My summer of love Ingrid Jo Boissevain
It was 1967, when hippie dreams of peace and love migrated from San Francisco across the Atlantic. Ingrid Jo Boissevain was a sixteen-yearold grammar school girl, an architect’s daughter, living in Tadworth, Surrey. Fifty years on, here is her diary of th
Tuesday, 30th May – Surrey
My face is gruesomely red. Read a jolly good article on pop music in yesterday’s Times – one of the best articles I’ve ever read. William Mann [the music critic] thinks The Beatles’ new LP is marvellous, and that ‘A Whiter Shade of Pale’ is ‘beautiful and Bach-derived’. But I’m so MAD: Mummy’s taken the paper down to the rabbit hutch, so I’ll have to go down the moment I wake to save it.
Drew quite a good picture of Dutronc [astonishingly attractive young German I met on a skiing holiday] in ski-clothes in my rough book. Somehow, I can’t see myself falling in love with him. It would be so lovely though, if I did fall in love with Dutronc and he fell in love with me. I’m sure he’s awfully nice – despite what Daddy says about him having no deep feelings.
My hair is CHRONIC at the moment, it’s never been so foul. Thank goodness, I can put it into bunches.
At supper, we talked a bit about universities. Daddy says there is supposed to be rather a lot of drug-taking in Cambridge, and girls go to bed with their boyfriends, etc. Does he think it’s immoral, I wonder? I expect he feels it ought to be kept for love.
Friday, 30th June – London
Super weather all day. Wore my new green dress, and got the train to London.
Lucy [my best friend] and I bought some sandwiches, a pork pie and a box of strawberries for our lunch, went to Derry & Toms to go to the loo, and then to Kensington Gardens. Two corny boys sat near us and started showing-off doing handstands. We then walked to Portobello Market and on the way passed some workmen who kept shouting at us (!) We went into Lord Kitchener’s Valet – the only place we saw any mod types all day. All they’ve got there are military jackets and capes and hats. Later we passed a shop and this snazz, who was watering something outside, started watering me instead!! It was nice and cooling, actually.
Got millions of trains back to Lucy’s house, and had lovely crab salad for supper, and raspberries and cream.
Pa’s on the boat this weekend so Ma went on her own to a party. What made her mad was the way all her friends thought it was right that the Stones [on 29th June, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards had been convicted on drugs offences] have been treated so harshly!!! Honestly, I pity them, these people who can’t see further than the end of their noses. Anyone who encourages people to be individuals is doing a great deal for the world – more than people who design marvellous aeroplanes that go at 10,000mph, or something feeble.
Monday, 31st July – Saint-tropez
Changed into Scallywags dress and at six we left for St Trop. It’s a gruesome place, I suppose, but it is fun. After all, it’s only meant to be a tourist place for all the with-it young French – and that’s exactly what it is. Most of the girls have the ugliest faces, but good figures – we saw two wearing silken skirt things that fell from their hips to the ground! The boys are fantastic, but they don’t look nice types. Tons of them had Bermuda shorts, often with fraying ends. I had a choc ice and an Orangina. Just felt so weedy walking around with the parents.
Dinner was absolutely super: steak grilled over charcoal. The drinks waiter gave me one fab long look.
Monday, 14th August – Returning home from France
Got to the train in good time, so we sat down by the track and watched the English walkers pass by. In their long, baggy, khaki shorts, you can tell them a mile off.
We walked through to the restaurant car at eight. Passed this flirty French boy who said ‘ appétit’ to me. Good meal and we got very giggly. Daddy kept trying to pinch my ice-cream biscuits! Writing Diary in bed – in rough because too joggy.
Thursday, 17th August – Surrey
Saw Top of the Pops – ‘All You Need is Love’ isn’t No 1 any more but a ghastly song all about flowers called ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)’.
Sunday, 27th August – Yarmouth, Isle of Wight
Daddy was so stupid - he complained about the patch on my jeans. ‘It looks silly and very stupid,’ he said. We went to Mr Martin’s garage to get a battery, as ours packed up this morning.
Sailed to Yarmouth at 5.30 and, to my utter amazement, moored alongside a snazz. (He’s got foul hair, though – it curls over at the back.) Then Daddy told me he didn’t like my pink top, which made me a bit fed up.
We went to the Bugle Inn. It’s very informal and nice, but unfortunately there are only waitresses. I had hors d’oeuvres, duck and roast potatoes, and Meringue Chantilly. Then, going back, Chump [my sister] and me decided to call everything ‘groovy’, and Daddy joined in. ‘That’s a groovy dog, he’s got a groove of a tail’ etc! It was very funny.
Wrote Diary in bed. I can hear foghorns in the distance. Ominous.
Ingrid Jo Boissevain’s ‘1967: Diary of a Posh Schoolgirl’ is published online www.poshschoolgirldiary1967.net