Forty years after Malta became a republic, Kristina Chetcuti looks back at a simpler life when men wore the trousers, knitting was all the rage and a home cost €7,500.
This was the year the Russians invented a pill that would supposedly help smokers kick the habit within three weeks.
If you were a chain smoker in 1974 and happened to go to a pharmacy in the USSR, you would have been well advised not to buy a packet of these pills, which were based on the “alkaloid of an insecticide widely used in the Soviet Union”. If you did, you are unlikely to be reading this.
This was a year where everyone washed with Fa soap, when women took Phensic for headaches, flu, and period pains, and when Oxo was called “the great little cube”.
More tellingly it was when Maltese people started to care about cosmetics and looks.
If you said the word Botox people would probably have understood buttocks, but adverts in the papers offer an indication of the first attempts at rejuvenation.
Advert shows a man saying he’s going to seduce his wife for Christmas by getting her... a vacuum cleaner
Phyllosan, for example, were pills marketed as “counteracting the physical and nervous debility” and “helps you enjoy a vigorous life”. Beware, ran the advert: ageing sets in at age 28.
The Malta Health Farm in Tarxien was all the rage. “Regain the healthy look of youth” said the daily advert.
The advert featured a man wearing a silky gown and smoking a pipe – while his partner sat on a rocking chair wearing a dressing gown and was... knitting.
Yes. Knitting was big in 1970s Malta. We all had aunts who knitted away one twin set after the next, religiously following the patterns in Women’s Weekly.
Newspapers seemed to target men. A C&H Bartoli cartoonish advert shows a man saying he’s going to seduce his wife for Christmas by getting her... a vacuum cleaner.
Parker pens – a variety of them costing anything between €4 and €19 – were for the “go-ahead man”. Women presumably asked their gentlefolk to write letters for them, or used boring old pencils. Office equipment back then was: a phone, a copy machine, a typewriter and, if you were lucky, an electronic calculator that cost €50.
‘Haf Department Stores’ in Guardamangia offered “the meticulous housewife” everything she needs “from a teaspoon to a bedroom”; “from a saucer to a refrigerator”. Men presumably never gave much thought to sleep and food in those days.
Archives of 1974 Times of Malta reveal that Eddie Privitera urged “housewives” to – surprise, surprise – “vote Labour”.
Mr Privitera, who was already a prolific letter writer, told readers the Maltese housewife “will once again vote Labour... especially more now with children’s allowances, cheaper gas, electricity and bigger things to come”. Déjà-vu?
The classified sections in the newspapers ran vacancies for dressmakers and typewriter repairs, cleaners and “a vacancy in a nightclub in one of Malta’s leading hotels for a female hostess in her 20s with “personality plus”.
No company left a phone number in those days. Potential recruits were urged to get in touch only via Post Office boxes.
Renting property was still more popular than buying. A three-bedroom flat in Princess Margaret Street, Msida, could be yours for €7,500. A luxury three-bedroom flat with sea views, garden and carport in Sliema was priced at €12,000. A semi-detached villa in St Andrew’s, with walk-in wardrobe and two garages, was selling for the princely sum of €25,000.
It was also the year when the meaning of the word ‘street’ was defined in the case of Herbert Schranz v The Commissioner of Land. The Civil Court held that land having a frontage on an existing street must be considered as a ‘building site’ although adjacent to a grass path.
In other news, there was a call for a cycling track at the annual general meeting of the Malta Cycling Association.
In their report, eager cyclists listed their difficulties: particularly the cost of tyres and spare parts. Fast forward 40 years and... nothing has changed.
On a similar note, a Times of Malta editorial on December 23 urged the ‘Tapping of solar energy in Malta’.
But perhaps a great reflection of how history repeats itself is the lottery. Even in December of 1974, people repeatedly failed to win the jackpot, which reached the sum of €93,000 by Christmas.
Entertainment
• Buskett Roadhouse featured the international acrobatic duo from Japan Missile Adagio.
• The Preluna had world famous hypnotist Paul Sands over for Christmas entertainment.
• The Greenfields entertained at the Dolmen Bar.MADC put up The Dumb Waiter by Harold Pinter at the Deporres hall in Sliema.
• MTV had the series Baħar Imqalleb running.
• Walking Tall, an action movie about a man who tried to bring law and order to his home town, earned an ‘Adults with Reserve’ classification because, although “substantially positive” it had “too much violence”.
• New Year’s Eve dinner Ramla Bay Hotel in Marfa cost €9 – unless you wanted a flute of champagne, in which case it would set you back €14.
Weather
Forty years ago, the weather was very similar to today’s: December was mostly sunny, with the occasional showers. On December 13, 1974, the day started with scattered showers, and it was bright and sunny at intervals.
Top toys
• Corgi toys
• Subbuteo table soccer
• Wembley playballs
• Revell and Tamiya kits
• Monopoly
• Lima trains