In the Beginning…
Today, an exhibition opens in London of an event, a life changing event, that transformed lives far more effectively than anything the Nu-Labour activists could dream of. It was a genuine revolution, a relatively bloodless one.
Today, Carnaby Street is 50 years old. That is not quite true, Carnaby Street was around in Dicken’s time, a grimy backstreet at the wrong end of Oxford Circus, unloved by retailers – and hence an area of dirt cheap rents.
Today, the re-invented Carnaby Street, centre of ‘swinging London’, is 50 years old.
Carnaby Street was my ‘beginning’, where I started my life as an independent adult, and I loved it with a passion. I was far too young to work legally, and totally unqualified in anything, but Carnaby Street was a place where new life was forged, where no one had any experience, where everyone was young.
The characters that were around were legendary.
Colin Wilde, the tailor who designed the first cat suits, decided that my ridiculously long legs and skeletal frame (this was 50 years ago folks!) were the perfect vehicle to advertise his product. In return for a supply of free clothing, made to measure for me, I spent my days measuring some of the most famous inside legs around and advising on suitable pouches for ‘padding’ for that all important skin tight cat suit appearance on Top of the Pops. One of the perks was tickets for a show that was the centre of every teenager’s universe. Occasionally I see clips of Top of the Pops and I can recognise myself or Dawn bopping around in the background like demented meerkats. I didn’t actually get paid, but there was a regular supply of the novel ‘hotdogs’ from the Greek Cafe in Beak Street that sufficed. For a teenage runaway, free clothes and a life spent crawling between legs that other teenagers could only dream of being close to, was an education in itself.
My best friend was secretary to Don Arden, then a rising pop entrepreneur, (where are you Dawn?) and she and I would babysit the young Sharon Osborne in his office. We went off to the Galway Bay Oyster festival in grand style in the first Rolls Royce that Charlie Simpson, an ex-East End paraffin salesman, had awarded himself from his Kleptomania chain of shops – and left behind a trail of devastation as Carnaby Street met Anglo-Irish gentry at what was then a very ‘county’ event. I still can’t face Guinness and Oysters to this day.
I had taken refuge with a family of Australian potters who produced something called a ‘mug’ – an item unheard of in those days, and I sold them to Liberty’s – an event which completely overran the ‘we’re artists – not artisans’ ethos of Hatton Beck, so I journeyed up to Stoke-on-Trent and managed to persuade the Liverpool Road pottery to make me 200 mugs, with a Union Jack on the side.
Liberty’s were far too snooty for such an item, hand thrown pottery, yes, china, nooooo! So they went into John Paul’s new ‘I was Lord Kitchener’s Valet’ shop on Piccadilly, in return, not for money, but for two days helping to paint the shop black – black being the cheapest way of concealing the shop’s previous history. A curious arrangement – John Paul would take your goods on sale or return, in return for your labour!
The mugs sold out within hours, and I hitch-hiked up to Stoke to pay the bill and order more. On the way back, standing on the side of the M1 in pouring rain, a sleek jaguar pulled up and offered me a lift to London. Polite conversation ensued as to what this bedraggled rat in a skin tight cat suit was doing standing on the side of the M1, and when I explained, the driver roared with laughter. ‘You mean you hitch hiked up here just to pay a bill’. ‘Yes’, I said. ‘You’ll never have to do that again’ he said.
The driver was Percy Baskerfield, owner of the pottery. A great friendship followed, he gave me a £1,000 line of credit, an unimaginable sum in those days, and credit for a woman was equally unheard of. When he left his wife and ran off with Ruby, his secretary, improbably to open a fish and chip shop in Tangier, I visited and acquired a new line in kaftans, hugely popular after the Beatles followed the Maharishi to India. Lengths of leather, and a job lot of silver bells turned into necklaces for the hew hippies, and proved a big seller in Portobello Road.
Looking back I realise one curious fact – none of us had any money. We bartered our youth, our energy, our enthusiasm. There was no such thing as social security for teenagers, or dole money. No outreach workers, or social workers. Even at the centre of swinging London, I didn’t know anyone who had ever actually taken drugs, though rumours abounded. The pill hadn’t been invented, so we were remarkably circumspect in our relationships.
And yet they were great times, fun times, and happy memories. We changed the world, we turned pop music into a potent economic force. We shocked, we challenged, we rebelled. We changed the clothing industry. We changed hairstyles and lifestyles. We invented the world teenager. We changed society. We did it all without a mobile phone, without the Internet, without support workers; for most of us, without any visible means of support whatsoever.
Will today’s teenagers effect such a revolution and turn this country round?
*’In the beginning’ was first published on February 26th 2010.
** Ms Raccoon is on her hols until Sunday, so has been digging some old posts out of the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet to keep you amused…as it happens, she is 65 today and being wined and dined in great style, wearing a beautiful silk hippy kaftan (all clothing has to be ‘hippy’ these middle-aged spread days) to what I am told is the best Thai restaurant in Morocco. She still intends to return – but you never know…
June 3, 2013 at 19:43
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@ Looking back I realise one curious fact – none of us had any money. We
bartered our youth, our energy, our enthusiasm. There was no such thing as
social security for teenagers, or dole money. No outreach workers, or social
workers. @
I recall from the excellent biography by Lee Server that Robert Mitchum
declared personal UDI aged 14, and with the agreement of his mother left New
York, ho-bo-ing his way across the USA, and luckily for film fans, arriving in
a place called Hollywodland. Last evening I was reading a three-part magazine
piece written in 1973, by Robert Vaughn about his early life. He only ever met
his father about a dozen times in his life, his mother was unreliable to be
polite about it, and he was brought up as a child by her parents in
Minneapolis. He describes how at 12, he *told* his grandparents how from then
on he would come and go as he pleased, but would behave in a respectful way to
them. Aged 17 he drove himself and his reconciled mother across the USA to
California and for several years of his early adult life shared a one-roomed
apartment with her as they both lived independent lives too. Nowadays I guess
both these guys would be more likely to be writing a Misery Memoir about the
lack of parental love in their early lives.
- June 3, 2013 at 11:01
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Happy birthday and many more of them!
Reading the name Don Arden reminded me that my old school chum’s wife used
to work for him , probably at the tail end of the 60s. Her name was
Barbara.
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June 2, 2013 at 08:58
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Well, I shan’t forget your birthday again. One day after my youngest
granddaughter. This will help as I am a trifle prone to forgetting things
these days. Fortunately only inconsequential things like saucepans on the
stove. Thank God for the very expensive saucepans my one time husband bought
me for one of my birthdays that I didn’t frightfully appreciate at the time
because I wanted a Power Drill.
- June 1, 2013 at 23:41
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Just in time – Happy Birthday and Many of them
- June 1, 2013 at 23:07
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A happy birthday wish for my star blogger. Unfortunately when all the 60s
fun and games was going on I was stationed round our possessions overseas in a
futile attempt to prevent it becoming unglued. So now you know why my daughter
thinks I am the most un-hip person she has ever met!
- June 1,
2013 at 23:02
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Occasionally I see clips of Top of the Pops and I can recognise myself
or Dawn bopping around in the background like demented meerkats.
Oh, please let it be on Youtube – if it is, Anna, do give us a link!
Bon anniversaire!
- June 1, 2013 at 22:55
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Hippo Birdies Too U
- June 1, 2013 at 20:17
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A couple of years behind you, but so was the Swinging 60s in the Provinces
where I did my growing.
Today’s teenagers certainly wouldn’t/couldn’t do what we did way back then.
We did it because we had to, we could do, and there was little to stop us
doing it anyway – but today there’s too much safety-net (parental &
state), too little inspiration and too many rules: a fatal combination against
innovation of any kind. Not hungry enough, not wild enough, not free enough.
They don’t know what they’re missing.
We enjoyed a golden age, so keep on enjoying your recollections of it, as
we do. Many Happy Returns, and hopefully many more of them to come.
- June 1, 2013 at 20:12
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Oh Georgeous Anna!!
Brains and Beauty, all is yours!
Happy Birthday
and many more,
Your not so secret admirer.
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June 1, 2013 at 18:29
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Add my name to the virtual birthday card. Stay around for many more natal
days.
- June 1,
2013 at 18:23
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I posted your link to a Facebook page that is populated by a lot of the
characters from those days, specifically to Robert Orbach, who also owned Lord
Kitchener’s. So, if there’s an uptick in views, it’s probably going to result
from that! Have a happy birthday!
- June 1, 2013 at 16:41
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Happy birthday, be mine on the 10th. Lovely to remember those happy days in
London living in grotty bedsits where the snow came in the windows and we
lived on milk and chips to keep our little money to spend on better things
like clothes and records, I wonder if todays teenagers would live like that
now. After a couple of years we headed for two years in Jersey, another
paradise for young people in the 60s.
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June 1, 2013 at 14:32
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Many happy returns, Anna, – you are a month older, wiser, ahead of me
- June 1, 2013 at 12:56
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Happy Birthday Anna —Enjoy your hols
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June 1, 2013 at 11:46
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Happy Birthday, Anna!
- June 1, 2013 at 11:01
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Following on from your article about Mr.G’s shed of all sheds, isn’t there
a slight risk that he might take a fancy to some exotic DIY appliance in the
Marrakech souk and trade his kaftan-wearing spouse in for it?
Oh, and Happy Birthday.
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June 1, 2013 at 10:46
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June 1, 2013 at 10:30
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Happy Birthday!
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June 1, 2013 at 10:08
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Happy birthday, Boss. What a life!
- June 1, 2013 at 09:53
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A happy birthday and continuing thanks for the writings – old and new.
- June 1, 2013 at 09:45
- June 1, 2013 at 09:42
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Being at Ground Zero at the birth of the Teenager as a global economic
power – as well as gifted with a sound sense of the craft of prose – makes you
very special.
Thank you for sharing your gifts with us. Happy birthday
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June 1, 2013 at 08:03
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Happy Birthday old gal.
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