The Natural World

There were many great things about growing up in the countryside in the late 70s.  We had fields and woods to explore and build dens in.  We had trees to climb and streams to fall into.  We had freedom to cycle for miles without helmets or mobile phones and we could get into all sorts of trouble without our parents finding out.

It would also be fair to say that we’d have traded the whole lot in without hesitation for a PS5, Call of Duty and a bloody big telly.   However, as we knew no better, we were happy. 
   
Of course, as we entered teenage years, the small town and the countryside were constricting and freedom could only be had a pricey bus ride or a lethal moped journey away.  But until then, we had a golden childhood.

If they can be prised away from Minecraft for long enough, our children can still explore and enjoy the countryside. However there is one important aspect of a rural childhood that they will never experience – a significant and wonderful countryside dweller that is now almost completely extinct.  

In the 70s, they could be found on roadside verges, in hedgerows and in woodland.  Sometime just one individual and sometimes a whole carefully concealed nest.  Bright, colourful – almost gaudy – your first glimpse got your heart racing with the excitement of the find.  Always educational and often life-changing – who can ever forget their first?  

Sadly, the march of technology has all but killed them off and so our poor children are never going to experience the joy of finding their first ever stash of hedgerow porn.



I discussed this recently with a female friend. She refused to believe that in the 70s, the roadsides and hedgerows of the UK were populated by tatty porn mags.  Back me up here – when you were growing up, was it or was it not commonplace for someone in your school to know of a stash comprised of what we innocently used to call ‘nudey books’?  And was that stash not kept somewhere either rural or on wasteland or essentially anywhere family members wouldn’t find it?  And wouldn’t you sometimes be let in on the secret of where a stash was kept?  And wasn’t finding a stash just like receiving a gift from the heavens?  A few of us found a stash once that was so huge, we seriously considered starting a Cargo Cult .


We’d read the things from cover to cover – getting all sorts of funny ideas about sex and girls.  Probably harmful but probably far less harmful to an 11 year old boy than what can be dragged up at the swipe of a screen nowadays.  

There were many sub-species of hedgerow porn.  Men Only & Mayfair were the classy ones to find.  As well as nudity, these mags contained stories – some, disappointingly, not about sex at all – and articles about cars.  Awash with cigarette and aftershaves ads that all made it very clear how to get women, these mags guided our dreams of sophisticated manhood.  A bikini-clad girl beside us in the Ford Granada smoking a Rothmans and leaning in to better smell our Old Spice.  The reality turned out to be 4 virginal and girlfriendless teenage boys in a Mini, smoking roll-ups and smelling of poor personal hygiene. 


Some boys preferred the slightly harder Fiesta and the down-market-johnny-come-lately Razzle.  These mags were certainly less discerning and had the twin horrors of 'Readers Wives' and ‘One for the Ladies’.  Until we saw 'Readers Wives', we assumed that all naked women looked like they did in Mayfair and Men Only.  To be honest, it wasn't a great disappointment - any real naked woman would have been a life-changing sight.

Far more horrifying, 'One for the Ladies' showed what lay ahead for women after 30 years of marriage.  What lady could not fail to be aroused by a few Polaroids of pot-bellied chipolata-danglers.

Many of the contributors blanked out their faces or wore dark glasses.  Even with the limited anonymity that this gave, what on earth possessed them to think that it would be a good idea to send in a nude photograph of themselves to what was Britain's best selling top shelf mag?  The modern equivalent would be sending a naked selfie to the Daily Mail, which would only really be worth doing if you had difficulty wrapping a turd.

There were the more risque mags that had couple scenes where the man offered up as much of a lazy lob as could squeeze past the censors spyglass to a woman who didn't seem too keen as she kept changing position every time the man came near her with his slack-on. The offering up of a limp penis to an ever-moving woman was rather like the elaborate courtship display of the Great Crested Grebe, where the female dances elaborately while the male approaches her with a dangly bit of pondweed.  

Then there were the rarest and most horrifying - the raincoater's specials.  These were the lowest quality, genuinely filthy and certainly illegal back then - probably illegal even now.  Mostly in black and white - grainy pictures for the truly undiscerning - these little gems could be guaranteed to put all but the most deviated off sex. Watching your parents having sex would have been less traumatic than some of these 'One Man and His Dog' mags. 

But now, alas, they're all gone.  Like the Golden Wonder crisp packets and the detachable ring-pull, we will never see them littering our countryside ever again. Country walks will never be quite the same.