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

The closest I came to drugs was taking a dose of caffeine tablets, when exaams were pressing and I was worrying about revision. The amount I took was within the recommended dose but I began to feel sucidal. I tried to make myself sick, and I began to feel better but then was so wired on caffeine I didn't sleep for 24 hours. I was never tempted to try anything stronger.

Someone I worke with used to take uppers and downers at the weekend and we all thought he was pretty stupid to do it.

I had a great time. Saw a different band each week in the dance hall or concert hall: Animals, Manfred Mann, Hollies, Searchers, Merseybeats, Herman's hermits, Steam Packet [Rod Stewart in that], Gerry and the Pacemakers, Freddie and the Dreamers, Wayne Fontana, Beatles, Chuck Berry, Ike and Tina Turner, Gene Pitney, Stones etc. etc. and got most of their autographs.
I was a Mod...all leather and suede coats and hush puppies. Boys rode the scooters and wore parkas and rode to seaside towns on bank holidays. Girls would follow by hitch hiking! We would try and gate crash parties at the weekends and drink cider and eat Wimpy burgers on Sundays.
Everything seemed vibrant and new...the hairstyles, the clothes, furniture too with the emerging Habitat shops/Terence Conran designs.
Jobs were easy to get, if you didn't like one you just left and got another within the week.
However no drugs offered to me or anyone I knew. My husband was a Mod too and by 1970 we'd been married for 3 years, had bought a house [extremely sparcely furnished] and had our first son. It was a great decade personally.

At 18 I was working as a temp secretary in Manchester. I loved every minute, different work weekly, unless the company wanted you to stay. If it was interesting, I did, otherwise, off to a new place. I worked for a Jewish firm of solicitors for a while, including the period of the 6 day war. I’d read the Leon Uris novels and other information on the Holocaust but working in the company during that period was fascinating, widened my horizons, my knowledge, encouraged me to learn more
Great time to be young and in Manchester. Worked for a debt collecting agency, got politicised about poverty.
Medical work. The city was buzzing, young people everywhere. Piccadilly Gardens the place to eat your lunch

She was so stylish in her beautiful nipped in waist dresses and gorgeous Duster Coats, and always with gloves.

I had a duster coat! Was I stylish?

Teenager in the 60s, you Left School at 16 unless you were brainy. Loved the music , fashion, more freedom, more safety, lived in small village, weekly dances, with a great band. Loved Twiggy, Dusty, Beatles, parents brought a Dansette record player to share with siblings, Brenda Lee Rocking around the Christmas Tree, first record. A simple life, wages were commiserate with the times, when 16 in 65, as a cadet nurse, 4.00 per weekwages after lodge taken out, wish I’d kept those pay slips. Dance night at the local theatre, friends and I were taken back to Nurses home by the Yardbirds, all above board no funny business. Who would have thought it, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton giving us a lift home. Never realised until much later. What good times they were, for me anyway.

silverlining I never bought a Biba dress, nor Mary Quant Ginger group. Apart from the price, the Biba dresses were shoddy and badly made. I saw some Ginger Group dresses in a department store, they were £8.00. out of my price range.

Comparative wagess depend on age, job and year. In 1961, I had a holiday job in a department store and was paid £5.50 a week. By 1965 with a degree and work experience I was paid £16.00 a week, but needed to pay for my rent and food out of that.

Do you want to go back, lie on the grass somewhere, or on a beanbag, and have a go now?

Silverlining
The memories that I have of the 50s fashion are of my mother.
She was so stylish in her beautiful nipped in waist dresses and gorgeous Duster Coats, and always with gloves.
When her and my father went out most Saturday nights she always smoked Sabrani Cocktail cigarettes. As children we thought they were so pretty.

My only 60s drug experience was when I was offered a puff of a reefer (cannabis) in Soho, politely declining we made good our escape.

Sorry fat finger
The people I knew who smoked cannabis were poets, singers fans of Dylan etc. The pill poppers were mods and in rock bands. None of my close friends did drugs we were too scared

A word on drugs and the sixties. I’d be interested in others experience. At 16 I left a party with my friend when it became obvious the guy whose flat we’d been invited to was a drug dealer. We made an excuse and ran
The people I

Yes I remember that happening MissA.

My neighbour said she used to have dresses put aside, and pay them off weekly.

Monika your £5 dress cost more than my entire 40 hour wages week in the civil service. I earned under £5 pw gross in 1964/5.
Equating that to today....say £ 10 per hour ( many earn more%) x 40 hours is £400. Would we feel that a dress costing £400 is reasonable? Doubt it, we can easily get one for £20 or £30, a fraction of a weeks pay.
Clothes and most everything else was really expensive in relation to income in those far off days.

The 60 s were very different in comparison to the very staid 50 s. Fashion and music, also drugs, aimed at the young was new and exciting ( not the drugs) but attitudes still remained similar to those in the 50 s. Shame, guilt, living in sin, unmarried mothers, what will the neighbours think etc etc.
The Contraceptive pill was available towards the later 60s, but generally limited to the married and engaged ( proof required).
Like most people I started work at 15 and any ‘swinging’ passed me by. The 60 s were fun, fashion and music was fun, but were not as swinging as some would think. Or if they were, I missed it.
I rather think those lucky enough to attend college or university had very different experiences. They would have been very much in the minority though, so it’s interesting to read of the grans who benefitted from higher and further education.

I was 16 in 1960 and living in London so I should have had a swinging time and I did, up to a point, though I missed out on the drugs and free love. My mum would not have approved of either of those! It was an exciting and almost magical time, with a real buzz in the air. I remember a lad I worked with coming into the office with a Beatles haircut, the first one I had ever seen, and the first minidress I saw was on my younger sister. We were 'mods' and mostly used to make our own dresses or buy from C&A in Oxford Street. Biba and Quant were too expensive on our meagre office-job salaries. It was an optimistic time, too, with plenty of jobs going. You could leave one job on a Friday and start another on the Monday, no problem. I married at 19 (not considered particularly young in 1963) and we moved out of London in order to afford to buy a house, something I lived to regret. We both had to find new jobs in our new area but we never saw that as a problem, and it wasn't. Different times!

I was 21 when I launched myself in London in 1964. Although my parents lived in Epsom, after a few months of commuting I moved into a flat about half a mile from Marble Arch. Two, eventually three of us, shared a one bedroomed flat and shared the bathroom with the landlord on the floor above.

A year later I moved out to a bedsit close to Primrose Hill, not then the upmarket area it is now. After the freedom of university, I didn't want the relative control of home, or the commuting. As I said I wasn't a swinging chick, but feasted on very busy museums, art exhibition, almost all of which were free and I had a season ticket for the Proms one year, went to the ballet and plays. All much cheaper, relatively than they are now.

It was a fabulous time!! And I had a fabulous time!!

There was an air of optimism with great fresh designs, music, fashions, architecture etc. We were lucky not to have lived through the war but benefitted from it being in the recent past and so there was a sense of relief and freedom.

I wouldn't like to go back but I wish I had known how attractive I was and had been more confident.

I was in London, starting work in 1964. Biba, 100 Club, Carnaby Street, yes I was there but I also had a dad who expected me to be in by 10.30 and was very strict with what I did and who I was with, so not exactly swinging. I married at 19 and the 60's closed with me having a small daughter.

Of course, it was swinging, even in the far north-west and the freedom at College. Skirts shortened by 6 inches, coloured tights, flared jeans we didn't look like our mothers like other generations had. Long hair for both sexes or a Twiggy cut. Clothes for home and clothes for college. shared skirts for teaching practise that were longer .
Yes we had the 11 pm curfew but you could always get in through someone's window who had signed you into the late book.

The pill for our mothers no longer burdened with big families and women's rights on the up and dads buying cars. Trying to learn to drive in dads car which you did not dare scratch.
Never did get to burn my bra though they were too expensive

I was living in Dundee at that time and loved the music. Drugs passed me by as did sex because I was a good convent-educated Catholic girl.

I loved going to a club with friends and dancing the night away. I earned very little money- 4 of us shared a flat 2 doors away fromM&S and the few years I lived there I could not afford to enter the door. I had no idea that they sold food then!

I still enjoy the music, knowing many songs word for word still.

I loved it but didn’t get up to much by today’s standards I LOVED. the music and still do, I went to see lots of the big named groups locally I was 15 in 1960 and was just getting out and about with my mini skirts and thigh high white boots it was short lived though by 1964 I d met my ‘to be’ husband and by 1965 married and by ‘67 I was living overseas with a new baby and bucket loads of responsibilities and a not very caring husband so I had five years of fun and freedom

I was never offered or knew anyone who took drugs

Oh I hadn't thought of bringing people back.
That could mess with the order of things.
They can come back for tea, then they'll have to go home.
Nope, no pumpkins these days. That's so last year!

Can’t wait! I promise to report back. You won’t turn me into a pumpkin or anything at the end will you? And can I bring a friend back with me?

You can just stomp in your new shoes, if that's what you want.
It's all there for the taking this time around.