My wonderfully ludicrous wide-legged jeans enjoyed their first outing last night. It’s not that I was building up the courage to wear them in public, you understand, I was just waiting for the right occasion. I was having supper with some friends who I knew would appreciate their true vintage style and not burst out laughing. It had to be women. My experience of men and fashion is, sadly, that they just don’t get it at all. It didn’t used to be this way – I can remember young men in the 70s growing their hair long, embroidering their jeans and tripping up when they caught their floppy trousers in the heel of their platform shoes. Those were the days.
Sadly, people don’t seem to hang onto the fashions of their youth, but they do hold onto many other things from that era. Music, for instance. I’d guess that most people stop listening to new music by the time they reach 40, or maybe even earlier. Why listen to Stormzy when you could be enjoying Earth Wind and Fire instead? By the time I was 30, I’d already absorbed classical, jazz, rock’n’roll, country, R&B, folk, blues, heavy metal, disco, glam rock, reggae, punk, new wave and rockabilly. When faced with rap, indie, grunge, girl power, hip-hop and garage in the 90s, my brain just called time.
It’s not really surprising that we tend to absorb less as we get older. After all the frenzied activity that is demanded of our poor overworked brains throughout childhood and early adulthood, they just need a break. I’m sure when I turned 30 my brain thought, “Thank God for that. I’ve done my best and now Sheridan will just have to take responsibility for herself. I’m off to Ibiza.” I think it’s been self-isolating ever since.
Then of course there’s the way we speak, the slang we use. I find it fascinating how language changes so much from one generation to the next and how much it says about the people and their time. My mother has a particularly rich catalogue of expressions that no one from my generation or my children’s would ever use. For instance, she says things like, “He’s a long thing and a thank-you,” and, “Oh my giddy aunt.” I think that cataloguing and researching my mother’s many colourful expressions would keep a linguist entertained for months, if not years. It certainly amuses us.
In the interests of linguistic research, I asked my son which expressions I used that his generation didn’t and he couldn’t think of any. I was so disappointed. I’m obviously going to have to enrich my vocabulary; otherwise, what will my children blog about in the future? In the meantime, I’m going to follow him around the house with a microphone to do my bit for preserving the language of his generation for posterity. I’m sure he won’t mind.
I bet you’re saying to yourself, “This is all very well, but how were the floppy jeans received?” Sadly, no one even noticed. Or maybe they were too polite to comment. True friendship.
Well…….my husband still has a pair of corduroy jeans, from the ‘60s, that he made flared by sewing in triangles of pretty flowered material! He even sewed them in by himself!
They have since been used for ‘60s fancy dress parties, although I’m aware that nowadays themes for parties are for the ‘70s, even the ‘80s! They have been borrowed a couple of times, too!
Whilst in the ‘60s, remember things were ‘swingin’ or ‘dodgy?’
John’s mother used to say ‘the back end of the year,’ when referring to November & December.
And…….whilst having coffee outside a cafe this week, an ambulance went blaring past. I remembered, as did my friend, that ‘in our day as children’ we’d hold our collars until we saw a person with a dog. That would mean the patient in the ambulance would be okay!
Ring any bells?!
Final note…..I still say ‘oh, my giddy aunt’ when surprised by something amusingly strange I’ve been told!
Thanks for the reminiscing, Sheridan!
And I still say “The back end of the year!”
An expression I like is “all mouth and no trousers” – on checking on Google (where else?) it seems to have originated in the 60s. I’m a bit disappointed it isn’t older.
In the 70s when I lived in Spain an old chap I knew used to say “Laugh? I nearly passed my fags round!” Apparently, again courtesy of Google, the expression was used on the 70s TV comedy programme The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club hosted by Bernard Manning. Fortunately, as I was living in Spain this programme passed me by! Whether the chap in Spain pinched it from the TV or whether it was a known phrase, who knows … or cares.
That reminds me of being in India a couple of years ago when the traders would dash up to us with their goods saying “lovely jubbly” and “Asda price”. Such is the power of television.