One major problem was the old was being overlooked by the new

1960'sGeneral Lifestyle

Life was on the move, for most it was a move upwards. Things which in the 1950's were seen as extravagant were now starting to be seen as expected.

The trend of 'only buy something when you've got the cash' seemed to disappear and more and more Retailers, Car Sales Companies etc., were providing more ways to buy items before you'd paid for them - the credit trend had begun.

Both  the 50's and 60's saw a huge change in House building. New homes were going up everywhere and the 'Estates' became prominent both in private and Council properties.
The problem was that they were being built with a great sense of urgency and most of them were architectural disasters - especially the newly built Shopping Centres going up, albeit some where the Blitz had been bad.

A fine example of this was Canterbury, a beautiful City full of old buildings, history and the most important Religious point of the Anglican Church, the Cathedral.

Right in the City Centre grew the most ugly contraption of Shops you could think of; square, unattractive and certainly not built to last a thousand years!
Thankfully, only two years ago (2006), this was demolished and a better designed Centre has now gone up.

But in the home, interior design was reflecting the revolution in Music and entertainment.
Flower patterns were 'in' and wallpapers were as busy as bees!
Desperation seemed to be amongst the Designers. Everyone wanted to be the new look, so a wide variety of Retro / post Retro tastes were implemented!

The centre of the Sitting Room, now called 'Lounge', was the TV Set and Stereo system (late 60's). The TV Interlude was thrown out and TV became something you could watch from 6am to midnight or more.
With BBC2 and Colour coming in as well, this was the status symbol of the late 60's and the screen size, model of your TV was your 'Statement'.

The family were becoming less disciplined. Teenagers were allowed to 'hang loose' more and even the older ones appeared to accept the changes which were taking place.

All this led to a lifestyle which was evolved around leisure. With more and more people affording cars, the seaside towns became over run with day-trippers during the summer month's. Traffic Jams appeared from nowhere and the need for Motorways and Town By-passes became urgent - too urgent. Once again, speed and desperation came in and many a town and countryside was spoilt by 60's man's desire for change as fast as possible.

I guess you could relate it to being shut inside a house for 3 month's, then being let loose. You'd want to do so many things in the shortest possible time and miss attention to detail

'The latest', 'New', 'Special Offer' became slogans for many a new TV Advertisement. You had to be 'in' and not 'square'. Fashions changed every five minutes and the consumer society had arrived.

With more money to spend, food was becoming a bit more experimental. Chinese and Indian Restaurants started to spring up in every town and recipe books were becoming a lot more adventurous.
Package Holidays came in and the Great British Seaside Holiday was diminishing, being replaced by cheap deals to Lloret de Mar and other Costa Brava places.

Rush, rush, rush, yet behind the rush, a laid back attitude.

During this time I was working in London Advertising Agencies. In the late 60's I was working weekends in the Band and life in general, for me, was quite lucrative both financially and socially.

Many people claim one particular decade as being the most important. Those ten years younger than me would say the 80's etc., but re-visiting all the decades I've seen, the 1960's did have the biggest climate of change, The only other one to see so much change was probably the 80's with the Thatcherite Years, which some would say were good, some say bad.

The 1960's had a serious undertone. It was great whilst it lasted, but because of the rush to change thing's too quickly, the 1970's paid the price with great political unrest and financial disasters.

But, overall, peace and love!!

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