To those of you who were young in the 60’s - was it really ‘swinging’?

I had a great time in the 60"s but don't imagine the whole of society was swinging!
In 1968 the girls in my women's training college hall of residence had an 11oclock curfew during the week and had to apply for a late pass to be out after 12 at the weekend. A friend was dismissed from her training college because she was living with her boyfriend.
A girl was told not to go back to a school where she was to do teaching practice because she wore too much makeup and it frightened the children
Even as late as early 1970s I worked in a scool where women teachers could not wear trousers.
We had great music, fantastic gigs and clubs and enjoyed ourselves but we often did it by dodging rules and regulations.

You sound just like me trisher did we go to the same training college and teach at the same school?
One day when I was teaching all the women teachers went in in trousers and the head couldn't say anything!

I had two babies in the sixties so my life wasn't exactly swinging. But it was great to emerge from the austerities of war and the 1950's. I loved mini skirts, and the music, and colour everywhere. It was a decade that brought about a lot of change.

Oh yes. A wonderful time.

Kate1949

I was a teenager on the '60s. I loved every minute of it. Mini skirts, great fashion, The Beatles, Twiggy, Mary Quant. However, the drugs and the love ins passed me by!

Same here Kate!

Would you like to go back for a week or two and have another go?

dragonfly46

You sound just like me trisher did we go to the same training college and teach at the same school?
One day when I was teaching all the women teachers went in in trousers and the head couldn't say anything!

We had just moved and I was doing supply work. Gave me such a shock. I turned up in trouses and the deputy head freaked out. Your solution sounds great.

Yes I would jump at the chance MissA (assuming I went back at the age I was then, not the old baggage I am now!).

Yes please MissA.

I was in my twenties in the 60s. I lived in London as a postgraduate student in the first half of the decade. My time was my own providing I got my thesis finished. I lived with a group of other students like me in highly subsidised housing, so had ready made friends. I had a wonderful time going to the ballet and the theatre - always the cheapest seats because I was living on a scholarship.

I was never interested in pop music, but I loved the general fizzing atmosphere, and the clothes. There really was something special in those years, and much as I loved my family I also loved the freedom of not having to tell anyone where I was going, really doing much as I liked.

Reality closed in and I had to get a job once I’d got my degree. I worked first in Edinburgh, which I loathed. It felt like the back of beyond after London. After a year I moved to Liverpool, which was much better, met my Australian husband and married in 1968.

So all in all an eventful decade for me, and very happy apart from the year in Edinburgh.

MissAdventure

Would you like to go back for a week or two and have another go?

I had a great time but no, I couldn't keep up with my teenage self now!

Drugs hadn't really arrived on the scene, but I do remember us all being shocked because one of the students had taken purple hearts. We managed to have a great time without drugs.

Being teenage in the 60s was great. Loved mini skirts, music and the make up was a bit scary I have to admit.
I remember doing the Cavern Stomp with my friends to the music of the Beatles.
Would I go back? No because I am different now and it wouldn't be the same.

The cavern stomp?
I haven't ever heard of that.

Aha!

youtu.be/5ZF-NVQZ034

Can you imagine being a parent then?
Having lived through the war and then the austerity of the 50's, watching your child throw caution to the wind in the 60's?
Must have been terrifying. Notwithstanding some people must have felt pretty hard done by.

Yes please MissA but as I was then with the body and energy I had! Let’s go Kate!

I remember doing the Cavern Stomp with my friends to the music of the Beatles
Or dancing on the tables

BlueSky

Kate1949

I was a teenager on the '60s. I loved every minute of it. Mini skirts, great fashion, The Beatles, Twiggy, Mary Quant. However, the drugs and the love ins passed me by!

Same here Kate!

And me! I grew up in central London, weekend haunts, The Kings Road, Oxford Street and Carnaby Street.
Every Friday, at school we’d read Time Out or NME to decide where we were going and which band to see.
Loved the fashion and also wished I’d kept my Mary Quant stuff.

"Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven"

I came from a fairly serious family. I was allowed out and able to enjoy myself, but the overwhelming message was "this is your time - working class people aren't kept down any more". My parents were also hot on 'prejudice', so alongside the good times, I was supposed to 'make a difference in the world'.

So for me it was more about optimism for a better world to come, and my memories are more about meeting people, singing round campfires and earnest discussions, than nightclubs & discos.

But I do remember (and was reminiscing with a friend just a couple of days ago) that we made lots of our own clothes, and were very creative on a shoestring. I remember painting patterns on white plimsolls, and making clothes from remnants (still do!)

My mother took me with her on a business trip to London when I was about fourteen - which will have been the summer of 1966.

Obviously, I wasn't allowed to go to the places where the swinging sixties really were hot, but I remember walking down Carnaby Street and being amazed and fascinated by the clothes sold there.

Everywhere we went in London, we saw young men in velvet suits and with long hair - really long, not just the Beatles' hairstyles. mini-skirtet Twiggy look-alikes. girls.

Glasgow was light years behind at the time, although some of my school friends were being allowed to wear mini-skirts at home and blue jeans! I was green with envy.

My first mini-skirt and pair of jeans didn't happen until 1972, when I moved away from home to study. I prudently did not take either garment home with me in the summer holidays either, knowing fine well my parents would not let me wear either at home.

Looking back, I am unsure whether other cities really were swinging in the sixties or whether it was only London.

It is the seventies, when I was in my early twenties that stand out for me as the really exciting era.

Love reading these replies - thank you!

I had a great time in Liverpool in the 60s. I remember walking down the steps of The Cavern and the walls were wet.

Drugs passed me by. In fact I had to do jury duty just before my 70th birthday and I wished I had learned about them because I looked a bit stupid in the jury room!

I will always remember the pair of Cathy McGowan shoes in Dolcis’s window. 89/11. Beyond my pocket then. Freeman Hardy & Willis got my custom, such as it was, back then.

If I go back as MissA suggested please can I have enough money for those shoes?!