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Talkback is a
regular feature in laterlife.com run by
journalist and author Helen Franks.
Welcome to talkback 75
Read Helen's views and ideas, then add
your own by emailing her on helen@laterlife.com.
Whatever your opinion on the subject under
discussion, Helen wants to hear it.
If you would like to suggest future
topics for talkback, please email Helen with
the details. And remember you can also start your own
forum discussion thread by visiting the laterlife cafe
Thinking about the Sixties
The Sixties were great – a liberation for young people who
had experienced the previous decade. I remember in the late
Fifties, a colleague who was cohabiting with her boyfriend
telling me that they really liked the couple who lived upstairs,
but they didn’t dare get friendly because of the stigma of being
unmarried and living together. Only when they left their flat
did the upstairs people confess that they were cohabiting too.
Such was the narrow-mindedness of the times.
Mary Quant, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Carnaby Street, Bob
Dylan, Beyond the Fringe, Ready, Steady, Go, West Side Story
were all landmarks of fashion and culture. There was a new
freedom in the air, a new way of looking at the world.
It wasn’t all sweetness and light, though. The Cuban
missile crisis shook the world. Britain was rocked by the
Profumo scandals. The US was heavily involved in Vietnam.
And in 1963, John Kennedy was shot dead in Dallas.
But the keynotes of the Sixties was that great sense of
liberation. And so our
Challenge for June is the Spirit of the 60s.
Of course, nostalgia is in the air. One Challenger wants
us to organize a school or university reunion - ‘Possibly
through Friends United… and make the meetings constructive… See
how the group can help out your old school or university’. Why
not do it through the Forum pages of
www.laterlife.com?
Another said: ‘The music was great and there are plenty of
radio stations that focus on playing those old favourites’.
And there’s a note of originality in one suggestion: ‘Enter
competitions for shows of the Sixties…. A recent success was
tickets for Round the Horn which was absolutely
brilliant.’
But where is the innovation and surprise? What has
happened to that search for adventure and originality that
typified the times? Maybe we have all got older (and possibly
wiser). Even Twiggy, once an icon for the most outré of fashion,
is now advertising with M & S.
Just in case your memory is letting you down (again),
here are links to various topics about the Sixties:
Previous Challenge Talkbacks
Reinventing retirement
How not to go doo-lally in later life
Doing Things for
Others
Time for Discovery
Raising money together
Thinking about the sixties
Helen would still like to hear your views
Don`t forget to take a look at Helen`s healthwise column
too
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