Bye bye to the 60s!

I've always thought the hype connected to the 60s was just that. Maybe in London there was liberation, sexual freedom in a 'swinging' society. Funny how that word has been hijacked and now means something - to me - morally distasteful.

Up here in Scotland in the 60s, we still lived in a society that forced young couples to get married because the girl got pregnant. Even in the late 70s, I can remember a friend going to see the doctor where she asked to go on the contraceptive pill. He refused her request, telling her to come back with her mother. She was 23 and a teacher. Not much liberation there.

For me, the 60s mean just two things: song lyrics - give me the opening bars of any song of the time and I can sing the rest, word-perfect. Oh, and tights! Yes, tights! The great liberators. Us gals were so glad when tights arrived. An end to layers of uncomfortable underwear digging into you. Not to mention that there would never have been mini skirts if there hadn't been tights. But most of the 60s I was too young to know what sexual liberation was or too busy swotting for exams - Highers and then university - or working to pay my way in life.

So I'm glad to see the 60s being re-assessed. We can finally say that the swinging 60s - in the London music scene at least - were really about dirty old men putting their hands up wee girls' skirts. Like Gary Glitter and Jimmy Saville. Or interfering with wee boys, like Jonathan King. Not to mention the singers and musicians whose idea of fun was having sex with groupies - or 'bitches' as they liked to call them. Not much liberation there either for the women involved.

I'm glad we've moved on in cultural terms. Divorce is good: too many people in Scotland spent a lifetime in miserable marriages in the past. Let them get on with it. As for relationships - do your thing. Hetero, gay, bi, trans? Don't care - just don't do it in the street and frighten the horses. I'm old and old-fashioned enough to wish young people would do things in some sort of order: relationship, engagement, marriage, then weans but hey, I'm also enough of a child of the 60s to think: Well, it's their life. Let them get on with that too. I could wish that young women took feminism more seriously: as far as I can see, a woman's life in Scotland is still pretty hard and I would like them to have more of a say in the way government money is spent - like on childcare, early years education and access to college and university for mothers with children. But they'll only get that once they're in political power and I see no enthusiasm for politics among young women right now.

As for Jimmy Saville, with luck there's a seat by the bad fire ready and waiting for him.