FRIENDS FOREVER First and Second year

 

It might be said that we make friends by chance but to me, a friend is just someone who has always been in your unconscious suddenly appearing and not just the unconscious friend but also the person with who you may spend the rest of your life with.

"We choose not randomly each other .We choose only those that already exist in our subconscious"

Freud

Is it good to have friends . Well it depends on the type of friend. There are all types. Those friends who have power , those who know things,

What draws people together as friends?

1. Common interests. This probably ties us closer to our friends than many would like to admit. When our interests diverge and we can find nothing to enjoy jointly, time spent together tends to rapidly diminish. Not that we can't still care deeply about friends with whom we no longer share common interests, but it's probably uncommon for such friends to interact on a regular basis.
2. History. Nothing ties people together, even people with little in common, than having gone through the same difficult experience. As the sole glue to keep friendships whole in the long run, however, it often dries, cracks, and ultimately fails.
3. Common values. Though not necessarily enough to create a friendship, if values are too divergent, it's difficult for a friendship to thrive.
4. Equality. If one friend needs the support of the other on a consistent basis such that the person depended upon receives no benefit other than the opportunity to support and encourage, while the relationship may be significant and valuable, it can't be said to define a true friendship.

What makes a friend worthy of the name?

1. A commitment to your happiness. A true friend is consistently willing to put your happiness before your friendship. It's said that "good advice grates on the ear," but a true friend won't refrain from telling you something you don't want to hear, something that may even risk fracturing the friendship, if hearing it lies in your best interest. A true friend will not lack the mercy to correct you when you're wrong. A true friend will confront you with your drinking problem as quickly as inform you about a malignant-looking skin lesion on your back that you can't see yourself.
2. Not asking you to place the friendship before your principles. A true friend won't ask you to compromise your principles in the name of your friendship or anything else. Ever.
3. A good influence. A true friend inspires you to live up to your best potential, not to indulge your basest drives.

 There is an extra factor, an attraction similar to that which draws people together romantically, that cements friends together irrevocably, often immediately, for no reason either person can identify. 

!, Do you believe friends already exist in your subconscious waiting to meet you

2. Can life be led without many friends

3. What kind of person can never be a friend

4.The best friendship is to offer the hand of friendship to all citizens. Why is this important or not important

5.The greatest friendship is to yourself. Agree?

6. Is there a friendship between different species?

HOLBEIN AND HIS TIME MACHINE

 HOLBEIN  AND HIS TIME MACHINE

Holbein was from Bavaria and born in 1497. His father was a painter and a really good one. Holbein was maybe the greatest  artist of his time and maybe one of the greatest of any time.His main claim to fame is that he  immortalised Henry the Eighth and his world. Without Holbein Henry might well be someone we just heard about like his Father but not the Henry we know.

 In the National Portrait Gallery, there is an early painting of Henry. It is based on, let's say, reality and  later there was the full-size propaganda-style and iconic painting of Henry standing legs apart in the way everyone remembers him, the smaller painting is Holbein at his best because what he did best was telling us about the soul of the personality. We can tell from these two paintings that Holbein painted what he felt (the smaller painting) and what he was ordered to do (the big painting).

As said we know everything about the world of Henry because of Holbein. He didn't just describe Tudor England but he immortalised the period. By immortalising it he made it (maybe) that part of history that we can really visualise unlike the pages from a history book. These we cannot envisage at all. So for me, it is a real lesson.

 When I first went to the three big galleries in London the thing that really impressed me as an eight-year-old kid was how real Holbein was, not his paintings but his drawings. Why? Because as my teacher at university Gombrich said: " a  painting can be laborious but a drawing is quick and immediate it shows us the soul." 

He went to Basle and started painting for book producers and did religious art. He produced some funny drawings for Erasmus and his satirical book on the clergy "In Praise Of Folly". But the publishing began to flounder and so Holbein needed work and with a letter from Erasmus got to England. England was not interested in the world of the Madonna, they were interested in portraits. He met Thomas Moore and lived in his house while painting a massive family portrait of Moore plus another of Moore on his own. Holbein's painting of Moore was new, not just in British art but anywhere. It shows Moore as a driven personality searching for something. This is why when we look at a painting its interesting to know what else was being done.

 Moore was the famous man of Henry who would not buckle down to Henry's want of a divorce. He was beheaded. . The painters first visit lasted two years and he went back to Basle. It was a place of religious fanatics where iconoclasts smashed up the churches. They destroyed nearly everything including anything Holbein. The Lutheran iconoclasts were a group who wanted a world without an image.

 Holbein was born a catholic and seems to have kept his faith through the years but without showing it. When he went back to London he worked in Steelyard Passage an area designated for German merchants, it was a mini world for Germans. The painter lived through the period when Henry was ravaging the structure of English religion and creating his own church. He gives us the idea of raging bull Henry and that piggy eyed Thomas Cromwell ready to destroy a huge chunk of art as he contemplates his destruction of the churches. And here we can ask does he tell us something through his painting that we couldn't know from words. I think he does. 

But Holbein wasn't just a painter at court, he designed everything possible to design for the court. Nevertheless, his chief duty was to paint Henry as a weapon of propaganda, he painted him on various occasions but they do not reveal.

 Holbein was no longer in the business of telling the truth but painting in that   Mao Tse Tung manor, big and huge, boring and meaningless, unimportant apart from its historical reference. 

With Henry needing another wife he was sent to paint pictures of possibles. Welcome to the Hans Holbein dating agency. 

His lightning-fast fingers drew up a lot of women that Henry could view. Finally, he found Anne of Cleves while scouting Europe. Henry saw the painting, liked it but when Anne arrived to be married Henry said she smelt so much that sex was out of the question. The marriage was never consummated and Thomas Cromwell beheaded as he was blamed for this woman. After all, he was the one who said Ann looked cool.

 His most famous painting apart from Henry is the Ambassadors. He died of the plague in 1545 and his fame lies in his "big " paintings but for me, it is, as I said, his drawings, which were his greatest achievements, without doubt for me.

black death

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pRZYb2Jl22g

WORDS

1. Fleas

2.Outbreak. ANSWER scoppio improvise

3.Pathogen.infectious microorganism or agent, such as a virus, bacterium, protozoan

4.East Smithfield burial ground. ANSWER V a place in London

5.Virtual notice. ANSWER In the article places like East Smithfield market was set up at virtual notice to bury the dead. It means without warning

6.strain ANSWER  strain is a genetic variant, a subtype or a culture within a biological species. 

7.Interim ANSWER temporary or provisional, interval. The school doesn't start till September, but he's taking a Spanish class in the interim. 

8.probing. ANSWER A slender, flexible surgical instrument used to explore a wound or body cavity.

READ 

Two events happened that may have created the terrible death toll. First of all, Weather had improved in Europe and it became warmer this invoked very good harvests and gave rise to more children. This happens when people start to feel better off. Then because of a much bigger population, peasants could not feed everyone so malnutrition set in. This malnutrition was found in the bones of plague victims in East Smithfield so lower disease resistance may have been why so many died. 

Before the Black Plague peasants suffered from malnutrition seen by the bones dug up in Britain. This was because, From the perspective of many of the survivors, the effect of the plague may have been ultimately favourable, as the massive reduction of the workforce meant their labour was suddenly in higher demand. R. H. Hilton has argued that those English peasants who survived found their situation to be much improved. For many Europeans, the 15th century was a golden age of prosperity and new opportunities. The land was plentiful, wages high, and serfdom had all but disappeared. 

• The Black Death (1348 - 1350) had killed many people. This meant there was a shortage of workers and wages went up. Parliament passed the Statute of Labourers (1351), which set a maximum wage and said that people would be punished with prison if they refused to work for that wage. This meant that despite the demand for workers and the greater availability of land, poor people stayed poor.Hence one of the reasons for the Peasants revolt and its link with the Black Death

• 
  

A century later, as population growth resumed, the lower classes again faced deprivation and famine. 

QUESTIONS

1.what was it caused by? answer. Spread by fleas on rats. its believed. EXTRA QUESTION is it still ongoing?

2.What were they scarcely able to do? Answer To Bury the dead

3.Where did the plague originate from? ANSWER China and in Europe Sicily. As of 1200, China had a total population of more than 120 million, but a 1393 census found only 65 million Chinese surviving. Some of that missing population was killed by famine and upheaval in the transition from Yuan to Ming rule, but many millions died of bubonic plague

4.What is difficult to say? ANSWER Will the plague return

5.It killed 1 in 2 in what time span? ANSWER in the space of 7 years

6.Why would the medieval person find it easier to cope than now ANSWER

7.Don't ask this All the strains today originate from the strains of the Black Death It's never gone away. Why? ANSWER THERE is no reason given in the video

EXTRA QUESTIONS

Could present-day society cope better? No, because then people were more independent and today there would be total chaos.

8. Today many people are only worried about going back to their normal lives work-wise or free time while Covid increases. If it was the Black Death and not Covid do you think these people would have the same attitude?

9. Half your friends are wiped out. Sounds incredible? No, this was the Black Death and there was not a vaccine. But like Covid quarantine is the only real answer. When a top virologist says total lockdown and other important authority figures do not want to listen what does it mean. Does it mean that some people are selfish not very bright or more interested in the economy.?

Bruegel

 THE PAINTING I COULD HARDLY LOOK AT

HISTORICAL NOTES

1The Eighty Years’ War, (1568–1648), the war of Netherlands independence from Spain, which led to the separation of the northern and southern Netherlands and to the formation of the United Provinces of the Netherlands (the Dutch Republic).Phillip the Second inherited the Netherlands from the Holy Roman empire and he tried to put down the rising faith of Calvinism. Both Phillip and the Calvinists were fanatics and Phillip sent the Spanish inquisition to the Netherlands ,

2.Calvinism was an idea of reformed Christianity and reformed Protestantism, that follows the theological tradition and forms of Christian practice set down by John Calvin and other Reformation-era theologians.

3.Hieronymus Bosch, born Jeroen Anthonissen van Aken (c. 1450 - August 9, 1516) was an Early Netherlandish painter of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Many of his works depict sin and human moral failings.

Bosch used images of demons, half-human animals and machines to evoke fear and confusion to portray the evil of man.

His works contain complex, highly original, imaginative, and dense use of symbolic figures and iconography, some of which was obscure even in his own time. Bruegel took over the masters place as the greatest Dutch painter according to some Dutch historians

4.Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.

The new Dutch Republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe and led European trade, science, and art. . The upheavals and large-scale transfers of population of the war, and the sharp break with the old monarchist and Catholic cultural traditions, meant that Dutch art had to reinvent itself. The painting of religious subjects declined sharply, but a large new market for many secular subjects developed.

WORDS

HIGHBROW means high culture

GRUESOME means something terrible, something that makes you feel horrified

STUNNINGLY . Something that is far from normal. For instance the woman is stunningly beautiful or ugly .Villa Raverio is stunningly quiet

DISEMBODIED. Something taken away from something

GHOULS Something horrible and ghostly

MINGLE to be part of a group of people. I went to the party and started to mingle with the other people

BLEND IN also a cookery term that means to make something part of something .I did not know anyone at the party but I tried to blend in.

ICONOCLASM Those who destroy art mainly out of religious reasons

TO FOCUS concentrate deeply

WITTING in an image it is the thing you are meant to see . For instance in the Triumph of Death we are meant to see the dance of death and the end of mankind.

UNWITTING something the author of a work did not intend but it is there anyway. For instance in the Triumph Of Death something must have made the painter paint such horrible scenes and the unwitting testimony is that in his own country there was terrible war

ARTICLE

When I was a kid my dad used to take me round the famous London art galleries on a Sunday morning . That was the first time I came into contact with Pieter Bruegel (BRO GAL ) the elder . His paintings were mostly destroyed when he died and now there are forty in existence but he more or less celebrated the life of the peasant in his homeland. He was called Peasant Brueghel because he liked to dress up like one of them so he could mingle unnoticed.

He blended in with them and was able to do drawings of them that would later become paintings. But his most famous painting is the Triumph of Death which is a painting that is about the end of mankind. It was probably painted because of the religious wars going on in the Netherlands between the Spanish and the Dutch. It is a frightening painting and when I first saw it I straight away thought of Hieronymus Bosch.

Bosch was described like this by Van Mander

"Who will be able to tell of the weird and strange ideas in his mind". If you believe in Hell then your vision of it is from a Bosch painting "

When I saw them in London they terrified me .He must be the inspiration not just for Bruegel but also countless horror films of today.

Bruegel and Bosch were both painters of pastoral life and did mostly that kind of painting .

Bruegel was a formative influence on Dutch golden age painting he was one of the first generation of artists to grow up when religious subjects had ceased to be the natural subject matter of painting. Focusing instead on the visual world and depicting everyday scenes of peasant life.

Bruegel was born at a time of extensive change in Western Europe. Humanist ideals from the previous century influenced artists and scholars. In Italy artists such as Michael Angelo and Da Vinci painted their masterpieces.

Reformation was accompanied by iconoclasm and the widespread destruction of art in the Low countries

The Catholic Church viewed Protestantism and its iconoclasm as a threat to the Church.

The Council of Trent which concluded in 1563, said that that religious art should be more focused on religious subject-matter and less on material things and decorative qualities.

At this time, the Low Countries wanted separation from the Habsburg rule based in Spain. The Habsburg monarchs of Spain attempted a policy of strict religious uniformity for the Catholic Church within their domains and enforced it with the inquisition. Increasing religious riots, political wrangling , and executions eventually resulted in the outbreak of the eighty years war.

In this atmosphere Bruegel reached the height of his career as a painter. Two years before his death, the Eighty Years' War began between the United Provinces and Spain.

In this historical atmosphere his moral work, the triumph of Death is symbolized by a large army of skeletons razing the Earth. The background is a barren landscape in which scenes of destruction are still taking place. In the foreground, Death leads his armies from his reddish horse, destroying the world of the living. The latter are led to an enormous coffin with no hope for salvation. All of the social institutions are included in this composition and neither power nor devotion can save them. Some attempt to struggle against their dark destiny while others are resigned to their fate. Only a pair of lovers, at the lower right, remains outside the future they too will have to suffer. This painting depicts a customary theme in medieval literature: the dance of Death, which was frequently used by Northern artists.

Bruegel casts the entire work in a reddish-brown tone that gives the scene an infernal aspect appropriate for the subject at hand. This scene is influenced by both the medieval tradition of the Dance of Death and by depictions of the Triumph of Death in Italian painting. The profusion of scenes and moralizing sense applied by the artists are part of Hieronymous Bosch´s influence on this work. The painting is not about a pandemic but about his feelings towards the years of constant war in his country. The witting testimony is as we have said above but the unwitting testimony is that the Renaissance the so-called period was really about war and not discovery.

Whatever you may think of Bruegel it was Bosch who gave me nightmares . What kind of mind did he have?

QUESTIONS

1. What was the golden age of Dutch painting (research this )Dutch Golden Age painting is the painting of the period in Dutch history roughly spanning the 17th century, during and after the later part of the Eighty Years' War (1568–1648) for Dutch independence.

2. What is the difference between mingle and blend in . To mingle in normal language means to mix with other people , normally used for meetings or parties . Very often people say don't be a wall flower go and mingle. Blend in means to be like the others . It's like saying when you go to school "Try and blend in with the other kids.Do what they do and wear what they wear. OR it can be to introduce an ingredient

3. Why was Bruegel called the elder? To distinguish him from his painter son called the younger

4 When Bruegel died he told his wife to destroy all his paintings . Can you guess why from the above text?

5.Give me an example of witting and unwitting

6. Do you think Bruegel and Bosch influenced horror films of today?

Mi piace

Commenta

INTERNET ADDICTION MAY NOT EXIST

internet addiction does not really exist

Is the behaviour that parents are concerned about real addiction?

Jordan Peterson a well-renowned clinical psychologist is one of the champions of the internet. He said if you have a fast enough phone you can then in your spare moments, like waiting for a bus, acquire a university education in one year by attending online university tutorials. You would obviously spend some time doing this but it would be easier than actually attending those same lectures at university and you don't have to be at university to do it. Since I heard that smart piece of advice I started listening to those who can inform me of things I do not know. I feel kind of transformed.

He said that young people can quickly become much more knowledgeable and prepared so is being on the internet something negative? After all, you can spend six hours in school and everything depends on the teacher. On the internet, you can pick the best.

One of the most important things I learned was to listen and ask but not constantly offer an opinion. With the type of lessons one can do with Peterson and others you can open up a great new world with the internet. But like the invention of TV, it might be used badly. Parents and adults spend hours watching TV just like the young spend on computers. There's very little difference. It is enough to hear most adults offer an opinion and you know it's directly from the TV and mostly hearsay. So I think there is little difference between the groups except that the young might be watching people like Peterson who is rarely on TV and if the young are watching something that tells them something important then the kids are in the driving seat. Adults will never be in the driving seat watching what is propaganda driven tv news or that in the newspaper. The thing is no one ever says to adults "Er I think you spend too much time in front of the T.V" as they do to the young on the internet.

You might think when was the last time I heard a pearl of wisdom from an adult? The answer might be never. But I can say that on rare occasions students have made me think with points of view that are not from the TV.

What parents are alarmed about is usually two things: the sheer amount of time their kids spend on screens, and their kids’ resistance to cutting back on that screen time. Getting them to put away their devices and come to dinner, engage in other activities, go outside, or do their homework (without also checking social media and streaming TV shows) seems to be an increasingly uphill battle.

Kids sometimes use the word “addiction” to describe their own behaviour, too. In a 2016 survey by Common Sense Media, half of the teenagers said they “feel” they’re addicted to their mobile device. Three-quarters of them said they felt compelled to immediately respond to texts, social media posts, and other notifications.

By calling it an addiction, parents are often communicating their concern that so much screen time is unhealthy, as well as their feeling that they’re powerless to stop it.

While the comparison to substance abuse is tempting, because devices are stimulating to the same reward centres of the brain, experts point out crucial differences.

“Addiction doesn’t really capture the behaviour we’re seeing,” says Dr Matthew Cruger, a neuropsychologist and the director of the Learning and Development Center at the Child Mind Insititute. “With addiction, you have a chemical that changes the way we respond, that leads us to be reliant on it for our level of functioning. That’s not what‘s happening here. We don’t develop higher levels of tolerance. We don’t need more and more screen time to be able to function.”

There is, technically, no such thing as the internet or phone addiction. Some in the psychiatric community have proposed a new disorder called internet gaming disorder, to recognize unhealthy patterns of game-playing. But to rise to the level of a disorder, Dr Anderson notes, the behaviour would be very extreme, and seriously impairing a child’s life.

They think it crowds out other age-appropriate activities, like socializing, sports, school work — even hygiene and sleep. “We would be looking at adolescents who are pushing everything else out of their lives,” explains Dr Anderson. “They are not having friendships, not engaging socially — at least offline — and they may be failing in school.”

Some parents may see addict-like behaviour, Dr Anderson adds, when kids get angry if they’re required to stop, insist on more and more screen time, spend a lot of offline time thinking about how and when they will get back online. But this kind of behaviour can be prompted by many pleasurable activities and doesn’t constitute an addiction. “More often than not, what I see are parents who are concerned about their teenager’s behaviour around screens use the word addiction when it doesn’t really fit.”

One reason to be cautious about using the term, he added, “is that we have a tendency right now within the zeitgeist to pathologize normal adolescent behaviour.”

The time teenagers typically spend on phones and other devices can be misleading as a measure of whether they are unhealthily engaged. That’s because many of the things kids do on those devices are age-appropriate activities that in the past have been done offline: socializing with peers, exploring personal interests, shopping, listening to music, doing schoolwork, watching movies or TV.

Texting and use of social media sites, for instance, have become important channels for adolescents connecting to others and being validated. Role-playing games allow kids to interact not only with friends but with people around the world. A 2016 report by Common Sense Media concluded: “What looks like excessive use and distraction is actually a reflection of new ways of maintaining peer relations and engaging in communities that are relevant to them.”

Is it masking a mental health disorder?

When a child seems unhealthily focused on video games, to the point of social isolation, the behaviour maybe, rather than addiction, a product of other mental health problems.

Dr Anderson reports that he finds himself saying to parents, “We understand your hypothesis that your kid is addicted to games, but it may be that he is socially anxious. It may be that he is depressed. It may be that he has a learning disorder.”

Dr Anderson recalls treating a 16-year-old whose mother was adamant that he was addicted to video games. “I was doing in-home sessions with him, and it was, indeed, very hard to get him off playing Call of Duty to even have the session. But what I realized very quickly was that he had both ADHD and depression, and he had been failing school for as long as he could remember.”

Call of Duty was actually a positive in his life, Dr Anderson said, “the only thing that provided solace, a sense of belonging. He had joined a crew of people who play Call of Duty and post YouTube videos of them playing.”

Once his ADHD and depression got appropriate treatment, he was able to cut back on Call of Duty and make offline friends. “He joined the football team at school. His grades improved,” said Dr Anderson. “In that sense, it was the treatment of ‘internet addiction’ through treatment of the actual underlying conditions.”

Problematic use

While experts say that parents should remain sceptical of the notion of addiction, they also argue that parents should be alert for potential negative fallout from screen use. Apps and games are designed to keep us engaged as much as possible, and it can be hard for children to exercise self-control when their impulse is to keep scrolling.

There is ample evidence that intense social media use is correlated with an increase in anxiety and depression as teenagers, especially girls, compare themselves unfavourably to their peers and worry about missing out.

Research shows that excessive gaming — spending two-thirds or more of free time — is correlated with negative mental health outcomes, including a higher incidence of anxiety, depression and substance use.

There is evidence that multitasking — using social media, texting, watching tv while doing homework — undermines cognitive functioning and decreases learning.

And, of course, experts note constant attention to devices comes at the cost of other activities that are ultimately more valuable, and developmentally important.

“Our brains are hardwired to like things that are novel and stimulating, and the phone captures that,” notes Dr Cruger. “It’s easier to engage in constantly checking your phone or playing a game than tasks that require more mental effort, though those are ultimately more rewarding for a lot of people.”

Why would you pick up a book if you’re stimulated by Instagram or Candy Crush, Dr Cruger asks. “You still retain the capacity to apply more mental effort to things but the opportunity is lost when you’re constantly superficially engaged.” But a book is only words put together on paper. You might read words on a computer. Like paper, it depends on what words.

“There are absolutely alarms to be sounded,” concludes Dr Anderson, “but the vast majority of kids are engaging in screen-related behaviour that may not be either pathological or damaging.”

The key, he notes, is to help parents set appropriate boundaries around screens, to understand what their kids are doing online, to feel confident that they are is engaging in the right developmental tasks — online or off.

1. Do you think adults waste their time watching TV just as much as students do online?

2. Is the internet a great chance to gain enormous amounts of knowledge?

3. Whats the difference in reading things on the internet as opposed to a book?

4. Why was Call of Duty was actually a positive ?

5.Kids sometimes use the word “addiction” to describe what?

6. Why is addiction the wrong word to use ?

From Victorian London to the Swinging sixties?

 Oliver Twist has given a startling and lasting impression of what the streets of London were like at the beginning of Queen Victoria's reign, with dens of thieves in the East End turning boys like Oliver into "fogle-hunters" burly housebreakers like Bill Sikes setting off through the sleeping town to practice their skills in the leafy suburbs, and loose women like Nancy being battered to death in dingy rooms or down dark alleys.

 A generation later, Charles Dickens (Jr) is hardly more reassuring than his father, advising householders to lock up carefully and bring their mud-scrapers in at night if they happened to like the patterns on them. Later in the reign too, social problem novels like George Gissing's The Nether World (1889) were still painting a lurid picture of slums in the East End, whose denizens grew as "vile" as their surroundings and were, of course, only a stone's throw from the City and (worse!) only a couple of stone's throws away from the monied residents of the West End.

For a few years in the 1960s, London was the world capital of cool. When Time magazine dedicated its 15 April 1966 issue to London: the Swinging City, it cemented the association between London and all things hip and fashionable that had been growing in the popular imagination throughout the decade.

London’s remarkable metamorphosis from a gloomy Victorian grimy post-War capital into a bright, shining epicentre of style was largely down to two factors: youth and money. The baby boom of the 1950s meant that the urban population was younger than it had been since Roman times. By the mid-60s, 40% of the population at large was under 25. With the abolition of the National Service for men in 1960, these young people had more freedom and fewer responsibilities than their parent's generation. They rebelled against the limitations and restrictions of post-War society. In short, they wanted to shake things up…

Added to this, Londoners had more disposable income than ever before – and were looking for ways to spend it. Nationally, weekly earnings in the ‘60s outstripped the cost of living by a staggering 183%: in London, where earnings were generally higher than the national average, the figure was probably even greater.

This heady combination of affluence and youth led to a flourishing of music, fashion, design and anything else that would banish the post-War gloom. Fashion boutiques sprang up willy-nilly. Men flocked to Carnaby St, near Soho, for the latest ‘Mod’ fashions. While women were lured to the King’s Rd, where Mary Quant’s radical mini skirts flew off the rails of her iconic store, Bazaar.

Even the most shocking or downright barmy fashions were popularised by models who, for the first time, became superstars. Jean Shrimpton was considered the symbol of Swinging London, while Twiggy was named The Face of 1966. Mary Quant herself was the undisputed queen of the group known as The Chelsea Set, a hard-partying, socially eclectic mix of largely idle ‘toffs’ and talented working-class movers and shakers.

Music was also a huge part of London’s swing. While Liverpool had the Beatles, the London sound was a mix of bands who went on to worldwide success, including The Who, The Kinks, The Small Faces and The Rolling Stones. Their music was the mainstay of pirate radio stations like Radio Caroline and Radio Swinging England. Creative types of all kinds gravitated to the capital, from artists and writers to magazine publishers, photographers, advertisers, film-makers and product designers.

But not everything in London’s garden was rosy. Immigration was a political hot potato: by 1961, there were over 100,000 West Indians in London, and not everyone welcomed them with open arms. The biggest problem of all was a huge shortage of housing to replace bombed buildings and unfit slums and cope with a booming urban population. The badly-conceived solution – huge estates of tower blocks – and the social problems they created, changed the face of London for ever. By the 1970s, with industry declining and unemployment rising, Swinging London seemed a very dim and distant memory.

1. Why do you think Tower blocks were a bad idea for working class people. Use your logic and say what you think might have been the problem_

2. What do you think was a fogle hunter

3, What made London officially hip

4.denizens grew as "vile" as their surroundings. What does this mean

5. Why did swinging London seem a distant memory

6.What does the son of Dickens advise householders to do

 

PEOPLE USE FASHION TO EXPRESS THEMSELVES Words  Haute Left.  Leftist who think of themselves as the aristocrats or upper level of Leftist political  thinking Growing Trend  A fashion starting to become serious Gregarious  Someone who is social Fashion was described in many ways. According to the Cambridge dictionary, fashion is a popular style.  In this case, it is a popular style of clothing. Quoting the famous fashion designer Coco Chanel  ‘Fashion is not something that exists in clothes alone; fashion is something in the air. It’s the wind that blows in the new direction, you feel it coming, you smell it. Fashion is in the sky, in the street, fashion has to do with ideas, the way we live, what is happening’.  Self-expression is an expression of your personality, emotions, or ideas, especially through art, music,  or acting. But is it possible to express ourselves through clothes?  Do people use fashion to express themselves?  Clothing plays a great role in human life since the cavemen first tied a leaf around themselves.  In some ancient Indian cultures, people wore specific clothes, intense and colourful body paint and  jewellery to symbolize faith, or in the case of women fertility.  “Many societies passed decrees known as sumptuary laws to prescribe or forbid the wearing of specific  styles by specific classes of people.  In ancient Egypt only those in high position could wear sandals; the Greeks and Romans controlled clothing.  Clothing was always used as a tool for capturing attention. In combat-oriented times it was important for women to find strong, protective men to keep the family safe. Usually, these men wore animal fur, tooth, bones, and shields and painted combat symbols to demonstrate their place in the community.  Clothes demonstrate something in us even those who say they do not like fashion. Quoting Edna Woolman Chase who was the editor in chief of the Vogue magazine “Fashion can be bought,  style one most possesses”. This may be true but fashion and style walk together. For instance, would you go  to a present-day Rolling Stones party dressed in the height of fashion and style that was cool for the 70s This sentence basically means that there is a big difference between fashion and style.  But Fashion is about the clothes and their relationship to the moment in time they being presented in, Fashion cannot exist away from the style and vice versa.  In the world of fashion, there is a hierarchy, with the dictators (like fashion designers, magazine editors) on  the top and the followers on the bottom.  Fashionable pieces and clothes don’t contain the personality of the followers; it is just a going trend that  personal identity allows becoming their own style. This is very important because clothing gives a first  impression. Wearing fashionable clothes give the impression of someone demanding, modern,  informed and open-minded, while wearing simple trainers can make someone undemanding, refused or  careless. To sum up, style is making a statement of personal identity, with the use of fashion. The careless  dresser probably cares as much for the careless look as I do for the Dandy look. “Dress is a continual manifestation of intimate thoughts, a language a symbol”. Before people are close  Clothes give information about the wearer.  Clothes announce sex, age, social class and in some  cases occupation. Fashion can also reflect many personal things as origin, personal opinion, taste,  sexual desires and current mood. The brain automatically observes these things and registers them,  even if people are not able to put these observations in words or are not aware of what is happening.  Clothes, therefore, are non-verbal language. Why are people following fashion? Human nature has a side called imitative instinct.  Naturally, humans as gregarious living being feel better as a part of a community. People follow or  copy each other because it is a natural biological protective instinct. People have a need to belong somewhere.  At the same time, human nature also requires detachment, personal prominence. This comes from the  fact that every human is different and wants to find him or herself, develop their own personality,  while still belonging to society. Following fashion and being an individual character and being a part of a  community is possible by copying and not copying fashion but you are always saying something. , and fashion is a tool with which this is possible People are liable to judge others by their look as the book by its cover. This human habit makes others afraid  of expressing themselves through fashion and clothes. The fact that people judge often by appearance  developed a self-protective side of humans. As fashion can be used for self-expression  it can be also used as a shield or protection. “People use fashion to present the image they want”. From the  person who wants to present a careless Haute Left personality to the Bank manager.   As an example, people wear uniforms in schools and at workplaces because it is required, and without it,  the opportunity of studying or working there is not available. People can easily make the impression  they want by wearing proper clothes.  Charles Dickens wrote down how the upper class was judged upon their clothes, which were ornate and  arty while the lower class wore monochrome, torn materials. This part of fashion can give proper  or false information about someone because it is about expectations and circumstances.  As an example businessmen wear expensive brands like Boss or Armani to show their wealth and  impress business partners. This part of fashion is about self-expression because the social  differences are shown and the facts of being wealthy, poor, middle-classed are part of somebody’s character.  Fashion was and will be used as a status symbol, and representing the wearer's place in the society it gives  information about him or her.  In conclusion, fashion is an always-changing prevailing style of dress and its not just fashion from the fashion  houses but the fashion that a group of people identify themselves as. 1. Most of you try to dress like one another . Do you really want to fit in at all costs ? 2. If yes do you not think that's a bit sad 3. What person comes across to you as an Nikon of fashion and style? 4. Do you think that as I said Fashion cannot exist without style? 5. In the article it says clothes can impress business partners do you think its true .Say why? 6. If one of the Haute left wears a beaten up old leather jacket do you think in his group he will be  impressing someone just as much as the business man?