Memorable Decades

[poliphilo]

They say the Sixties- by which I mean all that fabulosity and grooviness- only really happened to a few people- most of whom lived in London. I can't disagree. My sister owned the White Album and we listened to it quite a bit and otherwise- well- we didn't even smoke tobacco.

The same is true of the Eighties. No-one on my street wore red braces or marshalled lines of charlie with their credit card.  I was living in Greater Manchester, going though an adjustment in my marital arrangements and thinking mainly about theology.

Comments

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I hate the way some people claim whole decades as the property of them and their likeminded friends. (But I've ranted about this elsewhere).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm very disappointed in my generation...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I can't remember whether I read your rant when you first posted it, but though I am definitely of the Boomer generation (being born in 1952 at the tail end of the Classic Boomers), I absolutely don't fit into the stereotype and I know lots of people who don't. It is, as you say, Middle Class people of that age. I admit that some of us working class kids did benefit from free university education, but we didn't want grants to be discontinued, that was the people of our generation who were in power while we were power-less.

Regarding housing, a lot of us didn't benefit from the property boom nor do we have substantial pensions. It was so easy in the 70s to pick up casual work and rent rather than buy. (You had to save for ages for a deposit in those days, no 100% mortgages. You also had to go on a waiting list to even get a mortgage!) Only belatedly did we realise that flitting from job to job and leaving it very late to actually purchase a home meant that financially, we were buggered when it got to old age. And we were young enough to have to wait longer for our pensions.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

I didn't want to spam poliphilo's LJ, but I should perhaps have mentioned that my rant was followed by a partial palinode. :)

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Spam away! I'm always happy to reread your past
posts.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Very interesting. Thanks for the link. I think the problem with Boomers is that they genuinely were a Generation, all born Post War and grouped artificially together by that very war. The generational effect is probably much diluted now as people are not constrained en masse in the same way as to when to marry and procreate.

However, the younger generations are often benefiting from those Boomer parents/grandparents who did manage to strike lucky with buying houses cheap and watching the prices rise. Bank of Mum & Dad (or Granny and Granddad) is enabling many youngsters to buy houses who wouldn't otherwise be able to raise the deposit.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

I'm just a bit too young to have really experienced the fabness of the 60s and, having married and had my first child quite young, the 70s totally passed me by, especially as we were living in rural Wales by then.

There were aspects of each decade that I experienced, eg listening to Radio Caroline, tights replacing uncomfortable stockings and wearing my skirts shorter in the 60s, then wearing them long in the 70s due to hippyish influences. But decades just aren't as easy to categorise as the media try to make out. It's a lazy shorthand.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I spent much of the 70s either in theological college or serving in curacies- and feeling (at least some of the time) that I'd taken a wrong turning.