The Good Old Days

The 1960s. My teenage years. These were definitely my good old days. I was hurtling towards womanhood, I was fit, I was healthy, I had the world at my feet. I could do anything I wanted, be anyone I wished. Summers were hot and lasted years, Christmases were for eating Quality Street, drinking snowballs and opening token gifts. I remember the year I got a transistor radio - now that was the height of technology. No amount of excitement for tablets, laptops, games consoles or phones could hope to beat the thrill I felt on first listening to Radio Luxembourg (underneath the covers) on my new transistor radio.  Speaking to my brothers recently (they had received the same present) we agreed it was the best, most exciting gift ever.

The Beatles were emerging - what was this group of four young lads, who sung beautiful, original songs, spoke with a strange accent and caused hysterical screaming wherever they went? 'George' was scribbled on my pencil case in biro. Every lesson I gazed at his name, drifting off into a dream, where I bump into him in London and discover I am actually the girl of his dreams too....

My best friend and I giggle away a couple of hours applying make-up, modelling outfits, backcombing our hair, and finally totter out in heels far too high, skirts skimming our backsides. Off to Tottenham Royal, the Cambridge or Manor House (where we laugh at our parents worrying about the two murders committed there the previous week and plan our excuses for getting home late).

The world was full of flowers, marijuana and free love. Woodstock was the place I longed to be; Twiggy was the stick thin model I (ridiculously) aspired to be; and Mary Quant was my fashion icon.  The contraceptive pill was the answer to many a young woman's (and probably a young man's) prayer. Women began getting together and fighting for liberation. We had arrived!

Art School was everything I'd hoped it would be - and more. Rod Stewart played Maggie May live at the May Ball while I felt a million dollars, full of cheap lager and dancing in the dress I'd designed and made that day out of a red checked curtain. I relished the freedom, the first taste of independence, those creative minds, the smell of plaster, clay, paint, turps - I loved every technicolor moment of it.

But just a minute.

Didn't I suffer agonies of indecision and lack of confidence? Why are my diaries full of anguish and despair ('I'm so fat/spotty/hairy; no boy's ever going to look at me; I blush, get tongue tied, cry over dates who don't turn up; my art isn't up to everyone else's, they all know what they're doing but I don't; I'm rubbish, I'm a fraud.')

The Vietnam War is in full swing. People are getting killed or their lives changed forever. We haven't learned any lessons. Children are starving in Africa. In 1960s Britain there are still people with outside toilets and no electricity. Men who love men and women who love women are mercilessly criminalised. Equal pay for women is still only being paid lip service, and in South Africa apartheid is literally dividing a nation. Signs declaring 'No Irish, no gypsies, no coloureds' go unchallenged as viewers laugh at TV programmes mocking all those who unfortunately fall into the above categories. Only a few years before it had been 'No Jews.'

Maybe there are no good old days, only rose coloured specs? Each generation takes a step forward, a step back and another step forward. Do we really move on?

'Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose.'

Girl with attitude, circa 1966

To lighten the mood, here is a poem I wrote about twenty years ago, dedicated to my mother and my daughter: 

Oh Mother, Oh Daughter

That dress

Pink stretch towelling

Plunging neck and a keyhole

To reveal

A heaving teenage cleavage

The length was

Just this side of decency

Red patent shoes, platforms

High heels, crossed straps

- I can see them now –

Click clack click clack

They killed but I felt fab

Just fab 

Mum watched me from the window

Brow furrowed

As I tottered, wiggled

Waggled, giggled

To the bus stop

She was never one of those

You’re-not-going-out-in-that Mothers

But I knew, I just knew

That she wasn’t

Entirely happy

I didn’t care

I looked great

I felt great.

“Those white lips, black eyes

Like a clown”

She whispered it to dad in the kitchen

He sighed and nodded.

I’d heard, but I didn’t care.

I knew I looked great.

The hooting, the wolf whistles

As I giggled and wiggled

Confirmed it.

I was immortal, invincible,

I got away with murder.

I’d never be old like my mum. 

Thirty years

Gone by like three

Stretch lycra

(We only had nylon)

Plunging neckline

Bare midriff

Platform high-heeled boots

To the knee.

Skirt just, only just,

This side of decency

Black eyes

Lips silver this time around

She totters and wiggles, waggles and giggles.

I watch from the window

Biting my lip

“What does she look like?”

Sighs her dad

“She’ll freeze.”

“She looks great,” I say

“They all go out like that.”

I like her best with pink lipstick

And I wish she’d take a cardigan.

She doesn’t care

She knows she looks fantastic

She’ll never be middle-aged like her mum.

 

Thanks for reading…….. Jill