Where are you going on holiday this year? We thought we might go to 1967.
Wouldn't that be great. Sigh. Imagine if you could go on holiday to say, London in 1967, taking in the full swinging scene, shopping your head off for stuff to bring back that would be worth a fortune now, going to the grooviest of hangouts in your Carnaby Street wardrobe and generally immersing yourself.
To me, that's the holiday of a lifetime.
The only proviso would be that you couldn't change the course of history, otherwise, the world is your oyster. So where shall we go?
How about joining the jet set in St Moritz, 1969, where you'd be swigging kirsch as you dipped your fork into yet another cheese fondue in front of a roaring log fire in a place very much the one George Lazenby goes to in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, complete with international babes, naturally.
Or how about Hawaii, 1960, when everything South Seas is all the rage, and you spend your evenings sipping elaborate cocktails in an open-air tiki lounge against a backdrop of fake Easter Island statues while Yma Sumac wails her exotica in the background.
Or let's go to New York, 1975, at it's scuzziest, most Taxi Driver/CBGBish best. Or what about a country house hotel in 1950, or perhaps a motoring holiday in the Italian lakes in 1963. You might like to catch what's on at the Cavern in 1962, or make your way to Woodstock, or do some go-go dancing by a Hollywood pool in 1966 - you know, the list is endless.
If Fantasy Island was real, this is what it would do. Perhaps I'll invent it.
10 comments:
Ooh, as well as '67 - which I'd have loved - bagsy-me on holiday at Brideshead, pre-war. Or, bizarrely, an Indian summer in WW2, on a break from being in the ATS, sitting in a field with a dishy RAF chap. Or as part of the Pre-Raphaelite lot.
Paris, late 50s/early 60s. That'll be me sitting in the corner in a cloud of Gitanes smoke having overly earnest and pretentious conversation about Nick Ray and John Ford films with Francoise Truffaut.
About 1965, the Blue Train from The Union of South Africa to Victoria Falls, Rhodesia. To pick up the train I'd fly London Airport to SA by VC-10; BOAC of course!
Although I'd quite fancy a trip around East Berlin and through the Curtain during the same era as well. Perhaps just a long weekend for that one though.
Financially - it would have to be London 75/76 to snap up, and put by, all those Westwood/McLaren designs that go for fortunes now..
For fun it would have to be around 65/66 to catch some rocking mod bands, and hang out the Scotch Of St James and The Flamingo ..
But then 73 with proto-disco and glam a'popping - plus seeing The Faces, Bowie and Bolan live is very tempting..
I would head back to 1966 as a Top Dolly Bird, but with a certain amount of caution. All those man-made fibres, poor male hygiene and inadequate dental procedures would probably have made for quite a smelly time.
If you went back to the '60s, it would be shit. The food would be shit, the booze would be shit, the fun would be shit. Indeed, if your name's not Lulu or Ringo Starr, you can forget being let into all the best parties, orgies, swinging happenings and groovy scenes, because they were just as exclusive then as they are now. In reality, your '60s holiday would consist of sitting in a deckchair talking to a racist on some windswept British beach somewhere, eating a undergenerous ice-cream made from animal fat with a knotted handkerchief on your head. Then, when you'd had enough of hearing about the bloody wogs, or how Harold Wilson is ruining this country, you'd wander back to your B&B through a landscape of scandalously half-demolished Victorian buildings before the awful landlady locked the doors, and spend the rest of the night watching The Black & White Minstrels Show on a TV the size of a postage stamp. In a room with no central heating. Wondering if the '70s are going to be any better.*
*No, they were even worse.
Far out, man.
But you'd know where to go and how to get there, how to get into the scene, man, so you could in fact live the fantasy life.
Don't pour cold water on it, BPP, I enjoy my fantasies.
I've amended my post about how crap things were in the past to point out you were on about livin' it up in ye olden days.
Apologies for making it sound like I was pooh-poohing your idea and being an all-round cynical boob on your generally upbeat and positive site.
(Still reckon you'd end up in Margate being locked out of the Shady Pines B&B when you show up one minute later than Mrs. Ethel Teabastard's draconian 'in by eleven' rule, mind)
That deleted comment was meant for Office Pest's site, if you're wondering.
DAMN THESE MULITPLE WINDOWS!
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