Slow love - it's groovy baby!

Though I’m a little too young to remember, there are plenty of references in music, literature and other art forms to the ‘groovy love’ that students, hippy and free-spirited types enjoyed in the 1960s and ’70s. To ‘make love not war’ sounds like a sensible way of saving money – and, possibly, lives... but could there be curiously karmic consequences to all this free love?




The other day I was at a dinner and, seated around my table, were seven other women of a certain age. It transpired that six out of eight of us were childless. You tend to find that women who’ve artfully (…or perhaps I should say artificially) avoided having children are relatively well educated, compared to a social underclass that, in the main, continues to do what comes naturally with wanton abandon. But whose choice is cleverer?

What lessons have any of us really learned from our newfound sexual freedom? Why doesn’t the constant pressure for progress take into account things that simply can’t be changed – namely, the basic facts of our biology: women have babies and men don’t.

It can be fun trying to bend the rules, but words sung by Wayne Fontana and the Mindbenders in the ‘60s hit The Game of Love seem cruelly pertinent:

The purpose of a man is to love a woman,
And the purpose of a woman is to love a man,
So come on baby let's start today, come on baby let's play
The game of love, love, la la la la la love

It started long ago in the Garden of Eden
When Adam said to Eve, baby, you're for me
So come on baby let's start today, come on baby let's play
The game of love, love, la la la la la love

Come on baby 'cause the time is right
Love your daddy with all your might
Put your arms around me, hold me tight
Play the game of love


Shortly after this recording, the Mindbenders lost Wayne Fontana, moving on to find a new and Groovy Kind of Love. Meantime, as we cyber-speed our way towards St Valentine’s Day, I thought you might appreciate this nostalgic flashback to slightly slower grooving times.

By the way, we’ve got some original, hippy chic-style slow design in the form of these curiously cool retro shades at ShopCurious: They’d be great as a Valentine gift, for someone who'd appreciate a rose tinted view of the world, or who just happens to be feeling groovy...

Which reminds me of that song by Simon and Garfunkel, telling us we’re ‘moving too fast’:

On recent viewing, many wives and children (and songs for wives and children) later, Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel (as seen in this video) are beginning to look rather like the oldest swingers in town. Perhaps they could do with slowing down, along with the rest of us. Surely, the true game of love involves savouring every moment and everything that life has to offer… and taking time to consider the consequences of our actions?

Will you?