I was number 36 of the Beatles Fan Club, in around 1963.  I was 13 years old and crazy about John Lennon.  I still have all my memorabilia, including a letter from the Beatles Fan Club promising us that when the Club reached 100 members they would have a party ‘with the boys’. But by the time it reached 100 it actually reached several thousand. So we never got our party. But I did go to see them at the Finsbury Park Astoria in 1964, and the Stones in Weymouth, and screamed along with the rest of them.

It was a time when the old order was challenged, the Establishment questioned.  Music and TV sparked new ways and new thinking. Fashion was young and fun and the UK rocked. But it was also the time of the Cold War and I remember being frightened, as I lay in bed at night, that there would be a nuclear war and we would all be obliterated.

It was also a time when women were still treated in the way one sees depicted on Mad Men.  We got used to being mauled, to having someone touch us up on a tube or bus, of innuendo and of being kept in our place. I met my first husband in 1968 and married in 1971.  The words  “Can I speak to your husband?” would be asked by cold callers, who simply put the phone down when I replied that he was out. Women were not regarded as decision-makers or worth discussing business matters with.

But the pill had a radical effect not only on sex – and apparently there was lots of it – but also on women’s ability to manage their bodies and the number of children they had so that they could go out to work in a more serious way. They became not only more sexually liberated but also financially independent. This made a phenomenal difference to how we thought about ourselves. Today women can make their own choices as to whether they prefer to stay at home with their children or become a nuclear-physicist, airline pilot or chief executive.

My Generation

They call me a Baby Boomer,
child of post-war,
bomb-sites and ration-books,
of Clark’s shoes and grey school knickers
gobstoppers, black and white telly.

They said colour would never catch on;
but it did and the fun revved up,
Bill and Ben consigned to their flowerpot
with Weed and Muffin the Mule
so Dougall could magically intone his psychedelic Roundabout.

Overturned,  innocence stepped aside
as Lucy danced in the Sky with Diamonds.
The Carry On stopped the carrying on.
and the sharpened knives of Mods battered Rockers
on candyfloss beaches while Dixon looked on.

We screamed through Beatles’ concerts
didn’t hear the note but swooned to the new beat,
ran away to see the Stones, powdered Elton John’s nose
danced all night black-eyed in mini skirt.
Our parents couldn’t keep us in.

We discarded the established order
Millicent Martin songs exposed Profumo
move over you pale dancing Lords
that was the week that was:
we women had never had it so good.

We burned our bras in the streets,
“equality” the word on our lips.
The man on the moon connected our phones.
Now we could chat to China as we walked up the High Street
while regime-change arose from skyscraper dust.

From cosy Aga, raspberry ripple and apple pie
to explosive Khrushchev and Kennedy’s Cuba,
Thatcher and Gorbachev tore the walls down
worldwide we held our candles in the wind:
we don’t want to fight no more.