The diary of a Sixties schoolgirl
Jo Boissevain’s 1967 teenage diary captured the era of peace and love through the eyes of an innocent Home Counties schoolgirl
Fifty years ago, the Summer of Love was in full swing. Hundreds of thousands of people gathered in San Francisco, in an anti-vietnam war fervour, to cast off conventional values and usher in a revolution that rapidly spread to the UK. Peace, love, sex and LSD burst upon the nation, with
British teenagers embracing the mantra of the counterculture:
“turn on, tune in, drop out.”
Back then, in 1967,
I was a 16-year-old schoolgirl living an hour away from swinging London. My more rebellious peers had abandoned their mod gear for that of the hippy movement, intoxicated by the sense of freedom in the air. I, however, was safely ensconced with my family in Surrey – with no notion of rocking the boat.
I was aware of the burgeoning “Love Generation,” but, unlike most teens, thought flower power was ghastly. I loved Jeff Beck and The Beatles, adored the new fashions, and sewed patches on my jeans.
But I couldn’t stand the anthem of the era, San Francisco: Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair. Along with pot, it smacked too much of a cult to me. Instead, I focused on my schoolwork, fell in love with French pop music, and lusted (from afar) after boys with long hair.
My diary was my confidante. From the age of 13 until my late twenties, I collated my thoughts in those pages each night, and I never threw any away. According to my diary of 1967, which I am now republishing daily online, I was too preoccupied with trips to Liberty’s and the ever-rising hem of my school dress to engage with the Summer of Love. I was nervous of London, E-type Jags and people who were “in”; those gorgeous Chelsea creatures with their Afghan coats and long blonde hair.
I’d go to restaurants on the King’s Road with my family, and fashionable boutiques with my best friend (I loved my pink micro skirt from Harrods), but it was all very tame. My main source of information was my mother’s copies of Harper’s Bazaar, and Panorama documentaries on the Love Generation. I was the observer, not the observed.
As those heady summer months kicked off, and the Arab-israeli Six-day
War unfolded in June, my diary entry reads: “German all day yesterday,
Latin grammar all today. But after lunch it was super – it absolutely POURED with rain! When I opened my window the noise was terrific!”
In July, my best friend Lucy and I visited London. We barely bothered with trendy clothing boutique I Was Lord Kitchener’s Valet (“the only place we saw any mod types all day”); the real drama was “two corny boys showing off doing handstands” while we ate pork pies and strawberries in Kensington Gardens.
Yet I was absorbed by the stories of the day, especially Mick Jagger and Keith Richards being arrested on drugs charges, and I was proud of my mother’s liberal stance.
“Pa’s on the boat this weekend so Ma went on her own to a party. She came back and said she’d enjoyed it, but what made her mad was the way all her friends thought it was right that the Stones have been treated so harshly! Honestly, what have people got against the Stones?” My diary self was a mix of innocence, outrage and pedantry. I was a serious girl, concerned about homelessness and heroin, but I was also good at being trite, and was sometimes shockingly superior. I was too scared to go to youth club, but my friend
Anya did. “She told me about this ghastly boy
Gerry, who is really rather vulgar. I know just what Anya means: not being snobbish, these uneducated types are awful.”
I had a blessed life, a loving family, and my parents, forwardthinking architects, did not send me to boarding school but a girls’ grammar. At weekends we’d go sailing, at Easter skiing, and summers would be spent in the south of France. Boyfriends were the stuff of yearning. I wrote about an English teacher, who my friend and I were obsessed with. We would follow him home to see where he lived; we noted his mannerisms, and what he wore (I still have the piece of paper that lists every item in his wardrobe). When he left the school we were devastated. But the biggest yearning of all was for an astonishingly good-looking young German I met skiing in Austria. He asked me out twice – to my horror. In spite of his attractions (“I can’t describe how fab he looks. He’s got such super legs”) I was terrified at the reality of going on a date with him. I invented excuses, although I was besotted. At one point, he asked to take me swimming at midnight – but I said no because “he would probably have taken the chance of kissing me”.
Still, the “romance” kept me going for 12 months. I would have visions of him; there was even talk of him coming to visit. Relief came in August, when we set off for the south of France. There, waiters would stare at my bikini, and I’d snatch glimpses of gold bracelets on male tanned arms. It was titillating stuff.
While I was off sailing with my family, and searching for “snazzies” (attractive men) with binoculars, one of my school friends went to a party in Chelsea where there were drugs. “How she could get into such an awful crowd I can’t think,” wrote my 16-year-old self.
By the end of that summer, hems had reached nine inches above the knee. I took my skirts up every six weeks. When maxis came in, I created my own from an old skirt of my mother’s. I had never felt so trendy.
Today, I hope that I am less prejudiced than my teenage self. I take back all I said about Twiggy (“she’s too pathetic to ever be as famous as Jean Shrimpton – she didn’t even take O-levels”) and I’m not sure I’d be as dismissive now as I was about the launch of Radio 1.
Fifty years on, I work as an editor and live in Peckham with my artist husband, close to our children and grandson. But the essence of the 16-year-old me is still there – not least the hypochondria. It’s all in the diary.