My Parents Can’t Remember the 60s, But Not Because They Were on Drugs

I grew up in the 1980s, which meant that the 1960s seemed like the most exciting decade in human history.

Woodstock.
Bob Dylan going electric.
Jimi Hendrix setting guitars on fire.
Students throwing paving stones in Paris.
Civil rights marches. Protest songs. Cultural revolution.

The 60s, according to history, was the moment the world woke up.

And yet.

My parents do not remember any of this.

Not because they were on drugs. Quite the opposite.

They were in a sleepy village in the Cotswolds.

While Hendrix was redefining the electric guitar, my parents were playing tennis. While students were rioting in Paris, they were attending what I believe were called “cheese and wine evenings,” which involved small cubes of cheddar on cocktail sticks and very polite conversations.

History was happening.

They were politely ignoring it.

And when I was younger, I couldn’t understand this. How could you miss the 60s?

The answer is simple.

Most people are just getting on with their lives.

History looks dramatic in documentaries. When you’re living through it, it often just looks like Tuesday.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because we’re living through one of those moments right now.

AI

Some people are deep inside it. Building things, experimenting, automating workflows, discovering tools that didn’t exist six months ago.

And most people are… vaguely aware of it.

They might occasionally ask ChatGPT to write an email or plan a holiday. Then they go back to watching AI-generated videos of cats playing trumpets.

Which is fine. That’s how history works.

When we look back at the 60s, we remember Woodstock and Dylan, not the thousands of cheese and wine evenings happening at the same time.

Most people weren’t at the barricades. They were making dinner.

But a small group of people were right in the middle of it. Exploring, experimenting, shaping what came next.

And if you’re one of those people today, it feels a bit like how I imagine it must have felt to be standing in the crowd when Dylan plugged in at Newport. Half the room confused, half the room electrified, and everyone slowly realising something had just shifted.

Years from now people will look back at this moment and say: that’s when everything started to change.

But for now, most of the world is still playing tennis in the Cotswolds.

And that’s okay.

Because some of us can feel the music starting.