SO which 1960s are we talking about? It's all right for Blair to blame the liberal values of the 1960s for the mess we're in today, but for most of us, the 60s weren't like that at all.

Sex, drugs and rock and roll might have been liberating a few lucky souls in London, but the rest of us were still living in a society so old fashioned that it is now a world away.

It was a world bounded by rules and conventions. We wore school uniform, did loads of homework and could be punished for eating a sweet in the street. It was a world where teenage girls killed themselves rather than admit they were pregnant. Where boys got married at 16 and accepted the role of father and provider.

Virtually every adult male had some experience of the Forces and there was a feeling that however much you hated the rules, they still had to be obeyed. Landladies could refuse to give rooms to unmarried couples. Pubs could put up signs saying "No blacks. No gypsies. No Irish."

Class still ruled, lots of houses still didn't have indoor plumbing and many families lived in one overcrowded room. Disabled children were hidden away as a shameful secret, and kept apart from healthy children in case they somehow contaminated them.

Children were regularly mistreated, beaten and abused and had no one to help them, while homosexuals lived in fear of blackmail, and women found it impossible to get out of wretched marriages or to earn a decent living if they did.

Pubs were for grown-ups, children were barred and teenagers were tolerated only if they knew their place and sat in the corner quietly .

You could be daring and wear a mini skirt, but you still had to be home by 10pm or your father would be out looking for you. Even student halls of residence were strictly single sex and with no visitors after 10pm. For most of us, life was ruled by what our mothers thought the neighbours would think.

It was a world in which the grown-ups ruled and where it was assumed that however daft we were, the adults were still in charge and we would eventually have to fit in with their ways. Those of us who got away to university were eventually able to live another life, to tune in, turn on, drop out and for three years, get the chance of the 60s' lifestyle, of the image and the memory.

But then we went home and immediately all that hippie freedom vanished like a puff of hazy smoke. The trip was over. We were back in the real world, which was still very much that of our parents.

I don't know where Tony Blair spent the 60s, but I don't think it was the same place as the rest of us.

CAMPING is making a comeback. More and more people are apparently slinging their tent in the back of the car, or even packing it in their backpacks, and setting off for some corner of a farmer's field that is forever freedom.

Well, yes. I have known the pleasure of loitering in tents, the facilities of the posh campsite or, much better, the freedom of the unofficial site where you wash in the stream and disappear into the woods with your trowel.

Glorious in the sunshine and fine weather. But in the mud - ahh.

There comes a stage in your life when creature comforts are suddenly more important than freedom. These days when I'm on holiday, my blissful bed is never more than 6ft from the en suite and the power shower.

Oh dear. I think it's called middle age.

SINGER Charlotte Church has taken a gang of girl friends to Ibiza where they are doing a lot of swimming, sunbathing, drinking and all night clubbing.

Great. At 18 years old and despite her fame and many millions, she seems to have grown into a totally normal teenager.

www.thisisthenortheast.co.uk

/news/griffiths.htm

Published: ??/??/2004