The Rising Sap

Some people believe that “sex” began with Rock and Roll – they’re wrong.

Philip Larkin got nearer the truth…

“Sexual intercourse began in nineteen-sixty three,(Which was rather late for me)-

Between the ending of the Chatterley ban and the Beatles’ first LP”

That short statement sums up the enormous changes that occurred in the 1960s and lacks only a reference to the contraceptive pill. Before then censorship applied to the books we read and to the theatre and the cinema where nudity or passionate love making were strictly controlled. Every film was preceded by the Certificate of authorisation by the censors.  According to Noel Coward and other writers of the day, people formed attachments, kissed, married, and lived “happy ever after”. Divorce was unknown, at least in provincial circles.

It was as if the human race had existed for thousands of years without the need for sexual intimacy.

Most youngsters reached puberty without any guidance from parents or school.  Sex was never discussed with adults and “knowledge” was acquired from playground dirty jokes and a pirated edition of D H Lawrence’s “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” which circulated secretly among the hormone-driven youngsters in the Lower Fourth.

Despite such limitations, young men and women growing up felt the same urges as those reaching puberty have always experienced. As the young men grew bolder and the girls became more generous with their favours, they learned to follow a pre-Kinsey code of behaviour.  There was a set of strict  self-imposed rules which governed the behaviour of most “well brought up” teenagers and which exerted a degree of restraint which not seen as repressive, but necessary.

A friend, by name Adrian Plass, a talented and successful evangelist, described the problem as like giving a new car to a youngster with specific instructions not to go beyond a certain distance. From our Morpeth perspective this could have been “no further than Ashington or Seaton Burn” but it was not unknown to find oneself in Rothbury with no clear idea of the way back.  Some boasted of having gone to Berwick-on-Tweed, but this was not believed.

It should also be said that for most young people, alcohol was not part of their experience. As for drugs, they were unheard of. And, since we boys shared many leisure activities with our young female friends – on the tennis courts; the dance floor where we learned to dance “in the old-fashioned way”; country walks and bicycle rides; and cinema-going where the seats in the back row could be hotly contested – so we were bound by feelings of friendship and respect which encouraged us to play according to the rules as they existed.

The 1960s saw a huge explosion with previously accepted standards being thrown aside in all aspects of human endeavour.

The Beatles saw the end of the “moon and june” approach to popular music. The transformation from Glen Miller to Mick Jagger, and the replacement of the dance orchestra in favour of multiple raucous guitars; the now despised Perry Como and his like, in favour of screaming “stars” who delivered words which seemed angry but were to most of us unintelligible , left a slightly older generation bemused.

The advent of commercial radio encouraged the new and contributed to the death of the old.  Classical music also suffered with the arrival of Classic FM with its banal talk of “Halls of Fame” and its insistence on limiting its presentations to single movements, and garnering its audience with a continuous stream of popular bits of larger works. Like a stream of lollipops interrupted by adverts.  Sadly, the BBC Third Programme feels it needs to compete and, to its shame, has become a “show” where “celebrities” are invited to talk about their favourite music with short excerpts as illustration.

With the new freedoms have come new problems among which the inability to maintain an attention span for more than a few seconds strikes me as hugely important.  It all needs to slow down……

Excuse me, my chip is showing – I’ll feel better after a break.

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