Class and Moray Dalton: There's Death in the Cup

Moray Dalton (Katherine Renoir) wrote several mystery-thrillers that deserve more fans. They are very revealing about attitudes of the time. Other books include acrobats and failing private zoos, but this one is firmly placed in a stuffy little seaside town. The Armour family are beyond the pale of society. Though they have a big house and servants, the other middle class residents do not mix with them. The patriarch's second wife ran off with a French teacher, you see.

“What’s their social status?”
“Oh, middle class, I suppose. The father was a retired manufacturer from the Midlands. But they weren’t visited."
"One does not want to be censorious and Pharisaical, but they weren’t the sort of people we’re used to."

Mark Armour, our hero, is under a cloud for forging a cheque at school. He joined up and had a good war, but when peace broke out couldn't find a job. So he parlayed his startling good looks into a career as a gigolo. We get just a glimpse of this life in the first chapter.

He is forced to return home, where his bossy older sister Bertha inherited all the money. His half-siblings need looking after. George is clearly autistic, sympathetically portrayed, who is happy cutting pictures out of magazines. Winnie is "man mad". She was never very stable and is now about 40. As we've seen from other novels of the same vintage, there was a general idea that if a woman didn't get married she would start to go barmy by the age of about 30.

"One of the sisters is odd. Peculiar in her dress and so forth."
“There’s a taint of insanity then?”

As well as sewing finery out of old clothes, Winnie stalks the local doctor, sitting and crying on the kerb outside his house.

Yes, this is an other stiflingly inturned family, where everyone is forced to dance to Bertha's tune. If she dies, the inheritance is split between Winnie, Mark, George and Claire - the other child of the absconding French wife.

Mark has somehow met and fallen in love with Lucy, only child of what could be another repressive family unit. "I suppose you’ve seen to it that she met any eligibles that happen to be about?” asks her uncle, one of the subsidiary detectives. Oh no, woofles her father, coming up with some feeble excuse. "Lucy is a home bird" – the same phrase used by Joanna Cannan about the pathetic Nancy in They Rang Up the Police.

More about class: a servant going to give "evidence" to the police "was rather too smartly dressed in a bright blue coat lavishly trimmed with cheap fur, opening over a blue silk frock and ropes of pearls." And someone puts on "her high, affected company voice".
     
Though we barely leave the snobbish little resort, and nothing very dramatic happens (there isn't even a dispute about the will), it is a gripping read. Dalton is a good writer:

It was pitch dark in the drive and silent but for the crunching of the loose gravel under their feet and the steady drip drip of the rain on the laurels.
                
The car roared through the darkness. The hedgerows streamed by, every twig and blade of grass flashing out in the white glare of the headlights for a fraction of time to sink back again into the peaceful obscurity of the November night when they had passed.

I guessed the killer, mainly because they are the last person standing.

More Golden Age snobbery here, and links to the rest.
                


                

Classy Jobs

My upmarket accent means that people have always made assumptions about me. When I left university, I needed a job, any job. It was my ambition to “work in publishing”, which to me meant book publishing. Such jobs seemed to be few, or “like gold dust”, as we used to say. So I applied for secretarial jobs that sounded interesting. Sometimes I got as far as the interview, but when they heard my voice the interview panel would become inexplicably frosty. Why was someone like me trying to take a job away from someone who actually needed one? 

Posh people need jobs too. But as well as avoiding “trade”, those "jobs in the arts and publishing" were a way of staying among “those of a similar background” and even finding someone suitable to marry. And they paid less because it was assumed Daddy had bought you a London flat.

Oh, and the real value of having a job in publishing is being able to say "I work in publishing" to strangers you meet at parties. It's like saying "I really am middle class, don't worry". People used to say to me “But YOU can’t be a secretary!”. I thought they meant “you, with your brains”, but it was like confessing to being a parlourmaid. 

Sometimes it's what other people want for you. Oh, you're a “nice young girl”? You'd better work in book publishing where you'll “fit in”. It's almost protective. But perhaps they don't want anyone to step out of their niche. Are they subtly indicating "You don't belong here?" Sometimes they want you to fulfil a fairytale they believe about the lives of the “posh”. A man once asked me “Why aren't you married to a barrister and living in Fulham?”. (Because one didn’t ask me to marry him, that’s why.)

I cleverly worked out I couldn’t afford to work in book publishing anyway. Girls who could operate these new-fangled “word processors” were paid £2,000 a year more – and that was a lot in those days. I did a course, applied for a job, got taken on as a temp for a week and stayed for seven years. In publishing! Newsletters, not books. 

I once went to a party in Marlborough which was full of women who worked in book publishing. When I told them I worked in magazines they looked at me as if I was something the cat had dragged in. “I love magazines!” I enthused. “What are these magazines you love?” one asked with a sneer. Hadn’t she ever been to WH Smith in the high street? It had a wall of magazines, from Angling Times to The Zookeeper’s Gazette. Perhaps she was too grand to visit Smith’s and had The Lady delivered.

More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully 13: Accents

It's those little things that place you – and drive the other classes mad. 

Model Katie Price (pictured) once explained “I had my Botox done” before travelling to the States. Some refer to “my atheism” and “my power walking”, and others cringe. 

Adding a Y to words that don’t need them (acidy) is very lower-middle-class – they love baby talk. 

It’s very middle-middle to pronounce “non” as “nun” as in non-revealing, non-permeable, non-poisonous. Have these speakers been warned not to rhyme “none, one” with “con, don, gone, John, yon” because that’s northern?

Cornices, niches, pilasters: The middle-middles refer to the architectural features as cor-nieces and neeshes, while those higher up the ladder say “CORniss” and “nitch”. Elderly Upwards say PILaster, while most others say pil-ASS-ter or pil-ARS-ter. 

What do you call retirement? Lower-middle-class Jen Teale is looking forward to her “sunset years” and plans to go on a cruise to see the world. Like Jen, middle-middle Howard and Eileen Weybridges call it "retyement", and get involved in a lot of committees and work almost as hard as they did when employed. Their upper-middle friend Samantha calls it "re-tyer-ment" and plans to take up painting in watercolour. Aristocratic Caroline and Harry call it "retahment" but will keep an eye on their estate until they drop. Working-class Mr Definitely is going to project-manage his property portfolio, and Mrs D carries on as a dinner lady for the social side. 

Caro's mother still says plarstic, mar-sterbate and car-stration.

Howard says ocktion for auction, "We are going to haf to do", and "should have bin". He also says aquottic and quawk for aquatic and Quark. Samantha rhymes them with attic and park. She says "St John's wort" like "bird thou never wert". It's a plant not a skin blemish.

Teales never grasped that "a double consonant shortens the preceding vowel", and pronounce ogle as oggle. No wonder nobody could spell "millennium".

To everyone but Samantha, Memorex tape was always Mem’rex, and Corsodyl and Voltarol are Cors’dyl and Volt’rol. She pronounces every I in invisibility.

People on Twitter complain about others saying pitcher for picture, and heighth for height. Jen pronounces length as lenth.

At general election time, Sam and Caro flinch as announcers talk about “candy-dates” and “Conservative Hell” areas. If you want to sound posh, clip the vowels (“candid’t”), but pronounce the consonants (Conservative-held).

Old-fashioned English speakers used to insist combat was pronounced “cumb’t”, and shouldn’t be made to rhyme with wombat. Lamb’s Conduit Street in central London was “Lamb’s Cundit Street”. They would explain that if you wrote “cumbat” in medieval Gothic script, it would be unreadable, so an “o” was substituted for the "u". They used to argue about how to pronounce “controversy”, too. Accent on the first or second syllable? I can’t remember which was “correct”. Some pronounce comrade, Coventry, Sompting with a U sound.

They would also sneer if you said “paytent” instead of “pattent” with a short A for patent.

My parents’ shibboleths were sumpthing, everyb’dy and poor pronounced paw. It’s “something, every-body and poo-er”. The distinction between “poor” and “paw” disappeared some time during the 50s and I don’t think I ever heard anyone say “poo-er”, not even my parents. They also used to insist that lunch was “really” luncheon. That didn’t last either.

Whatever you do, don’t call Paris “Paree” in front of an upper-middle-class Upward who speaks French. They will say “Actually it’s ‘Parrrggghhhheee’”, and make you repeat it and repeat it, criticising you every time. “No, you haven’t quite got it.”

“Nobody can ever place my accent.” People like to claim that their accent is a hybrid, the result of moving around the country or continent.

I grew up with Dad from Portsmouth, a very middle-class RP but with a Hampshire burr that you don't really hear so much these days, and Mum had a cockney accent upbringing but has spent my whole life correcting me haphazardly, badly and punitively, in some sort of misguided effort to eradicate all trace of anything, so Christ alone knows what I’m left with. I think I swing from polite RP to South London, which means some people think I'm a Mockney, but I genuinely have no idea I’m doing it unless someone points it out. (MLR. RP with a Hampshire burr would not be RP. You could never make a film set in Portsmouth because if the actors got the accent right nobody would believe it.)

A lot of [public-school boys], I noticed, have a special ‘cleaning lady voice’ which is this slightly flirty, old school charming way of talking to people they regard as underlings or inferiors. (@KatyFBrand) 

Gideon Upward puts on a slight mockney accent in the same circumstances, and is rather hearty. Someone described my grandmother as being friendly to cleaning ladies but always “de haut en bas” (from high to low). 

Accents are called “broad, thick, heavy, flat”. The long A in path and grass is thought to be “posh”. (It’s just southern.)

My grandparents, who, like me, speak in a Wearside accent/dialect, do this with my wife, who speaks in a not remotely posh Norf London/S. Herts accent. My nana is like "Eeee, don't she talk lovely?" (@bartramsgob)

A character in EF Benson's Autumn Sowing rises in society until she’s invited to dinner by the local titled couple. She puts on an affected, high-pitched voice and is rude to the servants.

In South London, boys avoid a kicking by adopting a Cockney accent, while girls get ahead by sounding genteel. (Via David Bennun)

The upper middles used to hold entire conversations in “Cockney” or “Liverpudlian”. I hope this “joke” has been quietly dropped. But apparently when Americans want to be funny or ironic they adopt a “British” accent – even a “Cockney” accent! They must sound as terrible as middle-class Brits doing the same thing.

I love comedian Paula Poundstone’s remark about her recent visit to England. She said the most astounding part of her trip was how everyone there managed to keep up their accents 24 hours a day. (slate.com)

People sometimes call Received Pronunciation “affected”, as if nobody could speak like that naturally. But perhaps this is because they have been taught elocution, and are mortified to meet someone who really talks posh. In the 80s a friend was puzzled that a university receptionist had not lost her Southampton accent. Other acquaintances thought I was putting on my voice, or had learned it at my “good” school.

Some people even think that my accent is "put on" or think that I'm "trying to be posh" because apparently "your accent is just too posh to be genuine", says a fellow sufferer on Quora.

Class is dead, long live class.

More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully 12: Usage

Nobody ever said “Okay yah”. This parody of posh kids arose in the 80s – originating with impressionist Tracey Ullman. Why would you say “Okay yah”? Both "OK" and "yah" mean "yes" – nothing to do with "yah boo" (see picture of Harry Enfield as Time Nice-but-Dim). When I left school in the 60s I noticed that nobody on the outside said “yah” for “yes”, so I adopted “yes” instead.

Before smartphones and the internet, office workers used to hold long private conversations. I know many monologuers, and I used to sit there saying “Yes... yes... yes...”. When I put the phone down, my colleagues would laugh at me.

I had a flatmate who was furious that I said “absolutely” or “precisely” as an alternative. I explained that I wouldn’t say “exactly” unless what someone said was an exact fit with the truth. He became even more infuriated. Sometimes I would say “Mmmm” for “yes” and he complained that I sounded as if I was sneering, like Jeremy Paxman. What should I have been saying instead? How about “riiiiight” or “yeah” or even “yeah, right”? Or "definitely", like the Cs and Ds? I should have tried it.

“Fast” is grander than “quick”. Upwards talk about fast cars, not quick cars, though they say “That was quick!” or “Be as quick as you can”.

Upwards and Stow Crats used to address the lower orders as “my good man”. A man could call an equal “my good man” or “my dear man” during a debate, but it was very patronising. “My good woman” was likewise someone lower down the scale being thick or obstructive. Children could be addressed as “old dear” if they were too precocious or uppity. (Ooh, that stung!) 

Caro Stow Crat opines: We never called them “chicks”, they were nestlings or baby birds. From nestlings they became fledglings. “Chick” is baby talk. And we didn’t call them “chickens” – they were hens. They only became chickens post mortem. And I wish that people wouldn’t refer to their cats and dogs as their “babies”. But I can’t stand ‘doggies’ either. Or doggos or puppers. Or still worse, pooches.

What do you call comfortable, rubber-soled canvas lace-ups? From the top down: 

Plimsolls or daps
deck shoes
plimsoles or plimpsoles
sneakers
trainers

And the room you move to after dinner?

drawing room
living room
sitting room, lounge
front room

As Samantha Upward says, “Only airports have lounges”.

Caro asks: We used to make clothes out of “material”, now I have to remember to say “fabric”. Why don’t we call it “clorth”?

What do you call that thing you can't think of the name for?

doobry or doobery
doofer, thingummybob
oojamaflip

When swimming, you wear a:

cozzy, bathers
swimsuit

The upper layers despise "dip" for "swim" – baby talk again – but a swimsuit is a cozzy and on your birthday you get some nice prezzies. (They even talk about getting "wetty" in the rain, and a restaurant being "a touch spendy".)

“Crayon” is Teale – Upwards talk about “coloured pencils”. “Crayon” used to be printed on the packet – no wonder Upwards couldn’t say it. Still less could they talk about "crayoning". "Colouring in", please. See also “washing-up machine” for “dishwasher” and “kitchen-dining room” for “kitchen-diner” because "diner" is American. 

According to Sathnam Sangera in the Times Dec 2020, the official name for the bin where you store your food waste for recycling is “compost caddy”. His friends suggested “peely bin”, “stinky bin” and “the Farage” – typical Upward whimsicality and failed attempts at humour. He knows one Stow-Crat who calls it a “slop bucket”, its genuine wartime name. Back then it contained potato peelings to be fed to your pig, though a slop bucket originally removed the contents of your chamber pot, along with your dirty washing water. During WWII and after, the same lidded enamel buckets were used.  

Upwards don’t use “poor” for “deficient”, unless something is “pretty poor!”, or “a poor show”. They’d avoid a euphemism and say “bad”, “unsatisfactory” or “inadequate”. The thesaurus suggests “disappointing” (litotes, and hence acceptable to the upper layers), “substandard” (Weybridge), and “unacceptable” (rather Teale). 

Upwards don’t use synecdoche, or is it metonymy: they say “carrier bag” rather than “carrier”, and avoid the naff “tote” or “clutch”. Fashion writers are fond of this figure of speech (a “trench” is something you wear, not a battle line). And the "fibre" promised for your neighbourhood is not All Bran.

“Ta muchly!” for thankyou goes with “May blessings be conferred upon you!” when someone sneezes. "Prior to", "similarly", "initially" and "overly" are also very Middle Middle. It’s very Teale to say “warm” for “hot”, as in weather. (“Very warm today, isn’t it?”) To Upwards, a warm day is pleasant, a hot day is a bit much. (Teales also used to say “I’m a chilly mortal”. Stow Crats stick to hot and cold though they may admit to being "boiling" or “frozen”.)

October 2020: People are moaning that others have suddenly started saying “floor” for “ground” and it makes them want to scream. (They’ve been doing it for the whole of my life, and saying "Pick it up of off the floor!"

Patrick Hamilton in Slaves of Solitude says that a “common woman” is likely to say: ‘Sorry, I’m sure’, or ‘Sorry, but there you are’, or ‘Sorry, but what do you expect nowadays?’ It became “Well, there you go”, or “Well, this is it.” Grander ladies used to say "Life's like that" in a funny voice (Lafe’s lake thet), but I've never found out why.

"It's an aeroplane, not a plane – that's a thing for working wood!” says ex-RAF pilot. Some flinch at "grand-kids”, explaining that  “They’re not baby goats!” And the great John Peel used to say that a ''workshop" is a venue for carpentry.

Caro’s mother is probably the last woman in England who calls an ATM “the hole in the wall”.  

A friend says that at home in Devon the worst language allowed was “Bunny Rabbits!” Once grown up, she said “Damn!” one day and her mother slapped her. (Programmes get given a parental warning because Brian Cox says “b*ll*cks” once. I’m sure it’s snobbery.)

Lower-middle-class Teales don't like to make others uncomfortable by using foreign words, so they call the Asian mammals “panda bears”. The South American vegetables are “avocado pears”. They make salads or casseroles from  “tuna fish” and "penne pasta". On the side is a "ciabatta roll" or a piece of  "French stick". They're lucky it doesn't give them a "mygraine headache".

Class is dead, long live class.

More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully: 11 (in Quotes)

My voice marks me out as too embarrassingly middle-class to ever be welcomed into the lefty fold, but as a grammar school then sixth form drop out I'm sneered at by actual poshos. (Writer and women's rights activist Jo Bartosch) 

In South London, boys avoid a kicking by adopting a Cockney accent, while girls get ahead by sounding genteel. (Via David Bennun)

I automatically get annoyed when I’m on holiday and I hear an American accent coming from somewhere. I just know I’m about to hear some nonsense. (@LazarusKumi)

Scottish students at Edinburgh University are treated like outsiders because of their accents and comparative lack of wealth, a campaign group has claimed. (@magnusllewellin 2023-03-09)

My grandparents, who, like me, speak in a Wearside accent/dialect, do this with my wife, who speaks in a not remotely posh Norf London/S. Herts accent. My nana is like "Eeee, doesn't she talk lovely?" (@bartramsgob)

A lot of [public-school boys], I noticed, have a special "cleaning lady voice" which is this slightly flirty, old school charming way of talking to people they regard as underlings or inferiors. (@KatyFBrand)

In 2020, France made accent discrimination, or “glottophobie” a crime. During the debate, “parliamentarians complained that many broadcasters with strong regional accents were pigeonholed into reporting on rugby matches or delivering the weather”. (Guardian)

Listening to Angela Rayner on the Today Programme. If she ever had an English teacher he or she should be ashamed. Just imagine this person representing my country on the international stage. (@prodworthy. Translation: Angela Rayner has a northern accent. And now there’s a big fuss about Rayner going to the opera at Glyndebourne – I was called “precious” on Twitter for not agreeing that she is “common”.)

People would prefer to be represented by a barrister with a posh voice, and think that lawyers with a regional accent sound less intelligent or professional, research from @TrentUni and @DMULawSchool shows – in @thetimes (@legalhackette)

One senior barrister recalled being told by a judge that if the lawyer wanted to practise at the Chancery Bar – where property, commercial and banking disputes dominate – “you will have to lose your Yorkshire accent”. Another barrister said their accent stood out so much that they moved back to the north of England... [One barrister’s] ambition was fuelled by being told: “People like you don’t become barristers.” (Times)

One Black Country student said his voice was mimicked whenever he spoke. Others said they were hesitant to speak up in class or ask questions. A student from Lancashire was told his voice was uneducated and aggressive. Another from the same area, who was ostracised by wealthier classmates, was asked if his family worked in coal mines or he grew up in a council house... Someone I had just met once asked me whether my home town was one of those desolate wastelands where the factories used to be. (Times)

A study has found that people from some parts of the country are significantly more likely to be mocked or singled out because of the way they speak. The standard received pronunciation accent, French-accented English, and “national” standard varieties (Scottish, American, Irish) were all ranked highly in the Sutton Trust’s Speaking Up report, but accents associated with Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool and ethnic minority accents, such as Afro-Caribbean and Indian, “tend to be the lowest ranked”, said Sky News. (The Week)

Almost half of UK workers have had their accents mocked, criticised or singled out in a social setting, a survey suggests. Researchers found 46% of workers have faced jibes about their accents, with 25% reporting jokes at work. An entrenched "hierarchy of accent" caused social anxiety throughout some people's lives, the report concluded. They said those with northern English or Midlands accents were more likely to worry about the way they spoke. Many of those who were mocked for the way they spoke admitted anxiety over their future career prospects because of perceived prejudiced attitudes, said the research... funded by Sutton Trust. (bbc.co.uk on the Accent Bias in Britain project) 

A team of researchers at Northumbria University said that “accentism” causes “profound” social, economic, and educational harm for those with “denigrated accents” in the UK. There is a push to make accents a protected characteristic under the Equality Act after a government commission found that some civil servants feel compelled to disguise their accents at work. Dr Robert McKenzie, a social linguist who led the project, said “accentism” is “alive and well” in Britain, with most people often unaware of their “deeply embedded implicit biases”. He added that students with northern accents were less likely to secure spots at Russell Group universities while people with “denigrated or low in status accents” were more likely to be found guilty of a crime in court. (Times 2022-06-14. The report is called (Speaking of Prejudice.)

Twitter users disparage:
Misuse of ‘yourself/myself’. 

Brits refusing to even try to speak other languages when abroad, 

“Go shop”, “go toilet” etc.

Pronouncing the L in almond.

A thousand pound instead of pounds.

Saying “pitcher” for picture and “heighth” for height.

More here, and links to the rest.

You Are What You Eat: 18

In the 90s, I got told off for eating an Eccles cake (flaky pastry and raisins) – too stodgy, and available in packets from a corner shop. But isn’t this the kind of regional cookery we should be celebrating? Unfortunately it's a cliché that the English middle classes will eat peasant food from other cultures (polenta) but not from their own (Bedfordshire clangers, Staffordshire oatcakes).

At home, we never had Christmas cake, just Christmas pudding. And we never had a chocolate log with a papier-maché robin on the top (with wire legs). We ate slices in friends’ houses and it was delicious. Too nice, and might have encouraged us to develop a “sweet tooth”.

In the 80s, cookery writer and broadcaster Delia Smith was looked down on because she “used butter”. Was it by this time “bad for you”? Margarine was sold as a “spread” with positive health benefits. 

In the 70s and 80s, friends and flatmates were shocked that I shopped in corner shops rather than supermarkets. “But it’s much more expensive!” (There might have been a penny or two difference – but offset that against the cost of the bus fare to the supermarket.) Sometimes I shopped at the cheap supermarket Londis and they shuddered at the sight of the carrier bags. Didn’t I understand that People Like Us only shop at Sainsburys? You couldn’t get middle-class food in a corner shop, but you could  get common tinned sweetcorn and frozen fish fingers.

Soft, sweet white bread used to be reserved for the upper classes. Making it was complicated, and it was expensive. But then along came the Chorleywood process and the Aerated Bread Company. Postwar came the white sliced loaf: soft, rather sweet and cheap. No wonder my parents were appalled and called Mother’s Pride “Father’s Shame”. And home-made – sorry, “artisanal” – wholemeal bread became the class marker.

Fizzy water comes in different strengths of fizz because everything comes in a “range” (even hot cross buns) and there has to be a version we drink/eat and a version we look down on people for drinking/eating. Sodastreams are back, but Upwards are not allowed to add too many bubbles. Withholding again!

M&S Food's Best Ever Mac & Cheese! With cave-aged Cheddar, Pecorino, Emmenthal and mozzarella, topped with roasted garlic oil and onion ciabatta breadcrumb. Need we say more? (@CostaCoffee. You needn't.)

Little paper chef’s hats for the ends of lamb joints or mutton chops were utterly beyond the pale – but who eats either any more?

Apparently Americans call McDonald’s a “restaurant”, and complain that you can’t get Mexican food in Paris. They come to Europe and moan there’s nowhere to eat because they can't find their familiar fast food chains (Olive Garden etc). They also (genuinely) complain that when you order a salad in the UK you get a few green leaves. They’re thinking of the kind of hearty salad you bring to a pot luck supper in the Southern states: a meal in itself with a basis of macaroni. Educated Americans say “It’s OK to go to Dublin now – there are Thai restaurants”. Caro Stow Crat says “What is a burrito?” 

The threat of champagne being opened with a sword, which is the kind of thing I hate. (Kate Flett, The Heart-Shaped Bullet. All restaurant theatre is naff and the worst thing is to be in a party of people who all think it’s wonderful. It's so showy-offy.)

CLASS AND FOOD IN LITERATURE

He drank a little tea, black and silent, that still survived upon an upper shelf.  He swallowed some dusty crumbs of cake... They began with a soup square, which Leonard had just dissolved in some hot water.  It was followed by the tongue – a freckled cylinder of meat, with a little jelly at the top, and a great deal of yellow fat at the bottom – ending with another square dissolved in water (jelly: pineapple), which Leonard had prepared earlier in the day... Leonard managed to convince his stomach that it was having a nourishing meal. (E.M. Forster, Howards End)

When we studied this book for A Level, this episode puzzled us. It is one of the few scenes where we escape the intellectual Schlegels for more than a moment. Presumably Leonard Bast, the clerk, drinks “black” tea, as opposed to China. Surely he made himself a pot? But “black and silent” and “still survived”? The Basts’ supper consists of instant soup, followed by tinned tongue. The literary middle classes did not eat tinned food, and to them “tinned salmon” was a joke and a class marker – see John Carey’s The Intellectuals and the Masses. I hope the Basts had some bread and butter, at least, to go with it. They wind up with instant pineapple jelly, poor things.

In Josephine Tey’s To Love and Be Wise, the working-class Sergeant Williams urges Inspector Grant to try some home-made pickles. Grant declines, explaining “I have a palate” – which he doesn’t want to spoil. (The rest of the cast fawn on Grant, saying that he doesn’t look like a policeman, but more like a “Service type” or army man.)

Darling, You Shouldn’t Have Gone to So Much Trouble! is an ironic 80s cookbook by novelist Alice Thomas Ellis. It tells you how to fake posh food quickly, using cheap, easy ingredients. There is a lot of liquidising. The Cinderella ingredients in your store-cupboard are combined with scrambled eggs and topped with browned grated cheese if your husband brings a colleague home to dinner – no takeaways. The author turns frozen pastry, frozen French beans, eggs and cheese into a flan. Condensed milk baked in its tin in the oven for hours allegedly turns into sticky toffee pudding. We used to discuss this phenomenon, but never dared try the process. Perhaps it was “ein joke”, like the instructions for cooking bacon on an upturned iron.

In one of his mysteries, Verdict of Twelve, Raymond Postgate uses cakes decorated with pink icing and shreds of coconut to indicate the low grade of the teashop where we meet one of the characters. I once took a fellow student for a cup of tea at a favourite café down an alley in Norwich. I ate a cake exactly as Postgate described, and my friend was shocked to the core and even talked about it afterwards. And she probably thought I was well brought-up. Many of my fellow students were appalled that I even went to cafés at all. Postgate went on to found the Good Food Guide. His fictional Dr Holmes drinks wine that “had that revolting taste of sugar, ink, and red pepper that only bad port can achieve”.

An Amazon reader called the book “dated”, citing the way the 12 jurors are described in terms of class. Only the academic is a real “gentleman”. And this is how they describe each other – the salesman is accused of “aping gentility”. None of the jurors bases their verdict on the evidence, but point out that the accused didn’t belong in a big house, having once served in a tobacconist’s shop. "Taking someone out of their class" is disparaged – which brings us back to poor Leonard. ("We tried knowing another class – impossible," say the girls.

More here, and links to the rest.

What to Wear 13

Upper Upwards wear a lot of cashmere in subtle colours. Samantha Upward buys her jerseys (never a "jumper" or "sweater") from ebay, and sometimes dyes them with Dylon or natural dyes like onion skins, tea and blackberries. The garments are old, and wear through quickly or get eaten by moths, but you can always buy more. You can even cut out squares from the uneaten bits, machine them together and turn them into another garment.

Here’s a list of very upmarket items you didn’t know you needed. 

Cashmere wash
Cashmere brush
Yacht varnish
Escargot tongs
Grape scissors
Mink storage closet
Marble polish
Silver champagne trug
Cordless hoover for your yurt
Curry comb for the alpacas

Per the Times, Nov 2022, middle-class parents dress and accessorise their children entirely in “sad beige”. This extends to dolls, toys and even mugs and plates. But as Jilly Cooper points out, “All little girls are lower middle class” (Class, 1975). Aged six, I wanted to wear a tutu all the time, and see-through plastic high heels, and wave a pink plastic miniature umbrella printed with ballerinas. Mum disdained shop-bought fancy dress – she always made ours, without consulting us, so we were forced to wear a humiliating cracker costume instead of what we wanted – something pretty.

Kate Long (@volewriter) is fighting the good fight against small boys’ clothes plastered with dinosaurs and spaceships, while girls’ clothes are pink and decorated with mottos like LOVE or PRINCESS. She’s right to be indignant, but this is also a class thing. Clothes covered in slogans, feathers, rhinestones, pink plastic beads and a unicorn appliqué are naff. But I always wanted organdie, gauze and net. And multiple flounces. And I still want to meet Prince Charming.

Again quoting Jilly Cooper: when working class men go tieless, they spread their shirt collar neatly over the lapels of their jacket. There was a fad a few years ago for middle-class men to lose the ties, but they were awkward and half-hearted about it. They just took the tie off and the shirt collar looked empty and untidy. I think the trend has passed.

Who was Liz Truss's stylist? Women politicians are going for dresses in block colours, rather than suits. It's a uniform: safe but dull, skirts to mid-calf, featuring the kind of drapery over the bust that used to be recommended to large ladies circa 1955. Truss has an hourglass figure, and nobody advised her to adopt the Bessie Braddock armoured corset. But in a short skirt her curtsey would have looked even more uncertain. 

Are Fair Isle jumpers a sign of frumpy nerdiness? Aran jumpers probably the same, though they had a moment in the 70s.

Sam buys an outfit for her daughter’s wedding, but shudders at the term “occasion wear”. Middle-class Jen Teale yearns for the days of the coffee lace two-piece – dress with matching coat. Caro Stow-Crat wears a short jacket with a fishtail midi skirt to hide her legs in the photographs. 

When Jen takes off her jersey, her T shirt never rises with it, exposing her midriff or still worse, bra. She has just learned and rehearsed a method – she probably tucks the shirt into her waistband. 

Sharon Definitely never wears the same designer outfit twice – she buys the garment, tucks in the labels, wears it once and returns it. (Dress hire companies still exist and flourish.)

Don’t tie your jumper or cardigan round your waist, or you’ll look like a child from the council estate – I was told by a girl from the council estate. And pushing up your sleeves "made you look like a washerwoman", said the nuns - especially if you then put your hands on your hips. Folding your arms was out too. (Any gesture that meant your hands touched your body were out – including putting your palms on your thighs when sitting down – these are injunctions that go back to the 18th century.)

Working-class people buy “name brands” to show they can afford them. This means the middle classes shun those brands and buy cheaper generic clothes – or expensive brands that don’t flash their identity. Boden-wearers like to pretend that they spend their entire lives on a deserted white-sand beach.

Caro asks: What happened to “country clothes” and “town clothes”? There was a moment in the 1920s when women could only wear black in town. So if you lived there year-round it would be rather funereal! The answer is that you didn’t live there all year round – you spent most of your time in the country, where you wore tweeds and emphatically no black unless someone had died. There are many restrictive rules about what you can’t wear in the country (high heels, black stockings), but what about the town? It’s full of visitors wearing hiking costume, though there’s still a dress code in the City.

From the 30s to the 50s, ankle-strap shoes were beyond the pale, especially with Cuban heels. But the most vulgar shoes ever are orange plastic kitten-heeled slingbacks with square toes from the mid-60s – worn with a touch of grime on your ankle bone, as Nell Dunn (Up the Junction) observed. Upwards could not wear sexy shoes back then, because they were “bad for your feet”. Probably true.

In the 70s, boots slid down the class ladder (became cheaper and more available), and were adopted by a secretary called Dawn. She had long hair parted in the middle, a vacant smile, a skinny jumper and an A line miniskirt. Her’s boots only reached mid-calf – Upward girls wore boots that came up to the knee (and were probably more expensive). Of course you needed to be slender and long-legged to pull off the Dawn look. She saved for a month to afford her boots. Upward girls never saved, they just ran up an overdraft.

Hercule Poirot’s patent leather shoes, that he thinks are smart and shiny, mark him out as “not one of us”. Yet he can tell that a client is not really a lady because her shoes are cheap and too new. A lady wears “good” (expensive) shoes but then gets a lot of wear out of them. Before patent leather was invented, the aim was to get black leather shoes and boots as shiny as possible – this took a lot of work. In a big house, a boy was employed to clean the household’s shoes. He was known as the “boots”. In the army, a lot of time was spent (wasted) on “bull” – polishing equipment including boots until everything shone. Shoeshine boys in the streets made a good living. But keeping patent leather shiny took hardly any work. Suddenly shiny black shoes were no longer a “sign” of being able to employ someone to spend hours on your appearance, or of having done the hard work yourself.

Upward women can’t dress too sexily – what they'd call "stereotypically feminine". They may wear a more relaxed version of current clothing – nothing too tight, skirts not too short, makeup discreet, hair not too processed, heels not too high. They aim for a natural, healthy, wholesome, practical look (see the Boden catalogue). When this cuts no ice, they may try too hard, but their tight jeans and exposed cleavage will only garner disapproving looks from their female friends. But at least the “natural look” is preferable to the academic bag lady look – layers of flapping garments that entirely conceal the figure. 

In the 70s, pretty girls were referred to as “pre-Raphaelite”. Lank hair, unmade-up face, absence of bra and cheesecloth top were supposed to be deliberately Unsexy, and it was galling when men found these girls attractive. This elfin, waiflike look was only available to the young, small and slight. And these girls didn’t have to be warm, friendly or outgoing, didn’t have to learn one subject of conversation really well, meet people halfway, or make any effort at all. They just had to BE. Lucky things. (Upward advice is always of the "work on yourself" variety – never "get a makeover". That would be far too practical.)

Unlike the British upper middle classes, well-heeled Europeans show off their wealth. They used to wear fur coats, and still sport expensive leather jackets, good handbags with gold chains, well-cut jeans, and leather boots. Their clothes look very new and clean. They go blonde, not grey – honey blonde, since they usually start out with dark hair. 

Labour Party leader Michael Foot did not wear a donkey jacket to the memorial service at the Cenotaph, it was an olive green duffel coat without shoulder protectors. Middle England still woofles that he was disrespectful not to wear the establishment uniform of black or navy Crombie overcoat. And as a Labour leader he just would have worn a donkey jacket, the uniform of the Irish navvy, wouldn't he? But so what if he had? 

More here, and links to the rest.

You Are What You Eat 16

I hate the assumption that working-class people only eat English food, and cheap staples from other cuisines are dismissed as ‘pretentious and posh’ by others. (@STEMlorde) Except that spag bol and lasagne is “caff” food, not café food.

The parents are of the expensive, cocktail-party-and-chromium kind. (Edmund Crispin, Love Lies Bleeding, 1948)

M&S Food's Best Ever Mac & Cheese! With cave-aged Cheddar, Pecorino, Emmenthal and mozzarella, topped with roasted garlic oil and onion ciabatta breadcrumb. Need we say more? (@CostaCoffee) There's an upmarket version of everything.

I made home-made pesto and the ingredients cost about £800 and it’s not even that great so my life hack today is go to Lidl and just buy a jar for a quid and don’t be a twat like me. (@JaneSlavin)

The antiquated snobs will tell you you're wrong to say dessert rather than pudding, yet they will not hesitate to ask for a dessert spoon. (@AodhBC)

Latest Upward/Weybridge fad is sneering at anything imported, especially flowers – one must get behind Brexit/save food miles/save the planet.

Teales and Definitelies domesticate foreign tastes by adding sugar: Balsamic vinegar and sweet chilli sauce (that isn’t very hot). They domesticate “artisanal” bread by making a soft version.

Sam Upward would offer you “mashed potatoes”, because “mashed potato” sounds like something you’d read on a menu.

Who was refusing to go to a funeral because the choice of venue for the wake was “Beefeater or Harvester”? (At least you'd get enough to eat instead of a handful of polite nibbles.)

Most layers of the middle class love turning any subject into a rant about obesity (burden on the NHS, wasting our tax dollars). Starve the chavs! (Obesity can be a result of poverty.)

Upwards can never eat anything “creamed”: creamed corn, creamed potatoes. Especially when the word means “smothered in white sauce”. 

Dark brown meat in dark brown gravy is very downmarket. It’s hard to find except frozen in Iceland.

"Good food": consists of fresh ingredients, freshly cooked – but not deep fried. It is probably dished up in a style borrowed from a country where you can afford to go on holiday. If you want real British food you’ll have to sign up to meals on wheels from Wiltshire Farm Foods. 

Fizzy water comes in different strengths of fizz because everything comes in a “range” and there has to be a version we drink or eat and a version we look down on people for drinking or eating. Sodastreams are back, but Upwards are not allowed to add too many bubbles. Upward withholding again!

Whatever happened to those little paper chef’s hats for the ends of lamb joints or mutton chops? They were utterly beyond the pale in the 70s – but who eats mutton any more? (Damned by John Betjeman: "The frills round the cutlets can wait...")

Until the 50s, jam and pickles were decanted into cut-glass dishes. Only the lower classes put a jar of jam or pickles on the table, whether or not in a saucer or with a special silver jam spoon that hooked over the side. Of course silver jam spoons with a latched hook were utterly naff, as were asparagus tongs. Asparagus, melted butter and all, was eaten in the fingers. Those silver jam spoons come in handy for jars of instant coffee. (The Upwards faint.)

A 30s book of “cookery and household management” describes making, with a lot of time and trouble, a savoury custard which you cut into slices. You then punched shapes out of the slices, washed them in several changes of cold water, and added them to clear soup. The shapes were replaced by small pasta shapes like stelline before disappearing from our lives.

Why are the chairs in trendy upmarket cafés too low, and the tables too high? Makes eating difficult, makes reading difficult. Makes typing on a laptop harder, not easier. Typing chairs need to be high – you need to imitate a piano player, not a begging dog.

Upwards are allowed to like motorway services if they have a gloss of artisanal rusticity – a farm shop, some distressed wood, an absence of videogames and fruit machines, proper coffee. Someone on Twitter describes having a coffee at a services “in the middle of nowhere” as the ultimate in alienation. Very Bohemian Rowena Upward drives to motorway services on purpose to soak up the alienation. Local residents would be outraged to hear that they live “nowhere”. Would paintings of motorway services, or those “strange, sterile” Amazon supermarkets, have a Hopperish feel, asks an architectural journalist? 

There’s a tendency for institutions to replace an affordable canteen or café with a very upmarket restaurant which will get reviewed in the broadsheets and attract an impressive clientèle. Meanwhile ordinary visitors have nowhere to eat, avoid the museum/concert hall as a result, and the restaurant goes bust. When firms were no longer obliged by law to provide canteens the concept vanished from our minds. Was the wonderful BHS canteen in Oxford Street the last man standing? Ordinary grub, formica tables, and not a single pepper in anything. The National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the V&A – they all had canteens and I remember them fondly.

Why do Upwards despise pickles? Because they need to show that they can afford fresh vegetables, and always have been able to. They also needed to show that they could afford a fridge. This taboo extends to despising anything vinegary apart from French dressing.

Ethelind Fearon in The Reluctant Hostess (50s) describes the dilemma of a woman when a friend unexpectedly drops in to lunch and all you have in the larder is six eggs. Solution: omelette, followed by zabaglione (a trendy 50s dessert of whipped up egg whites, sugar and sherry). Why didn’t she say “there’s nothing in the house, shall we go out?” Because there was nowhere they could go. Somewhere acceptable for two ladies is either too expensive or too far away, and her husband has taken the car. Upwards used to avoid cafés, even dainty tea shoppes, because “bang might go sixpence”. They were right – I’ve saved so much money not sitting in Costa’s for hours. Caffs and Macdonalds are cheaper, but this is /fast food/, and Upwards can’t be seen there. The tea shoppes were too lower middle class and the crustless sandwiches came with a sprinkle of mustard and cress and a handful of crisps.

When computers arrived in offices about 30 years ago, many Upwards recoiled from them. They all came in beige plastic. There wasn’t an organic, artisanal version. We got used to them, and now they come in sleek, stylish metal. But some Upwards still feel the same way about microwaves, now being recommended as they use less fuel. 

I fear I am not the only insufferable microwave snob. A woman I know admits she views microwaves as ‘anti-aspirational’. She reluctantly bought one years ago for £30, still doesn’t know how to use it properly, and only ever heats up porridge inside it. It is hidden from view in a cupboard. Another super-successful woman I work for won’t have one in her house. Her word for them is ‘common’. (Times, Candida Crewe, Aug 2022) And a friend didn’t like to use a microwave because “you have to use plastic dishes”.

Lady Behave by Drusilla Beyfus (1956) reveals a lost world of menu French and salad plates. It's like looking into Tutankhamun's tomb. Salad accompanied a main dish, but on a separate plate. The most naff were glass and crescent-shaped. When laying a table, don’t forget the ashtrays and cigarettes. Beyfus boldly suggests putting dishes of vegetables on the table so that guests can serve themselves. She describes the “cooking hostess” who has to provide a dinner on a grand scale – she no longer has servants, so she just does it all herself. Another thing she doesn’t have is a job. Beyfus frowns on finger bowls, though you are supposed to eat gulls’ eggs in your fingers, shell your own prawns and debone your own sole. The ladies would need to withdraw after that lot – to wash their hands. 

Beyfus uses the word “delicacy” frequently. Another striking aspect – the food is all European, meaning French or Italian. German and Swiss food have never been “gourmet” in the UK, apart from Scandinavian smorgasbord, and fondue in the 70s, which we will pass over in silence. There’s a complete absence of anything from the Far East or Indian subcontinent. Delicacies are snails and frogs’ legs, which are either Roman-style decadence or famine food. There’s a lot of garlic, but not a single pepper.

More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully in Quotes 10

The way the Glaswegian writer speaks is largely down to his mother. She was a proud woman who insisted that he spoke the Queen’s English. “She thought regional accents would hold back your kids; that if you wanted to do well you had to talk like a BBC newscaster. So as a kid I just sounded a bit weirder than the kids around me.” (Guardian 2022-04-03, Douglas Stewart, author of Shuggy Bain)

When I joined the BBC in 1979, it was still very rare for a national newsreader to have a regional accent, and the first time I was interviewed for BBC Radio Stoke, the first question asked was “How can a person from Stoke on Trent (with heavy emphasis) get to be head of the BBC’s Pronunciation Unit?”... The British accents that regularly come bottom of the polls... are mostly those of industrial cities: Liverpool, Birmingham, Glasgow. Is the dislike caused by a perceived ugliness in the sound, or is it rather the fact that outsiders... still associate the Black Country, Merseyside, Glasgow and the East End of London with slums and ‘dark Satanic mills’? (Graham)

In the 1950s as my national (military) service was coming to an end, I needed an early release in order to start my first university term in time. I needed the Commanding Officer’s signature. He exploded into a raging fury I’ve never experienced elsewhere. “University? You can’t even speak English”. I grew up in Kent. My accent is still the same today... Like all emigrés I’m a fossil from the time I left, with 1950s slang and 1950s anything else. (Sidney Wood from Kent, who says he first heard RP from RAF officers. Fascinating discussion here.) 

An audience member quit a performance of a Shakespeare play in York because it featured Yorkshire accents, theatre staff have said. York Theatre Royal's staging of As You Like It prompted a complaint on Monday, with the theatregoer asking for a refund due to the accents being used. The Yorkshire-based company behind the show said its performances contained "unapologetic northern voices". "That's Yorkshire accents, right here in Yorkshire," the theatre's boss said. (BBC)

A while back, the CEO of a large company asked me to talk to her senior managers about the difference between marketing and marketing comms. I did a presentation for an hour, then a Q&A for half-an-hour. It seemed to go well, but afterwards, one of the senior managers took me aside. She said, “We love you Dave, but do you have to do the whole Cockney barrow-boy bit?” At first I couldn’t work out what she meant, then it clicked, she was talking about my accent. She wasn’t listening to what I said, she was listening to how I said it. And she assumed I must be putting it on for effect. (Davetrott.com)

Mum called into the living room from the kitchen in her best mock-posh. (Rob Chapman, All I Want Is Out of Here) 

I overheard a radio producer once saying that I had “a polytechnic accent”. (Suzanne Moore May 2022 This week academics are complaining about “accentism”.)

My wife has an RP accent; my great-uncle was pure Yorkshire. It's a good job that my father and I were present when they met, as neither of them could understand the other. (AW via Facebook. A few words rather than “complete incomprehension”? A taxi firm’s Scottish controller stumped me with “after mudnate”.)

My mother was a Yorkshire lass, working class and proud of it. But she dropped the accent, and only used it when we went to visit my grandparents. She learnt to use English with a very neutral accent and with all its consonants. (@meade_newman)

On my little island oilfield in Indonesia in the 1960s, the Field Superintendent (the most senior person there) was a Sumatran from a very high-class family. His voice was so soft that I could never manage to speak to him on the telephone because I never heard his replies so I always had to go to his office instead. (It was a pretty small outfit and that was no great hardship.) I was told that speaking softly was a sign of his high (family) status in that part of the country. (Teacup)

I work with someone like this. Promoted beyond her abilities because she speaks with a plum in her mouth. (via Twitter. That was me.)

Raised in Surrey, but lived in Hull for a while. Hull men might approach me, but would either back off or get almost aggressive once I opened my mouth. (@PenelopeClay10 Same here. She moved south again.)

Demos! Why can’t they say “demonstration” properly? I hate abbreviations. (Mrs Riseley-Porter in Agatha Christie’s Nemesis.)

A university is offering students what is believed to be the first module in chit-chat and networking. BPP University Law School has hired Georgie Nightingall, founder of Trigger Conversations, to help students have “good conversations” that “expand your perspectives and your relationships”. The university decided to launch the class after a poll found that 43% of its students feared they would be judged by the way they speak during their legal careers. (The Week. But surely social skills are so subtle and nuanced that they can’t possibly be put into words and we should all pick them up by osmosis, as I've been told?)

Barbara Windsor’s mother Rose had great ambitions for her, paying for elocution lessons in an attempt to lose her cockney accent and move her up the social ladder. Windsor later said her mother's family felt she had married beneath her... At the Aida Foster School in Golders Green, the teachers took their turn in trying to iron out her cockney accent but all failed. (BBC.co.uk. Shouldn’t that “lose” be something like “erase”? You can’t lose somebody else’s accent.)

More here, and links to the rest.

Classy Sports and Pastimes 3

People insinuating, 'I have never heard of X so I am better than you' is an even more pompous equivalent of 'What film have you never seen and still have no intention of bothering to watch, which would at least make your boast worthwhile in some way'. If only there was a way of finding out about these people you've not heard of. (Justin Lewis @WhenIsBirths, in a week when a Lord claimed not to have heard of morning TV presenter Lorraine Kelly. Perhaps this is why people assume I know nothing about popular culture and only listen to Handel and Vivaldi.)

Upwards also do competitive indifference to the royals and pageantry.

Whenever anyone marries into the royal family, the media will react by pretending she or he has “breached protocol”. They usually have no guide more recent than Nancy Mitford’s Noblesse Oblige. Tut, tut, Meghan – closing your own car door! (How furious they must be that Meghan, sensible woman, has gone entirely beyond their reach.)

The Times on The Crown: The Queen doesn’t really set protocol traps for visitors.

The Times on how to survive a weekend at a country house, paraphrased. (Nobody really calls it a "hice".)

Don’t be early or late. 

Come primed with gossip and anecdotes so that you can “sing for your supper”.

Bring clothes for all possible eventualities. (This is how posh people talk – it’s catching.)

Bring outdoor shoes or wellies (rubber Wellington boots), but “only Le Chameau wellies or Dubarry boots will do; absolutely not Hunter”. (Me neither.)

“If you are staying in a castle, the bedrooms will be too cold. If you are staying with a billionaire, they will be too hot.” Posh houses used to be absolutely freezing, while “new money” houses had central heating “turned up full blast”. They used to keep it on 24 hours a day, which meant they provided hardly any bedclothes.

Nobody will be introduced, so you have to guess who they are. Assume they are somebody important.

If you’re seated next to the host, “do not stop talking. Have questions to hand such as ‘What are you watching on telly at the moment?’.” (See Julian Fellowes’ Snobs for the laboured, vacuous dinner-table chat of the truly posh.)

Make friends with the dogs, but don’t address them in “stupid baby voices”.

Tip staff: £20 per person per room, in cash. That’s what the paperweight on the dressing table is for. 

Immediately email your thanks, and follow it up with a letter.

Upwards never go to “popular beauty spots”, or to marinas. They are too poor to own yachts. In the 60s, they went to Tuscany, but never to Portofino or Rapallo. Samantha Upward confuses the yacht harbour with Ravenna, where there are some mosaics that you simply must see.

In March 2020, during lockdown, middle-class Brits went back to a way of life not seen since the 50s and 60s – they stayed at home and had everything delivered, and cooked their own lunch. In the 70s, we used to wish that Britain had a café culture. Now it does, and we’ve become used to living in public. Fifties housewives really were stuck at home. People “kept themselves to themselves”. Without social media or even a TV, families were cut off from the wider society and parents could fill their children’s heads with any old rubbish. Upwards, Weybridges and Teales trod a careful path, avoiding anybody who wasn’t exactly “our sort”. Some people were so sure there was nobody worth mingling with that they had no friends and no social contacts at all.

In 2019, Samantha is very into “wassailing” – a revived ceremony encouraging fruit trees to produce. Her cousin Arkana runs it, wearing a green velvet cloak, a wide-brimmed hat and leaves painted on her cheeks. She teaches everybody the songs and dances, and there are craft and food stalls and activities for the kids.

Open fires are cosy, but Upwards have to reinvent them as “hygge”. (The fad has passed, 2020.)

Samantha is still rather shocked that people go to “pop concerts”. Concerts are string quartets and silent audiences in neat clothes.

No Upward can go in for Motocross. Or go to classes to learn “club dancing”. Everybody else has far more fun than we do!

If a Teale teenager fancies kayaking, she finds and joins a local kayaking club that meets at a nearby lake or reservoir. Upwards only kayak on dangerous activity holidays – on stretches of open sea. They don’t even know that every activity will have a local club, and don’t go to nearby lakes because they are too popular. They don’t really do “activities” anyway. It takes them some time to work out how narrow their horizons are, and how many other worlds there are out there, possibly because they are constantly told that they are “privileged”. They are also told that there is something dangerous and contaminating about the rest of society. Bryony Teale gets sponsorship of her sport and becomes an Olympian.

Swimming in rivers is fun. The Upwards rechristen it “wild swimming” – but there’s so much sewage in rivers in 2022 that this pastime is impossible. Upwards go for hearty walks but barely talk to people they meet.

Weybridges can afford a pool, and Eileen loves going for a dip. Howard adores adding chlorine and anti-fungal preparations, warning visitors not to get hair in the filter, and yelling at children for splashing the surround or kicking gravel into the water. (There is a strip of gravel beyond the concrete tiles, put there specifically so that it will be very difficult to avoid kicking pebbles in the pool. The possibilities for making visitors feel awkward and guilty are endless.) He has a special rake for removing leaves, and thinks the pool looks best with its cover on for the winter.

In 2020, Upwards are sneering about the crowds on beaches breaking social distancing rules. They never go to packed beaches, they are always looking for a strand that’s deserted apart from themselves. They’re deeply shocked that the Definitelies all go to the same “beauty spot” and bring supplies of alcohol. Stow Crat children neck vodka from the bottle at beach parties with bonfires. 

July 2020 and the Tories are launching an anti-obesity drive. Couch-potato, junk-food eating chavs get ill and put on a strain on the NHS which is paid for by our tax dollars. Islington is full of fit-looking runners – are they sculpting their bodies to prove their membership of the middle class? Or are they set-dressing to show that the area has gentrified?

Once we're adults, our culture tells us to turn play into Serious Work to Sculpt Your Body and Achieve Results. (@fatnutritionist. I remember girls at school who asked of every PE exercise: "Will it give me muscly legs?" – a fate worse than death.) 

More here, and links to the rest.

You Are What You Eat 15 (In Quotes)

“Imaginative food, beautifully presented” is a compliment. But what’s wrong with classic food, plainly presented? The American phrase “gussied up” is useful. Or “gourmet up the pot roast”, as Carrie Snodgress was urged to do in Diary of a Mad Housewife. (She probably added sherry, cream and a sprinkling of chives.)

Consider yourself too good for normal meals because you read the recipes in The Guardian? Then you’ll love these needlessly complicated versions of basic food. (Daily Mash)

The term “elevated” is bandied about a lot. It's used repeatedly on cooking reality shows. On those series, a contestant prepares a popular, common dish, and is told that it needs to be “elevated.” The term means that a hamburger or a taco might be “elevated” by using a more expensive and tricky to prepare cut of meat, or a rarer cheese, a specially made sauce, and perhaps the design and look of the meal may be different and fancier than all of the standard versions of the foodstuff. Chris Chan

My husband and I are planning a lovely weeklong staycation with his relatives—eight adults in total. My mother-in-law loves having meals together and usually makes the food, but she’s a terrible cook, bless her. She tries, and we get by with basic staples like tacos and prepackaged lasagna. But I really love good food, so it’s a real shame to do that for a week. ... To add to the issue, if I offer even light advice like, “I bet that some fresh basil would be amazing in this delicious tomato soup,” even when my mother-in-law welcomes the change, the rest of the dinner guests make comments like, “Oh, there Wendy goes again, wanting to make things fancy! She can’t just leave it alone,” which really dampens the mood. My husband loves my food and is very supportive of me, but if I let him, he would unleash. Am I destined to eat boring basics in exciting food cities? (Writer-in to Dear Prudie, slate.com)

My daughter Bella has a great playgroup that meets once a week after school. We were really lucky to get into this group. The girls come from some of the wealthiest families at the school, and since our family is more working class, we love that Bella is able to see how the other side lives and maybe even look for something to aspire to one day. So far Bella has had so much fun with all the girls. But last week I got a nasty email from one of the mothers. I sent some homemade cookies and store-bought veggies and dip for the snack last week, and apparently this was not up to snuff! The mothers said that my vegetables were clearly not homegrown and organic and that they could taste the pesticides and preservatives on them. They asked if I knew that ranch dip is high in cholesterol and saturated fat which leads to heart disease. I was in tears reading this email. Their assumption that I had no idea how to feed my daughter was so insulting. I emailed them back saying that I was unsure what particular brands of veggies, dip and baking items to buy, and received another email suggesting I start a garden. Prudie, we live in an apartment complex. I am unsure how to respond. I really, really want my daughter to be happy and have friends with the right values and aspirations. But I have no idea how to make these women happy. I went to the farmers’ market an hour away last weekend to look for some appropriate items to send for next week, but the market was so expensive. I don’t want my daughter to get kicked out of this playgroup, especially now that she’s so happy. How can I handle these clean-food moms? (Writer-in to Dear Prudie at slate.com)

When I was studying quinoa in early 2000s rural Ecuador, it was often considered a peasant food. 'Inferior', 'backward', even 'unhealthy'. Today in the West the exact same food is considered aspirational, fancy and thus innately healthy. (James Wong @Botanygeek)

David Brent’s spiritual home is a Harvester restaurant west of the M25. (Will Hodgkinson)

In the most deprived parts of London the kids rush to the local takeaway shop (normally chicken shop due to price) after school to get their dinner. They’ve been given £1-2 a day to get something as they know they are not getting anything at home. Their parents both work two jobs and don’t have time to shop or cook. (@cjbearcpfc)

More here, and links to the rest.

Choose Your Words Carefully: 9 (in Quotes)

People like to say that class is no more, and regional dialects have disappeared.

My husband and I have raised our kids to be pretty precise about grammar, because both of us grew up in poverty, and our studies helped us become much more financially stable as adults than we ever were as children. We especially stress the difference between good and well, number and amount, I and me, etc. (slate.com. Presumably they don’t like: “How’s X?” “Oh, he’s doing good.” These are clearly class markers.)

We weren’t allowed to say “shut up”, “what?” or “yeah” (always “pardon” and “yes”), or to shout to each other from another room. (Via Twitter)

We used to house-sit in the 70s for a classical pianist, and my mother’s voice went up several levels of gentility whenever she answered their phone. (Via Twitter)

My mum and grandma used to put on a sort of Hyacinth Bucket telephone voice. (@BardneyBoy)

My first wife's mother – at home, Looe variety Cornish accepted. Speaking to anyone she considered 'posh', she tried to speak posh herself – still Cornish but a bit higher pitch. (KD)

My wife speaks with great circumspection—'proper pride,' she calls it—to our neighbour the tradesman's lady. (WM Thackeray, The Book of Snobs)

I watched and listened to Jacob Rees-Mogg yesterday. He may be an arrogant anachronism, but you have to admire his eloquence and command of the English language. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to him. It is a pity that more do not talk like him. (Via Facebook)

The expression 'y'all' is among the most revolting, cursed things I've ever heard. Why are Americans so relentlessly, unwaveringly vulgar? (@CapelLofft)

'Y'all' is horrible, but I feel just as irritated when British people say "We were sat..." instead of "We were sitting." (@Lord_Steerforth)

When I lived in England, my mother used to tell me that I needed to put my Tennessee accent back on when I was coming home for a visit... When I left Oak Ridge, I started developing a distinctly Southern accent. My dear mother equated Southern regional accents with lack of class and education. She really was quite the social climber. She was raised in poverty, in rural Texas, and wanted better for her children. (MKI)

I was hoping changing your accent had been dumped. When I was a very young woman I was turned down for a job because I 'didn't speak well enough'. I think it was one of the first times I'd encountered snobbery. Never forgotten it – never lost my accent! (@Kibalchich1)

The requirement for ‘a pleasant speaking voice’ ensured that only higher-class girls with flawless Received Pronunciation would apply. (Sarah Shaw, Short Skirts and Shorthand. It was sometimes called “a good telephone manner”. She also points out that the girls who became Personal Assistants were slim and pretty, with straight blonde hair, blue eyes and button noses.)

Dear Dr Katie Edwards
Subject: Yorkshire dialect
I’ve just listened to your programme on Radio 4. My feedback is that I was sure the BBC wouldn’t impose their diversity agenda on the listener. You’ve been chosen because of the way you speak and you’ve obviously done well for yourself despite your evidently difficult background. Good for you! While you have my admiration for making something of yourself, I want to hear a presenter who speaks correctly. From time to time we are treated to a broadcaster with a ridiculous sounding regional accent and if the rest of the listeners are anything like me, then it’s an unwelcome addition to the programming. I’m astonished that you continue to speak with such a strong accent and use dialect, after Genesis 11, 1-9. Congratulations on your (I’m sure very many) achievements but you do not belong on Radio 4. (The Biblical reference is to the Tower of Babel.)


Kimberley Chambers appeared on BBC Breakfast in 2019 to plug her new thriller, The Sting. Twitter responded: Who on earth was that Cockney women on BBC Breakfast this morning. Couldn't bear to listen to her, had to turn the TV off! Poor Charlie and Naga. (@darryljb75) This book will be interesting reading if written the same as she speaks. (@mazarati33) Oh look, a plastic Cockney. (@marti6118) Can we please have subtitles from the BBC with regard to this Cockney? It’s like hearing the entire cast of Eastenders on steroids! (@IanBrownuk)

(And then the BBC broadcasts a radio programme claiming that the Cockney accent has disappeared. I'm sure the two incidents are not related.)

More recently, some have complained about people who say "communi'y". Is the northern "commewniteh" any better - or worse?

I really like Jess Phillips but I genuinely think (and I say this as a proud West Midlander) that her Brummie accent will put people off. The prejudice against certain accents is horrendous. (Via FB.)


In 2020, The Guardian ran a piece on students having their accents mocked at university:

It sounds ridiculous, but I only realised I had what people regarded as a strong regional accent when I began my undergraduate studies. Mocking of my accent was immediate.

A constant barrage of abuse from students and staff who were verbally disapproving of my mild but noticeable Black Country accent... Staff on more than one occasion said ‘we don’t normally get your type here’ or ‘perhaps you could try and fit in’... “I am gay and if anyone makes homophobic remarks towards me it is considered illegal, but if someone is classist I can’t say anything because it is not a protected characteristic – yet it is still abuse.”

“‘You’ll never get anywhere talking like that, it makes you sound stupid. You need to try and flatten your Yorkshire accent.’ That was a member of staff in my third year of university. [She was told:] When you use “like” in sentences, you sound like a teenager. My accent completely changed during my four years at university, flattening back immediately when I was welcomed home.

One girl from Tyneside went to Durham – but was the only student there with a northern accent.

Since moving down south a month ago I can think of at least 10 occasions when my accent, being a relatively strong one from Birmingham, has been brought up and mocked in conversation.” (She was told she ought speak more “eloquently”.)

I’ve had people make assumptions about my intelligence, family background and financial situation based on nothing but the way I speak.

Horticultural snobs frequently correct other people’s Latin pronunciation as a weird power move. (James Wong) He says he was turned down by a newspaper for not being “British” enough. They wanted someone “less international”. Someone responded: You have THE most British of accents and talk more posh (sorry that sounds snobby) than most people I know.

I don’t sound the same as the rest of my family and it often makes me feel sad. But also makes me feel like a bit of a fraud. Like, over time I’ve subconsciously lost the ‘heavy’ parts of my Chester accent. (@RebeccaRideal)

I'm Scouse. How do you think I'm treated? 1. We are only 'acceptable' if we are famous. Otherwise, the only way I'm welcome at a table is if I'm holding a tray. 2. People think its OK to do our accent back to us, repeating what we have just said. 3. People think it's OK to do stereotypical jokes. 4. The look of surprise when someone with a Liverpudlian accent and a boxer's nose can talk about Byzantine icons and Constructivism. (@ChrisFarrelly)

My mum was always telling me off for sounding ‘Too Cardiff’. She was Cardiff born and bred. (@villi63)

I had a fairly standard Cheshire accent when I started uni darn sarf, and somehow managed to collect an entire circle of friends who were from the Midlands or North. And we did get mocked for our accents by the posh southerners! (@ThorhallaBjorg)

Several people from Dublin have pointed out that Moriarty does have a Dublin accent but it is an exaggerated middle-class south Dublin accent. It is locally known as the “D4 accent” after a postcode in south Dublin... Where I grew up anyone who didn’t have a regional accent was “posh”. After coming to University in the South, I have realised that BBC pronunciation is not considered “posh” but “standard”. Posh was defined as the rather over-exaggerated accent people often use to pantomime the rich. (Blogger welllingtongoose, wellingtongoose.livejournal.com)

I've taught in Essex, Norfolk, Yorkshire and Cornwall. Children are dead proud of their accents and their dialect words. But they also know they have to "posh" themselves up if they want to get on. So sad. (@owen_jermy)

My family always said I spoke posher than them but going to university I realised I really didn’t speak posh. (Via Twitter)

I thought I’d poshed up my accent when I went to Cambridge. But then I joined the FT, and I realised that I really hadn’t. (Beth Rigby, political editor at Sky News)

I grew up poor with a very distinctive working-class accent. In England in the 1980s and 1990s, this would have impeded my professional advancement. (Former National Security Council official Fiona Hill)

I'm lucky enough to have a pretty soft Yorkshire accent and still get some judgement. My wife, whose accent is much stronger, is more readily written off at times and it's annoying. (@DrRichFG)

I was born and raised on benefits and from a housing estate. I was told by my PhD supervisor to "speak properly" just before presenting at my first international conference. Years later I'm so glad I've never lost my thick Derry accent! (@KitanaValentine)

One of those strange 1960s pop English voices that you don’t hear any more, like the guy out of the Monkees, or Cliff Richard in Summer Holiday. (Hugo Rifkind, Times 2020. Davy Jones of the Monkees came from Manchester, but when he moved to the States he was given an American’s idea of Cockney. Judy Carne from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In, and Geraldine Chaplin in Nashville also adopted the accent.)

“The industry is still hugely dominated by class,” says actor James McArdle. He said he heard complaints in the industry about difficulty in understanding Scottish accents “all the time”. (Scotsman.com. A reviewer recently talked about “whining Scottish accents”.)

Scots face insidious racism in the West End. (Alan Cumming)

Class is profitably marketed online by creepy coaching companies offering “diction, charm and social grace”. (Libby Purves in the Times)


But is it really such an advantage to talk like Jacob Rees-Mogg?

Radio 4 – I hate that poetry-reading middle-class voice they put on. (@sufiboy)

People assuming I grew up rich with upper-class parents because I know some long words and occasionally sound close to articulate in videos is a form of classism. That’s my TED talk. (@shaun_vids)

I feel for you, Shaun. And someone else adds that RP "just simpers".

More here, and links to the rest.

Class is Dead, Long Live Class: Definitions

Posh: To some, "posh" people went to a private school, however cheap and obscure. Their parents were teachers and business-people, rather than cleaners and lorry-drivers. But really posh people are aristocrats, who have old money, inherited land and stately homes. The category includes rich families who have always been friends of aristocrats.

Aristocrat: In the US, it means well-off people who run the country. In the UK, it means people with a hereditary title who own large houses on country estates. (The Antiques Road Trip recently used “aristocracy” to mean “haute bourgeoisie” – the kind of people who went to the opera in the 19th century.)

Upper class: To tabloid (red-top) readers in the UK, it means upper middle class. They lump us with aristos, not caring about the vast disparity of wealth, power and land ownership.

Middle class: In the US, it means working people who are doing OK at blue-collar jobs. In the UK, it means a snobbish elite obsessed with "clean eating" and being "woke".

George Orwell called himself a “striving exam-passer” – he was middle-middle-class, and had to pass exams because he couldn’t rely on powerful friends pulling strings to get him a job.

According to the National Readership Survey, the upper middles (Social Class A) are vastly outnumbered by the middle (Bs) and lower middles (C2s), and the aristos don’t even feature (despite owning half of Yorkshire). And the As, Bs and C1s are outnumbered almost two-to-one by the C2s, Ds and Es (skilled workers, unskilled workers and workless). No wonder the chaterati were so upset by the death of Diana, Princess of Wales: huge crowds appeared from nowhere, took over London, cried openly, tied teddy bears to trees, applauded Earl Spencer's address, laid a carpet of flowers in front of Kensington Palace, and then quietly disappeared again. The upper middles are still trying to forget that all these other people share the country with them. (What to say about Diana's funeral: "Of course I was sad, but I wasn't hysterical.")

I see the "exactly what is middle class" discussion is spreading! The Americans are right of course. The old British definition is silly. (@grodaeu)

I think the confusion is that in recent years we've accepted the American definition of middle class, i.e. everyone who isn't dirt poor, whereas the Telegraph still uses the traditional English definition, which is basically anyone who is rich but not traditional aristocracy. (@AndrejNkv)

In the early 90s, Louise Mensch claimed to be “upper-class, not middle”. Her father was a lawyer and her mother the headmistress of a prep school. Upper middle, I think, Louise.

It's confusing that the Guardian, among other publications, uses “middle class” to mean “upper middle class”. No wonder people think that anyone who “talks posh” must be enormously rich and privileged.

@mckellogs in the US wonders what working class people think of as “middle class”? She lists:

Gets desserts at restaurants
Has a specific hairdresser
Real butter
Fresh picked flowers
Lots of bed pillows

Dad’s parents were Scouse/Welsh/Irish – a miner and a former housemaid. Mum’s parents, on the other hand, were teachers, from Cambridge – and, therefore, posh: Gran had been to Egypt on holiday and wore berets. (Caitlin Moran, Times 2015)

In the past 50 years, the upper-middles have been forced to copy the lower-middles, and pass exams to get into university, get a job – though patronage and the Old Boy network still operates in the UK. An old schoolfriend agreed that when we were young nobody talked about careers, and besides there was a boom and any fool could get a job. If you were sacked there was always another job you could walk into. But then times changed swiftly – probably with the oil crisis and the end of the Summer of Love.

The Times in 2015 wrote a piece headlined: "Sloanes lose their place in society to the polite new Middleton class". The magazine Town and County started the rumour. Called after the family of the Duchess of Cambridge, the "Upper Middletons" have "neither vast wealth nor lineage". Instead they they value "close family relationships, loyalty, reliability and niceness". They send their children to co-ed boarding secondary schools like "Bradfield, Millfield or Marlborough". Says Town and Country: “Their children are perfectly turned out, polite and, dare we say it, slightly boring. They have nice manners, are popular, attend school parties with perfectly wrapped gifts and get decent grades.” The Upper Middletons live "in Battersea, Putney and Richmond" or “underwhelming” counties like Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Hertfordshire. They run "small businesses that can keep them close to home". "They prefer skiing and tennis to riding and hunting... they disdain bling and anything nouveau riche."  You can recognise them by their "high-street taste", white jeans and "nude" coloured shoes. Meow!

More here, and links to the rest.