1967: "Peace and Love? But Won't that Ruin the Carpet, Dear?"

The girl with the winklepickers and the panda eyes wants a groovy party. Mum wants to preserve her lounge carpet. How can both their interests be catered for?

A Hippie Toaster...

This Morphy Richards toaster is decorated with influential designer Mary Quant's daisy motif.

Groovy, as the hippies might have said.

Twentieth Century Words by John Ayto (Oxford, 1999), informs us that the term hippie/hippy emerged in the early 1950s - "originally a low-profile synonym of hipster (1941) - i.e. someone who is 'hip' or in touch with fashionable tastes - hippie suddenly made it into the big time in the mid 1960s".

The hippies, of course, preached Peace and Love.

Many hippies took mind expanding drugs.

Hippies were usually middle class at the very least - the working classes could not afford to "drop out".

Most hippies protested against war.

Most hippies wore weird clothes.

Many hippies liked to go to rock concerts in muddy fields.

Many hippies wore ethnic clothes.

Hippies were often into religion - but usually not Church of England or anything else their parents were into.

Some hippies liked to be hairy.

Most hippies loved bell bottoms and flared trousers.

Many hippies were very promiscuous.

Just about every hippie believed in the freedom of the individual.

Many hippies were incredibly earnest.

Nowadays some members of the hippie generation decry every generation that has followed, giving them labels such as "Generation X" and accusing them of being boring, conservative copyists. Many seem to believe that their generation invented youthful idealism.

Maybe the hippie generation could do with a refresher course in Peace and Love?

In the meantime, how about a nice slice of toast from a Mary Quant toaster to be going on with? Wholemeal, of course...

A Brief History of the Lava Lamp...

The history of the lava lamp began in a pub in Hampshire, England, with a very unusual egg timer.

In the 1940s, one Edward Craven-Walker walked into the aforementioned pub and saw a strikingly odd object on the counter behind the bar. It was a glass cocktail shaker containing some kind of mucus-like blob floating in liquid. Mr Craven-Walker made enquiries, and was told by the barman that the device was an egg timer. The 'blob' was actually a clump of solid wax in clear liquid.

How did this “time” your egg, wondered Mr Craven-Walker? The barman elaborated:

“You put the shaker in the boiling water with your egg, and as the boiling water cooks the egg it also melts the wax turning it into an amorphous blob of goo.”

When the wax floated to the top of the jar, the egg was done. Mr Craven-Walker was very impressed by what he saw and he began to wonder - could he turn the egg timer into a lamp with thicker oil that would form sculptural shapes? Would this be a viable commercial product?

The inventor of the blobby egg timer, somebody called Dunnet, was deceased, so Craven-Walker was able to patent the invention for himself. The Astro/Lava Lamp was finally released in 1963. Craven-Walker had spent fifteen years perfecting the design.

In the hippy-trippy Summer of Love in 1967, the lamp gained great popularity - mainly with trendies and people experimenting with mind-expanding drugs.

In the early 1970s, the lamp became deeply naff. It was seen on the serving hatch at Stan and Hilda Ogden’s in Coronation Street - a sure sign of its complete and utter non-trendiness, and then Mildred Roper acquired one in George & Mildred.

Oh dear! My mother, middle aged and with absolutely lousy taste, bought one and we spent the evenings trying to avoid looking at something that resembled a blob of orange liver in yellow bile floating up and down.

At our local pub, which was all plastic beaten copper tables and “genuine” olde Englishe horse brasses, a lava lamp suddenly appeared. Frumpy Nellie and Fred, the mine hosts, were thrilled with the thing and became a bit of a laughing stock amongst right-minded regulars.

Finally, the lava lamp’s fascination for (a minority of) 30 and 40-somethings evaporated, and by 1980 they were just about dead and gone.

C. 1988, the awful blobby shapes associated with lava lamps appeared in a couple of pop videos. The new drug culture of the Acid House/Rave era seemed happy to embrace a couple of icons from the original Summer of Love. The lava lamp was one, the Smiley Face was another. Not that 1988 seemed like a second Summer of Love to me. It was faster and more streetwise - “Right on one, matey!” but, as we moved into the 1990s, 1960s trends became more and more “in” and lava lamp sales boomed.

Apparently more lava lamps were sold in the 1990s than in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s combined.

Bleurgh!!

1960s Hippie Era Fashions - Flares, Afghan Coats, Minis and Maxis...

A glimpse of the fashions of 1969...

One of the best ways to research fashion trends is by looking through your local newspaper archives. Some libraries have "local studies" sections, with local newspapers on microfilm. If you look at, in this case, 1969, you will know that flares and space hoppers were on sale in everyday shops - despite the BBC telling you on their "I Love 1970s" website and programmes that both didn't arrive until the 1970s!!

The BBC tells us that flares were 70s, bell bottoms were 60s, which is ridiculous. The 1969 advertisements featured here reveal the lie and flares and bell bottoms were actually popularised by the mid-to-late-60s hippie movement.

The BBC has a bizarre 1970s fixation, and is not to be trusted when it comes to pop culture history relating to that decade.

In the 70s, we struck a recession and fashion got rather stuck. On many housing estates across the land, flares were part of a grim teen uniform - and you had to wear them. Where I lived, to differ from the norm was to risk a bloody nose - or worse.

"Big trousers" had been around before, like most fashions, but in the mid-to-late 60s, flares and bell bottoms were considered new and very groovy!

Note the Americanism - flared pants - not trousers. Very groovy.

Cor - wot whoppers, missis!!

More 1969 newspaper advertisements.

Remember maxi macks? ("mack" = short for mackintosh, a type of coat). And what about Afghan coats? Didn't some of them pong? A really yucky, high sweet smell. One of my mum's friends had one that made me want to throw up whenever she cuddled me (I was about four at the time!!).

And wouldn't you just know it - she was the cuddly type, never happier than when enveloping some poor innocent kid in Afghan coat odour...

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Look at those flares! The maxi had arrived, but the mini was still far more popular!