Customs

When I walk through the Nothing to Declare channel at airports, I often find a complete absence of any customs officials. I've always put this down to the fact that they're busy in the Red Channel or that they simply don't have the capacity to be there all the time. How naive have I been! I discover that all major airports have a system of two-way mirrors and close-circuit TV which enable the custome people to monitor passengers even when they're still in the baggage hall. I've never smuggled anything in my life, save perhaps for a bottle of spirits more than my quota. Nevertheless, for some reason I always feel guilty as I walk past the customs officers and try to feign indifference. Won't need to anymore.

Inflation

I happened to be passing an old friend's former family home in Summertown, Oxford, the other day. This was a house in which I'd spent many a night while I was at school. A For Sale sign notice was outside it and I wandered over to the estate agents opposite and saw it in the window going for £695,000.

I telephoned Jim who told me that his parents had bought the house in 1967 for £7,500.

That means that in 40 years, the house has increased by roughly 10,000%. Staggering!

Acid House

Heard an interesting Radio 4 programme today on the Acid House/rave culture of the late 1980s, presented by Miranda Sawyer. It told of how it led to a relaxation of British culture. Taking the example of the Manchester music scene around Tony Wilson's Hacienda club that began in an almost derelict area of the city with homegrown music talent such as Happy Mondays et al, it explained how the "sitting around nursing a pint until 10.30pm scene" transformed itself into the ecstacy-fuelled 24-hour party people culture. It was a reaction to the sense of personal pigeonholing engendered by the Thatcher years. Its ultimate manifestation was at the mass raves held in large fields around the country.
Youths felt, however naively, that they were changing the world. Once people started making money out of it, however, the merchandisers moved in and the whole scene became commercialised and lost its sense of spontaneity.
It reminded me of just how cyclical such movements can be. The so-called hippie movement with its much overblown flower power began in the mid-1960s as a reaction to the straightjacketing conservative society, and the military-industrial complex that both the then superpowers had created as a result of the Cold War. This had led to America's disastrous involvement in Vietnam. The hippies were offering an alternative lifestyle based on human values such as peace and love and concern for the environment.
Just like the Acid House scene, the '60s youth movement was played out against a background of an energised music scene stimulated by a drug culture. And, in the same way, got crassly commercialised.
And just as many of the organisers of the rave culture became very successful entrepreneurs, so too did many of the '60s figures. They moved from San Francisco's Haight Ashbury to fuel the engine of technological change in Silicon Valley.