Bravo’s pop-dates-post reminded me of this. It was BIG in August 1967 and continued to be the iconic music for the summers of love.
PS If you are moved to tears, why not write a pome about your lost love? https://charioteers.org/2012/09/02/the-next-poetry-competition-lost-love/
Boadicea's Chariot 
I did not like hippies in the sixties, and I like them even less now. It seems that a lot of present day politicians, civil servants and the judiciary still seem to adhere to hippie ideals. No wonder this country is in such a mess.
I joined the Army that summer, so you can imagine that I had not a lot of sympathy for hippies and people in flowery, outrageously-flared trousers 🙂
FEEG, dodged them like the plague too! From what I was told, most of them had rampant untreated clap!
Certainly one had to be extra careful at Uni in those days, it was a favourite sport reporting back who was sitting in the clap house waiting room downtown.
Poems for lost love? More likely a case of good riddance to bad rubbish!
Whose potatoes weren’t salted today then? 😉
I must hasten to add that although I sported ‘mod’ sideburns and longish locks (blond) I was not yer akshull hippy, ‘cos Rowntrees would never have allowed it, being Quakers n’ all.
I think I arrive rather late on the hippy scene, but I do remember the song, Janus.
OK, message received about the pome. All I can say, is I’m working on it. 🙂
Arrers, glad to hear it! Maybe you could have a word with Bilbers and Eff too – they must know a thing or two about lerv….. 🙂
Actually I had a very nice Spanish Tortilla which contained perfectly seasoned potatoes!
I still think the problems of today originated in the late sixties, at the height of hippiedom!
FEEG, there’s a logical fallacy called ‘post hoc non propter hoc’. So your ‘originated’ may not be causal.
To be absolutely rigorous, that’s “‘post hoc, ergo propter hoc” 😆
G’day, Bearsy. Thank you for your rigour. Mea maxima culpa. 🙂
Correct wording or not, this logical argument does not apply here. Surely the “something for nothing” attitude started gaining serious ground with the hippies!
I think you’re correct, FEEG, that the hippies started the “I don’t need to work – someone else will do it for me”. Of course a lot of hippies were only part-time, weekend hippies, with proper jobs to pay for the flares and flowers in their hair.
Your mention of “something for nothing” attitude reminded me that yesterday I took a walk along what I call the Bramble Path near us. Most of the blackberries were not ripe, though I picked a fair bowl full. The sloes and rosehips were not ready either, but it won’t be long. Something for nothing!
Sheona, “Of course a lot of hippies were only part-time, weekend hippies, with proper jobs to pay for the flares and flowers in their hair.” How true! I knew a few ‘professional’ hippies when I worked in Vermont in the ’80s. They turned up at raves in the countryside aboard their Honda Goldwings, ruffled their hitherto groomed coiffures, donned their ripped jeans and flowery shirts and let it all hang out. Some of the men did too.
Ah, but Sheona, if you were a hippie, you would have expected someone else to pick them for you! 🙂
I’ve read the comments here with interest.
I’d like to point out that it wasn’t the ‘hippies’ who started the ‘I don’t need to work’ attitude – welfare payments had been around for a fair time and there have always been people, hippies and others, who have not felt obliged to work when they can survive on hand-outs from the State.
In my opinion, the Sixties were a time when the world had recovered from the horrors of the second world war, there was a huge optimism and many let their hair down and enjoyed life. I believe something similar happened after WWI. Of course after WWI it was only the better off who could have fun – the problem with the ‘hippy movement’ was that anyone could join in. Shock! Horror! The lower classes are enjoying themselves!
Much good came out of the ‘hippy movement’ – tolerance for others of a different colour, creed and gender, and a re-examination of the need to rush off to war… all gone too far, I agree. But, I doubt that the general principles of equality for all under the law would have occurred without the ‘hippy’ movement.
My only problem with the hippy mentality was a lack of realism – much as I, and I’m sure most, would like to believe that the world can run on ‘Love’ anyone with a grain of sense knows that it isn’t possible.
Quite right. I have never understood why the lower classes felt that they had any right to enjoy life. Surely that is the prerogative of the upper classes? That is why these social constructs exist.
Seriously, though, it is senseless to blame hippies for the state of affairs today, just as it is senseless to blame the youths of 1918 for the outbreak of WW2. Even blaming Hitler has its problems. Hitler could not have gained traction unless there were people who felt as he did, which of course there were. Children are products of their parents. So if anybody is to blame it is the parents. We all deserve ton take a lot of the credit and a lot of the blame for how are children turn out. But clearly that argument goes back ad infinitum.Humans are much more venal and nothing like as honourable as we would wish them to be. (The basis of original sin in Christianity).The truth is that society is a constantly evolving entity and there are countless factors that play a role. Sometimes we achieve things we feel proud of but it is only with the benefit of ever lengthening hindsight can we determine whether what happened was good or bad. Despite all the promises of our politicians, none has the faintest idea of how things will turn out nor whether the outcome will be beneficial or not, so we should not believe the lies they peddle us about how it is that ‘Things can only get better’.
Please excuse the typos.
Sipu & Boa: You must have known some very different hippies to the ones I knew. They were nearly all middle-class dropouts. It is not a question of who is to blame for today’s mess. Whether it is the parents fault, the hippies themselves or society’s fault is irrelevant. A lot that is wrong today started in the 60’s, in my opinion.
Notice I state that as an opinion, not a fact. What really annoys me about politicians is that they state their opinions as facts!
FEEG, I never knew any hippies. I was a totally unsophisticated, farm boy from rural part of one of the most conservative countries in Africa. Even pictures of hippies shocked me. The real thing would have scared the hell out of me.
Once upon a when, I was a young lad living not a million miles from Epsom, where the racetrack is. A sleepy, conservative town at the time, where the only activity was on market days and race days.
Then, when I was in my early teens, teddy boys appeared, with their bicycle chains, razors and knuckle-dusters. Local plod began to go around in pairs for the first time, dropping their previous Dixon of Dock Green imperturbability. When the Teds faded out, we became part of the Mods and Rockers scene, roaring down to Brighton on hairy bikes or limp-wristed Lambrettas or Vespas, according to taste. At the same time, the local Hooray Henries made an appearance with their loud, braying voices, Mummy’s car and bottomless wallets. They caused far more damage to the local hostelries than their low-class counterparts, until eventually put in their place by a pugilistic disciplinary action by a combined force of both Mods and Rockers.
Up until this point, class was significant – although plenty of us adopted a class rather than make do with the status we had been born into.
Later still, about the time I moved on to Uni (or college, as we called it then), flower power and free love (thanks to the newly invented pill) emerged with a portmanteau label of hippy. Ban the Bomb, Peace Man, tell authority to get lost. Rock and Folk Festivals drew different subgroups, but appearance and behaviour was (nearly) independent of class, which had become outdated and irrelevant. Teds, Mods, Rockers and Hippies were all reactions to WWII and the bastards in charge who believed in wars, nuclear bombs and oppression of the working man. They had something for nothing already, with inheritance and corporate fiddles. The plebs wanted some, too.
Don’t even begin to tell me that Hippies caused today’s social climate. Look elsewhere and think more deeply – well that’s my suggestion, in an amused avuncular way.
Youngest Chief Engineer in the company, with hair down to my shoulders and a deep red business suit and floral tie. The older bosses didn’t know quite what to make of me and my like-minded colleagues, so they threw money at us. It was fun for a while. 😆
FEEG et al, the hippies I knew were hard-working people commemorating the passing of their wilder years. Many of them were ‘drafted’ and sent to Vietnam willy-nilly, where no doubt a few good memories came in handy.
Nice one Bearsy 🙂
Bearsy, my college days pre-dated hippydom and the merging of the classes. One hapless maths genius from Surrey became a rocker and disappeared altogether; another, an engineer, became a world-famous rock-climber and lived a nomadic life. As for blaming the parents, we were the first generation for a while who didn’t experience war at close quarters, so I’ll forgive them anything.
I suppose all the different views of who did what and how they turned out and who was to blame etc, leads one to ask the questions, what is an ideal society and how does it manifest itself. Within such a society, whatever it is, it is inevitable that there will be conflicts of opinion which will require the means for resolution. Equally inevitably people will not all agree on these means which must result in segregation and the creation of classes, and so the cycle is continued. It is just the nature of mankind.
Sipu, indeed, man is a social climber!
“If you can remember it, you weren’t there!” 😀
Like you Janus, I pre-dated ‘hippydom’I but I knew quite a few ‘ and most could have been classified as ‘middle-class drop-outs’ and ‘weekend hippies’ – they worked but didn’t buy into the ethos of the previous generation and wanted to ‘change the world’and I happen to think they did.
It was a time of ‘levelling’ – most here, I would suggest, benefited from the educational opportunities that were accorded to post-war children – now, sadly, gone. It does not surprise me one bit that better education encouraged the questioning and rejection of long-established ideas and mores.
Not sure they qualify as “Hippy” events, but does anyone else remember the “Beauleiu Jazz Festivals” (Late fifties early sixties) . They had all the attributes? of later “Woodstockian” events, rain, mud, dope, drink and nakedness but also featured some seriously good music.
For the record, I got married in 1967 that put a swift end to any hippy tendencies I may have had together with my 1956 AJS. 600.