INGRID IS NOT SURE ABOUT SWINGING LONDON

F R I D A Y,  2 4  F E B

All day Anya and me thought of Finklestein. It's awful when you get a spasm of longing. It's not fair I had to fall in love with him. I've adored him for almost fifteen months.

Ma fetched us from school - we collected the logs to make the party seats and bought 'Penny Lane' and 'The Beat Goes on'!!

Read a terribly good article by Alan Freeman on Scott Walker. All the Walker Brothers sound nice, very anti these awful 'in' clubs and 'in' people.

“If you ask me, the whole Swinging London set-up is a sickening business. ”

Scott said one surprising thing comparing England, which he likes, with America: "The British people are a lot more willing to listen to different things - they're not so cheap or so easily brain-washed."

Ma finished making Chump's and my Austrian costumes in time for the party (just!). The dresses are red with silver buttons and the aprons are dark green. They're fab.  

““When did Swinging London start to Swing?””

In 1965 Diana Vreeland, editor of Vogue, described London as "the most swinging city in the world", but it was the writer Piri Halasz who coined the phrase "Swinging London" - in Time magazine, 1966.

The article quoted gallery owner Robert Fraser, who said, "London has something that New York used to have: everyone wants to be here; there's no place else," while Carnaby Street was (quaintly) described as "crammed with a cluster of the 'gear' boutiques where the girls and boys buy each other clothing." 

For an architect with a liberal bent, my father was surprisingly at odds with the new age. The "sickening set-up" was almost certainly his phrase. I was more in awe.