The legendary Tony Rodgers, while completely ignoring me, tugged at my strong locks and said to a lady ‘this will be good, take details’. She informed me they would like to use me as a model. How did I remain standing? The following Tuesday evening, I presented myself, fell in love with Paul and the world of hairdressing.
When the decade began, I was dancing in the legendary Grove in Clontarf, the alternative disco where Cecil never played ’bubble gum’ music. We considered ourselves super cool.
Continuing to dance my way through the decade, I moved on to Sloopy’s and Zhivago, experimenting with all the fashion world threw up. The Grove days of desert boots and fringed jackets, carrying Neil Young’s After the Gold Rush under my arm, not in a bag. Very important.
Hotpants and platform boots, kaftans and sandals, leather wrist bands, checked shirts, cowboy boots and real Levi’s. Miniskirts, Midi skirts, Maxi coats, huge palazzo trousers, long dresses for evening dances. And hats, hats and more hats.
Eating out in the early part of the decade meant three or four favorite spots. Of course, there were a few famous, very expensive places but our age group couldn’t afford them, and who wanted to be in a place full of grey suits?
Number one was Captain America’s. At the top of those stairs, we walked into the American dream. Juicy Burgers, with the famous mushroom sauce soaking into the chips, was a once a week definite for lunch. The Universal Chinese in Wicklow Street. The Berni Inn for a prawn cocktail and a steak. Across the river, Murph’s had opened on Bachelor's Walk, with a brilliant buzz, ever smiling staff and great food.
As the decade moved on, the city changed and we were changing with it. Not all changes were welcome.
One of my aunts, retired from the Irish Sweepstakes in Grafton Street, heard news about her old building that shocked her to the core. I can see her, as if it was yesterday, wearing her trademark black dress and pearls, hair perfectly coiffed, cigarette held aloft, in a voice indicating the end of civilization, telling my mother: ‘Breda, some fast food place is to take over the old building.’ Yes, the big yellow M was on the way to Dublin’s most glamorous street.
As my finances grew, I became something of a fashionista. Pia Bang was the place for tailored French clothes for us smaller girls. I copied fashion shoots from Vogue, one featured a leopard print dress I’d bought in Chelsea Girl in Liverpool. A long black coat from Friends, the ultra-chic women’s clothes shop on Grafton Street, was not actually put on, but worn over my shoulders. The front of my hair was dyed blonde, curled back, a sort of shingled look. A large black hat from Switzers, a long cigarette holder and lashings of the seventies make up completed the look. My mother’s wonderful reaction was to announce she now had a gangster's moll for a daughter.
It was all such good fun, and yes, carefree. How?
With injustices like the marriage bar for women still in place when I began working, no legal access to contraception and obviously no abortion or divorce, to be gay was unlawful, Northern Ireland was in flames, atrocities headline news every morning, how on earth did we manage to have such a good time? Many of us look back with fondness on the 1970s and I would willingly re-live those years again.
Apart from now, it was possibly my best, happiest decade.
Living in Dublin, a busy place, a port city, was a huge, important factor in my life. Being an independent child of sensible parents who encouraged thinking, and beginning my working life so young, gave me a sense of freedom. By the time the decade ended, I knew London and Paris well and had spent three weeks in Canada, a huge adventure. Others had taken to the east and gone to India. Two of our group had even gone to Russia in 1978.
I and others who took a similar path seemed to have emerged as a robust, independent generation. The group I considered friends and colleagues were intelligent people who could, and did, look after ourselves, taking whatever action was necessary, without reference to anybody.
Yes, there was unfairness, fierce injustices and horrific ignorance back then. But we did our own thing and knew that highly qualified people had been working hard since the late sixties, determined to address and change Ireland’s laws.
Brilliant journalists, some, activists themselves, informed us daily in the pages of the Irish Times. Through their work, Nell, Nuala, Maeve, Geraldine, Elgy and all the Marys, gave us hope and optimism.
How proud we were in 1990 when Mary Robinson, a longtime role model for us all and the woman who had bravely challenged the male establishment, forcing many changes, became the first female President of Ireland.
Stately and dignified, she transformed the Irish Presidency and in doing so, the country.
©2019 Jane Shortall for SeniorWomen.com
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