Memories of Seventies Dublin: As the Decade Moved On, the City Changed and We Were Changing With It; Not All Changes Were Welcome
A Dubliner, a girl in her twenties, envies me for living in that city through the seventies. She, and many of her friends do not snigger at those years described as ‘the decade that style forgot.’ They love how things were back then, citing everything from our apparent carefree life, lots of jobs, not so many crazy rules, many different styles of clothing and, in their words, totally brilliant music.
‘Tell me, what music from today will we be listening to in forty years’ time?’ she asked. ‘You saw all the greats. Envy! At least Fleetwood Mac is still playing.’
Yes, I did see lots of bands in Dublin back then. From Led Zeppelin to Horslips, they came to Dublin and belted out their hits, often with just one big speaker on either side of them. They mostly played in the old boxing stadium. We went to the concerts by bus and walked home. Hundreds of teenagers heading off on foot in all directions, maybe picking up fish & chips on the way.
Loving music, I bought a guitar and the Paul Simon songbook in Walton’s. I can’t have been the only teenager sitting in her bedroom, with painful fingertips, singing ‘Hello Darkness My Old Friend’ to the walls.
Considering my life in the seventies, I came up with this very personal look back.
Things were already changing in the Ireland of 1970 when I was sixteen and beginning the real business of living. Not that I’d had an awful life before that, far from it. Between nine and twelve years old I’d attended probably the best junior school in Dublin, Marlborough Street, opposite the Pro-Cathedral. Taking a bus from the suburbs into the city in the early morning and back late afternoon as a nine-year-old seems unthinkable today, but it was fine.
My senior school, nearer home, then called a Tech, now called a College, never measured up to Scoil Mhuire. Bored witless, after the Inter Cert I left, got a job in the city I loved and joined the adult world. It was an interesting job and I took to my new office life with gusto. Starting in the Data Processing department, I was there for the beginning of the new technology and I often went over to the swish IBM offices, who did the processing for our company. But my personality was more suited to people and I transferred departments, traveling with young students on Educational Tours to the UK, France and Holland.
I signed up for a three-year evening art course, spent a lot of time in the National Gallery, I wrote, painted, became a cub scout leader, took up horse riding and made great, lifelong friends.
The seventies informed and educated me. They were heady days, taking responsibility for myself, working, earning money, learning new skills and enjoying all that the city offered. And Dublin city offered a lot.
My office in Westmoreland Street meant I was in the thick of the action and the area around me, Grafton Street and the streets leading off it had everything I had ever wanted. Lovely buildings, Trinity College at one end, St Stephens Green at the other, fantastic shops, art galleries, restaurants, great pubs in the side streets, and, something that changed my life, one special hairdressing salon.
With a head of strong auburn brown hair, and the wages of a junior not stretching to salon appointments, I looked like Rory Gallagher. The salons I could afford just put rollers in bunged you under a huge hot drier and you came out looking like your mother.
The Witches Hut, in South Great Georges Street was my aim. The owner had worked with Vidal Sassoon in London, hair was cut in modern styles and dried with a handheld drier. I saved the £3 cost of this transformation and turned up, unaware that my luck, indeed my life, was about to change.
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