MY COLLEAGUE John Waters claimed the other day that the Sixties package of peace, love and understanding might have been everything we pretend it was if only it had been followed through "That it was not was due to the insistence of the succeeding generation on banking its hard won freedoms and leaving the mortgage of optimism unpaid."

I suppose it's quite irrelevant that the Sixties package I (myself) opened in wild excitement contained not the three promised goodies of popular myth but the triple whammy of psychic turmoil, sexual frustration and chronic misunderstanding; that like other misnamed Children of Love I got more fun from the packaging; and that not a lot has changed in three decades. But John is nevertheless correct.

However, in criticising the succeeding generation he is forgetting about certain cultural aspects of that era. The Seventies were a period of high inflation, and the best advisers were recommending that young people should take out the biggest mortgage of optimism they could afford. Leaving it unpaid for as long as possible, or at least for as long as inflation remained high, also made good sense, because effectively the monthly repayments were falling all the time.

Even early re mortgaging of optimism, the very instant it became affordable, was being strongly recommended on all sides. The optimism debt might initially seem mountainous even to a particularly cheerful young couple (never mind the few pessimists that were still around), but after the first few years of rampant inflation their smiles would grow even broader.

As for the banking of hard won freedoms, this was also considered the most prudent course by top investment advisers, even though interest rates were comparatively low. The whole point was to have some liquidity in case interesting investment opportunities should arise in the boom Seventies areas of equality, social integration, ecumenism, open marriage and communal living.

Tom Murphy's play, The Morning after Optimism, is a bleak commentary on the aftermath of this glorious era, but for those who lived through it, and invested wisely, it remains forever bathed in the warm glow of nostalgia.

Meanwhile I read in a book review the other day that Andre Breton was "the maitre d' at the great Surrealist party of the Twenties and Thirties."

To think that I was there throughout and never recognised him. Worse, I realise now to my embarrassment that Andre felt snubbed by my omission to tip him when I was leaving. This finally explains his attitude to me over the subsequent years. And now it is too late.

I could blame the gaffe on my youth, because when I arrived at the party I was only just turned 19; but since I was nearly 38 when I left, this excuse will hardly do.

Still, Andre carried a lot of Dadaist baggage with him throughout the festivities, and it appears I was not the only one who left he was not ridding himself of it with sufficient haste. But I have never since returned to the Brasserie Lipp without a feeling of trepidation.

I can console myself with the fact that I was more sensitive to some of the other staff. Busy as we were most nights with the principal issue on the Surrealist agenda, the repudiation of conscious thought, we were most grateful to Paul Eluard and Louis Aragon, the late shift waiters at our table, who kept us well supplied with Bollinger.

Dey Chirico, if I recall rightly, was sommelier in chief, he spent ages staring at wine spillages on our white linen topped tables, yet never failed to attend to his duties with courtesy and diplomacy.

Jean Cocteau meanwhile had joined the kitchen staff as a humble plongeur, but progressed rapidly through the ranks after a spectacular row with the unpopular Herbert Read. Indeed I recall that Read and Henry Moore, both silver service waiters, were - despite (or because of) being the only two Brits there - at each other's throats throughout.

Scott Fitzgerald I saw only once or twice as a casual employee, he dropped by perhaps once a month for an afternoon shift cleaning the cutlery. This was as often as not followed by an evening breaking glasses, but Surrealism was never really his scene and the front of house staff hardly appreciated his antics. As for the behaviour of the two scullery maids, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, well, the less said the better.