Academic Time Travelling

I'm going back in time, to the 70's in England to be precise. Several things have converged to make this happen. Firstly not only am I 50 this year but loads of friends are too of course. I'm very proud of the fact that I still have friends from school and that we still get together from time to time. Now Belinda has sent out invitations for a 70s-themed party - 'pop on your platforms and boogie on down'. So I'm off shopping in cyberspace for a suitable outfit. I knew I should never have got rid of my yellow and purple smock dress and matching platforms. Secondly, at our last supervision meeting, Pat (Professor Sikes - the most amazing person and a wonderful teacher. I totally love her, have total respect and am totally in awe) suggested trying to call up the 70s zeitgeist (coz I'm talking about women who went to uni then and was looking for a way to 'contextualise' the stories they told). So I'll be talking to my friends, surfing the net (get me!), getting out the old photos, watching 70s films (like I ever stopped watching Saturday Night Fever) listening to 70s music (again - like I ever stopped). I already have a pretty good idea what the 70's zeitgeist was for me and putting that across is going to be difficult. I have no idea how to do it. Not least because it wasn't any one thing - it shifted and changed. But, thinking about it, what links the strikes and blackouts to punk, flares to feminism is that it was a time (perhaps - I'm thinking aloud here) when there was a thirst and a hunger for change without any clear idea of how to satisfy them. There was a restlessness about the 70s, a boredom too, and the co-existence of tired old ways with a kind of mad trying on of anything that seemed to break with those. There wasn't much focus to the 70's I don't think, but it was the decade I grew up in and it's going to be hard for me to stick with the zeitgeist and not slide down into nostalgia and sentiment.