. I feel quite changed. We’ve done things we never thought we’d do. We’ve done things as a family together, which has been brilliant.’

She complained that i n the modern world friends and family can sit in the same room but not interact because they are using devices like tablets. She said: ‘There’s been a loss of basic manners. You see families out for lunch or dinner and everyone around the table has got an iPad out.

‘It’s changed my relationsh­ip with technology. I had an iPad welded to my hand virtually permanentl­y before the shoot, like many people do, but now I’m much more selective about when I use technology like that.

‘I have realised how much it had taken over my life and that it was in control of me rather than the other way around. I’ve put myself back in control. I read more, I’ve started knitting again. I’ve started doing more hands-on stuff again.’

Daughter Daisy has quit Facebook entirely and both Mr Hawkins and Miss Ashby said that they are using social media far less often.

Miss Ashby added: ‘The Seventies was the perfect balance. It felt like a real golden era.

‘What I’ve taken away from that is that it’s the time spent with people that is really important and making sure that we don’t let things like technology get in the way.’

The informatio­n for the programme was taken from the Family Expenditur­e Survey that ran from 1961 to 2001 and saw 10,000 households keep detailed records of how they spent their money.

The Good Life decade – Saturday Essay, Pages 16&17

‘It felt like a real golden era’

 ??  ?? Time travellers: Rob and Steph with their children Seth, 12, and Daisy, 16, as they appear in the episode set in the 1970s
Time travellers: Rob and Steph with their children Seth, 12, and Daisy, 16, as they appear in the episode set in the 1970s

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