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 watercolours. 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 school 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.

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.

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.

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.

Class is Dead, Long Live Class 5

Friends tell me that class has entirely disappeared. That's after they redefine it as "barons, villeins, serfs", and "knowing which knife and fork to use when you meet the Queen".

Brits suffer from:
A sense that they are not posh but others are.
A fear that “the posh” know what to do and how to do it right and this knowledge is denied them.
A fear that their speech and manners will betray their inferiority.

Petite bourgeoisie: Semi-autonomous peasantry and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance in times of socioeconomic stability [reflects] that of a haute bourgeoisie with which the petite bourgeoisie seeks to identify itself and whose morality it strives to imitate. (Wikipedia)

Attacks on “crap” towns are a long-standing internet genre. What makes them crap? They’re full of chavs, you see.

I belonged to a Facebook group called Architectural Crimes. It usually discussed UPVC windows on Tudor pubs, or the ill-conceived classical upgrade of a Georgian rectory. But given a plastic Greek doorway on an ex-council house and there was an outbreak of sneering. One member said it was a matter of taste, not class, which is a “vulgar preoccupation”. In other groups, “I’d like to shoot anybody who says ‘Can I get a latte’” is never far away, and everyone piles in when Diana’s funeral is mentioned. Moaning about Halloween swiftly segues to an attack on everything American. A Twitter discussion of the far right post-Brexit quickly became an attack on people who drink lager in Wetherspoons.

Lady Glenconner has written her autobiography The Times relates: At 16 she was sent to Powderham Castle, where Lady Devon ran a finishing school at which girls with good marital prospects were taught how to run large country houses. Her second finishing school, the House of Citizenship, taught the art of polite conversation. (So much for the idea that you can only pick up social skills "by osmosis".)

About 75 years ago, it was very damning to say of any woman “She’s not quite a lady”. A lady was “known by her gloves and her shoes”. Both should be expensive, and leather. Shoes should be clean and polished, but need not be new – just good, lasting quality. Patent leather, and shoes that clacked or squeaked, were out. According to Miss Marple, a lady doesn’t show emotion in public “however much she may break down in private”. And Katharine Whitehorn once said: "You can't afford to buy cheap shoes".

Some Americans honestly believe all English people live in Downton Abbey and obsess about napkins and teaspoons. They are always looking for the “real” English lady or gentleman.

In the 60s, if you complained about snobbery, you were told you were “just an inverted snob”.

The veganism I understand has its roots in the 1970s hippie version, where people grew their own vegetables, sprouted seeds, bulked it all up with then-obscure grains and were the only non-Asian people in the country who knew what tofu was. They did this out of a passionate concern for both the environment and animal welfare, even though everyone made fun of them, with their facial hair, Birkenstocks and love of houseplants and meditation (I do find it pleasing that the hippies have basically won). There was often a political angle – a contempt for, and rejection of, the capitalist economic system that, among other things, delivers food and staples. Yes, the hippies have won, but they’ve been ground up and reprocessed to make them safe for capitalism. (JP)

People are impressed by Boris and Rees-Mogg because they talk posh and wear suits. Someone on Facebook opined that Rees-Mogg is "well-spoken" and it would be a good thing if we all talked properly like him. I suspect that some people vote Tory to ally themselves with the upper classes.

We look back in horror at middle-class attitudes to servants in the 30s or the 50s. Women used to talk about “the servant problem” and, earlier, a lot of their conversation consisted of grumbling about servants. Virginia Woolf did the washing up once in her life, and her response was: “Now I know why servants take to drink.” (See Alison Light's Mrs Woolf and the Servants.)

Campaigner Jessica Eaton points out that “social mobility” is very hard work. To make it from the working class to university to a professional job and owning your own home, without inherited money, the right voice or the right contacts is next to impossible. And if you do make it, the middle classes will close ranks and mock your accent.

Pbs.org in the States ran a quiz that would tell you whether or not you lived in an “elite bubble”. One of the questions was “Have you ever bought Avon products?” (Others were “Have you ever worn a uniform at work” or “bought a pickup truck”. Somehow I don’t think elite bubblers do any of these things.)

I did nine years of retail. The worst, absolute worst, thing about it: customers who thought they were better people than the staff. (@WhenIsBirths)

The middle-middles and nouveau riches think they can buy into the aristocracy by sending their sons to a prep school in a converted stately home – with “grounds”. The Spectator thinks that the monks of Ampleforth and Downside took on aristocratic protective colouring from their Gothic (revival) surroundings. The school’s “old grey stones” were a feature of the fictional Greyfriars school, wrote George Orwell. (Now that we’re all safely Protestant, we can think of the Catholic past as somehow noble.) 

Caro Stow Crat’s grandmother raised cash by sponsoring debutantes and getting them invited to the right parties (so that they could marry someone with a title). She offered the same kind of service, discreetly, to newcomers to London, providing the personnel for big parties with lots of delicious food. (I once went to such a party in a marquee. It was the first time I’d ever seen a decorative cabbage in a flower arrangement, and I was so nervous I couldn’t eat anything. It may have been at this do that a friend addressed a French-speaking hostess as “Madame” and got the reply “Pas Madame! Princesse!”)

The middle classes have to work with their personalities, even if they lack one. They have to pretend to understand management’s poorly defined expectations and be friendly, outgoing, resourceful and passionate. (Rich Hall, paraphrase, Times 2018. By contrast, the upper classes don’t need to be ingratiating so they can be darned rude and get away with it. And remember that “passionate” in this context means “enthusiastic”, probably for other people’s schemes.)

More here, and links to the rest.

What to Wear 8

Caro Stow-Crat says: “Please, no fancy dress after 40. Though Harry did once go to a fancy dress ball as a bishop...”

A welcome erosion of class structures has seen top hats relegated first to the top shelves of cupboards and wardrobes, and then donated to become a staple of Amateur Dramatic Club costume collections. (Lucy Adlington, Stitches in Time) Thomas the Tank Engine’s Fat Controller (Sir Topham Hatt) was originally the “Fat Director” – a 20s caricature capitalist in a morning coat and top hat, grown fat on the profits of a private railway company. When the railways were reprivatised, why didn’t he revert to being a director? He's still an outdated stereotype.

Caro wonders when a bowtie became a “dicky bow”? A dicky is a fake blouse consisting of a Mao collar and enough material to show under a V-necked jumper. It's a useful way of using up remnants, and will delude your friends that you own more blouses than you actually do. A “dicky bird” is what vulgar people call a bird.

Samantha says “I refuse to buy my grandchildren clothes covered in writing and logos”. She buys them clothes at Muji and Uniqlo. Sharon Definitely buys her daughter (Madison) pink T shirts that read “Little Lady” but also “Girls Can Do Anything”. Her son Jayden dresses in scaled-down army uniform.

Lower middle-class Jen Teale uses shoe deodorisers, Caro chucks smelly trainers, but Samantha insists on wearing them out. She may Google for an old-fashioned (cheap) home remedy (baking soda) that doesn’t work. 

“Dress for the job you want, not the job you have.” This advice made sense in the days (80s and earlier) when a secretary wore a blouse and skirt, while the lady boss wore a suit.

I’m old enough to remember when we called face veils “yashmaks” and made jokes about them. Perhaps those old white men who moan about “political correctness” could cast their minds back. Nobody forced us to stop joking about yashmaks, we just stopped. We don’t give small children replica guns any more, either. Or sweet cigarettes.

Young people holiday in the far East and come back with batik sarongs. (In my day they went to India and came back with kurtas and kaftans – but not saris.) But no Upward goes to Whitechapel or Ridley Road market to buy a long flowery dress as worn by Muslim ladies, or a glittery shalwar kameez – or even a cotton shalwar kameez. They’re very cool in hot weather and are perfect for the office. Likewise, Boris is appalled by niqabs but not by a Carmelite nun’s outfit. The Times (August 2018) shows “manxi” dresses that are very like a Muslim woman’s dress, but no connection is made. Is this crossover? Cultural appropriation? Caro wears a genuine pashmina to the opera, over an oxblood taffeta evening dress with a wide skirt. Her great-grandmother wore a genuine Indian paisley shawl.

When I arrived at university in the 70s my sunglasses with pale pink frames puzzled other students. I seemed to be middle class – didn’t I know that the colour pink was common? And pink plastic! I also wore a pink mohair jumper – I was going through a 50s phase. I was ahead of the trend – lurid mohair jumpers were a punk fashion in the later 70s. And this was in a decade when we were supposed to be breaking down barriers of all kinds and creating an egalitarian society, free of all prejudice. They dressed entirely in blue denim or brown corduroy. (Can you still get brown denim? They never seemed to grasp what “prejudice” meant, either.)

In 2018 Teales wear 7/8 jeans, white T shirts and cardigans or jackets in a subdued, plain colour. Usually blue, navy, and grey. They look almost Boden. They achieve this look by buying cheap clothes and discarding them as soon as the material goes sad and shabby. They ruthlessly “edit” their wardrobes, and wash everything after one wearing. They iron their T shirts. Upwards, on the other hand, have “favourite” pieces they are sentimentally attached to and persist in wearing them however grey, bobbly and sagging. They fail to notice that modern fabrics don’t last like the old-fashioned kind. Teale clothes, being featureless, have no associations and are just replaced by more of the same.

More here, and links to the rest.

Canny Upwards in the 70s used Catherine Milinaire's Cheap Chic as a style bible.

Class Is Dead, Long Live Class 4

Stand-up comedian @SamWhyte asked Twitter: "When you were a kid, how did you know someone was a bit posh when you went round their house? So far we've got more than one type of cheese in the fridge..."

I've divided the answers into social strata.

Weybridges
Served food without a pile of bread and marge for if you were still hungry. (In our Upward home, all our meals came with bread and butter on the side, but nobody ever ate it. It was just make-work. And we continued with the pantomime for years.)

Soda stream. (I could never understand why my Upward parents wouldn’t get one. They didn’t want to spend the money, and they rationed sugary drinks. Even Kia-ora orange squash was only allowed at birthday parties. They thought that if we didn’t get much sugary food, we wouldn’t “acquire a taste” for it, and we’d “acquire a taste” for grown-up middle-class food like tough mutton and over-boiled cabbage. Liking sweet food is common – but it meant there was something they could withhold. Also they despised electric gadgets, though they did get a “waste disposal unit” for the sink, which made a horrible noise and ate a lot of Georgian silver teaspoons. I’m sure my mother used to push potato peelings down it with her fingers while it was on.)

Bidet, two sinks to wash up in, salad spinner.
Fitted carpets. Soft toilet paper. Colour TV.
Not sure if it was the master bedroom ensuite or the stone lion on a plinth in the garden.
One word - Lladró.
My friend's Dad had a study and always asked me what career I’d chosen - I was 10.
A serving hatch.
Fish knives and cake forks.
Fancy biscuits for every day.
Pot pourri, mahogany TV cabinet, VHS spinning shelves.
My friend was called Chris, until you were in his house and he was called Christopher.
Guest soaps in the shape of shells and a phone in the parent’s bedroom.
Phone table, guest room, ottoman, front garden, utility room, breakfast room.
A front room called the "morning room".
Taking your shoes off in the house.
Home-made puddings every day.
Keeping the Radio Times in a faux leather folder with ‘Radio Times’ on the front in gold letters.
Coca Cola when it wasn't a birthday party.
Choc ices in the fridge, a whole box of crisp packets, being allowed to take food between meals.

Soap on a magnetic arm. I often think I dreamt this, but the bar of soap had a little disk of metal pressed into it, and it hung off a magnetic thing.

Definitely
In the 70s our back yard (with outside toilet and coal shed) was converted into an extension. My mum still calls it her 'East Wing'.

When I was a kid, the posh ones wore 100% shop-bought clothes. It might seem amazing now but things like shorts, sweaters, socks, scarves and dresses in the 1950s were just about all home-made among most of my class-mates.

Supper is a bowl of Frosties. (I once stayed with an aristocratic family who lived in a stately home. But they had cereal for supper, in the kitchen, and then watched TV. I tried to persuade my parents to do the same, but they wheeled out the line about “learning how to behave in formal situations”, and “setting a good example” for my eight-year-old brother.)

I was born in the 1940s and lived in privately rented housing (with an outside toilet). But when I suggested to my mother that she put her name down for one of the council houses with all mod cons the snobbery kicked in, and she said "only common people lived there"... It was more to do with the infinite gradations of class, and whether people sounded their H's or not. My mother's mother was from the upper servant sphere, and I think she saw council-house tenancies as for the labouring classes. It was quite intricate.

White pepper in its original container from the shop.
Dairylea was considered posh in our street.
We had Walls Viennetta for pudding! Mint flavour. (Lucky things.)
Variety cereal boxes “were considered profligate in our household". (And ours.)

Upwards
A hardwood stereogram with a glorified giant toast rack next to it full of classical albums.  A very small black and white TV for those rare occasions when there was a good documentary on BBC2.

Playing classical music while eating homemade lasagne with a side salad at a dining table in a room with no TV on. Followed by homemade tiramisu for dessert. Oh, and it was called dinner, not tea or supper.

Using a cup and saucer, dads went to work in a suit to an office not down the pit, wine with evening meal, went abroad for holidays not to Hornsea or Ireland, rugs on polished wood floors. (Guilty as charged – though we did holiday in Ireland.)

Parents that engaged you in conversation. (Others say: “They talked at meals, instead of sitting in silence.”)

A spice rack. We only ever had salt in the cupboard. (The herbs were all dried, and these days Upwards grow their own.)

A separate immaculate living room that you weren't allowed to enter, let alone play in. (My parents tried this one, without much success.)

Engraved napkin rings. “Visitors were assigned a napkin ring from the guest set, kept in a special velvet-lined box in the sideboard.”

Dinner didn’t arrive on your plate, there were serving dishes on the table or a hostess trolley, with serving spoons and napkins. At home I just got given a plate of food. Served dinner at the table – owned tureens and stuff. (A lot of extra work, and assumes someone else will do the washing-up.)

I remember being completely bemused by the concept of a milk jug. 

Nobody left the table before everyone had finished. (Someone comments “I had to suffer that too.”)
Dishwasher, and they put whole peppercorns in the dinner.
Kids who referred to mum and dad as their ‘parents’ and their nan as ‘gran’ or ‘grandma’.

No visible religious iconography.
Imperial Leather soap.
Gold-top milk.
Brown bread.
Original art on the wall. (Sometimes by relatives or friends.)
An old upright piano.
Large, well maintained back gardens.
Melon as a starter.
Grapes on the sideboard.
A landing half-way up the stairs.
Garden furniture made of wicker.
Gravy boat on the table.
Salad in a bowl, without a sliced boiled egg but with vinaigrette.
Mayonnaise (home-made, not Hellman’s).
Telly in another room.
 “Supper.”
Not opening Christmas presents until after lunch. (Probably to teach children “deferred gratification”.)
Multiple kids who don’t share a room.
Downstairs and upstairs toilets.

Teales
Air fresheners plugged into the wall. A knitted lady hiding the toilet roll in the bathroom. Not being allowed ketchup at dinner because it’s too ‘common’ and finally not being allowed food upstairs.

A "formal dining room" they never normally went into. (One family only used it for Christmas.)

Decorative plates hung on the wall.
Dream topping and angel delight for pudding. 

A transparent plastic mat over the carpet the length of the hall.
Quiche and laminate flooring.
A 32-piece shiny cutlery set complete with fish knives in a purple velvet box.
Pampas grass... and it didn't smell like people lived there.
Video cassettes kept in cases that looked like hardback books.
Good outdoor garden toys.
Double glazing and radiators.
Doilies, antimacassars.
Mid-week fizzy drinks, a plastic wipeable table cloth.
A non-standard bathroom colour.
An immaculately tidy house


Nouveau-Richards
My mate lived in a house that had a name. His dad had a bar with a full-sized snooker table in it, and a woman who just did stuff around the house but didn’t live there. 

Colour telly in more than one bedroom.
Shag pile carpets that got hoovered every day.
Globe drinks cabinet.
A silver carriage for the After Eights box.
One whole room of house devoted to an electric organ – or a complete orchestra of instruments.
Two staircases and a housekeeper.
A room called a "den".
Onyx table lighter.
Leather sofa. Stairs you could see through. Shop cake.
A marble chess set on a wooden board always set ready to go but nobody ever dared play it.

More here, and links to the rest.

Modern Manners

There are no social rules any more – but what about queueing and correct use of the checkout divider? Yesterday a young man let me go in front of him in the checkout queue – what a gent!

Never comment on what other people are eating, even if they’re on the “clean, paleo, detox” diet and longing to tell you all about it.

I'm sure none of you would do this: You bring a bottle of the kind of wine you like (very dry, ready chilled) to a party. The host/hostess puts it to one side and never opens it, and gives you a glass of warm chardonnay.

And don’t forget Miss Manners’ good advice: If you know your IQ score, don’t tell anybody.

Some people imagine etiquette is all about this kind of thing: "As at dinner, it is the duty of a hostess to give the signal for leaving the room, which she does by attracting the attention of the lady of highest rank present by means of a smile and a bow, rising at the same time from her seat." The same site gives rituals for arranging your train over one arm correctly when attending a vice-regal drawing-room.

Anyone harking back to the “simpler” days of the 1950s has got it all wrong… Amy Vanderbilt’s Everyday Etiquette… offers advice of enormous complexity on issues such as, should a gentleman always remove his hat in an elevator? (Alexandra Frean in The Times) Miss Manners (Judith Martin) was asked the same question by a polite fellow who said he would like to remove his hat, but then what do you do with it? Miss Manners suggested he clutch it lightly to his chest. She also hoped that a few remarks about the weather to a lady lift-sharer might lead to a cup of coffee and – who knows?

“The unreal set of manners and bizarre systems of etiquette that they force themselves to follow, like our own upper classes.” (New Humanist) OK the poshos have some odd codes, like tilting your soup bowl away from you and not wearing black stockings in the country, or any jewellery but pearls before dusk, but they’re not really as bizarre as people imagine.

Middle-class unwritten rules are far weirder. Writer John Mortimer had a schoolfriend to stay, who at the end of the holiday remarked: "I'll tell you something about your father. He can't see. He's blind, isn't he?" Mortimer comments: "It was a question our family never asked. Naturally, I didn't answer."

You didn’t raise your voice in public, because you didn’t want to attract attention to yourself, and you didn’t want everybody to “know your business”. Some older people are still a bit shocked at others talking loudly in public. Upwards and Weybridges even kept the radio or gramophone turned down low.

Women used to be warned against “clanking” jewellery and “squeaking” shoes – circa 1880. Were you supposed to glide silently? Rustling taffeta petticoats were probably out, too. (It was fashionable to wear several very long chains, and multiple brooches. How did you stop them “clanking”?) Your voice was supposed to be soft, gentle and low as well. This got transferred to jangling charm bracelets when these became fashionable in the 1940s and 50s.

More etiquette here.

The Upwards: Update

What comes across... is the charmed, lazy life of overpaid Oxford academics – the short hours, endless long vacations and sabbaticals, the high-table boozing, international conferences, holidays to sponge off the Cecils, the Spenders... the general unaccountability. (The Times on Iris Murdoch’s letters.)

The upper-middle-class Upwards think it’s OK to make cracks about people who breathe through their mouths, can’t do joined up writing, and eat at Harvesters. They are far the most snobbish of the classes: I knew a woman who judged boyfriends by their mothers' curtains.

Upwards hate “celebrities” because they are celebrated for success in common fields like football, pop music, reality TV and Hollywood movies. Also they make a lot of money. Upwards resent popular culture, because it’s evidence that they aren't the only people in these islands – or the world. They like to say that “vacuous celebrities” are celebrated for doing things that don’t take talent or hard work. But then they manage not to “see” stage schools, or footballers in training. Unfortunately writing literary novels or even acting in Shakespeare will never get Upwards anything like the media exposure. And they aren’t allowed to go on X Factor.

They like to think that they have chosen their friends, and that they aren’t a “type”. They're very touchy about being classified or given a label (hipster, chatterati). Some of them like to say that if everyone stopped talking about class it would disappear. They’re not aware that databases like Mosaic ("consumer classification for consistent cross-channel marketing) are dividing us into finer and finer categories so that people can sell things to us (they’d be outraged).

Upward grandparents are the ones who worry about the whole family sliding down the social scale.
Fifty years ago, Upwards and Stow-Crats told their children that certain things were Done and others were Not Done. No further explanation needed. If you drank wine out of a tumbler or ate peas with your knife, in no time at all you'd find yourself living in the kitchen, using an old newspaper as a tablecloth, and pouring milk into your tea straight from the bottle. And you'd probably be dropped from polite society.

Upwards don't become aldermen, they sneer at them, also at Freemasons, Rotarians and Roundtablers, who have worked out a way of having a social life while doing something useful. The Upward equivalent is the book group, the poetry workshop, the writing circle, the music weekend - and that’s about it. They aren’t very organised about meeting people and making new friends – perhaps because they are terrified of mixing with the Wrong People. They shudder at “public speaking”, but if required to do a book tour they may take lessons in "presentation skills" from an out-of-work actor.

Middle-middle-class Weybridges celebrate English culture – change-ringing, topiary, battle re-enactments, Morris dancing, narrowboats. Upwards are keen on preserving working-class culture once it’s safely in the past – see the current fad for plaid shirts and distressed wood.

The Middle-Class Handbook has all the dope.

More here.

The Teales: Update

Miles and Juliet lived in a neat circumscribed executive estate in Pangbourne and did everything right. They bought every possession (including the right opinions) that the young executive should have and their lives were organised with a degree of foresight that made the average Soviet Five-Year-Plan look impetuous. (Star Trap, Simon Brett)

The lower-middle class Teales, Jen and Bryan, and their children Christine and Wayne, are admirable. They join Rotary, raise money for charity, and become aldermen. They are hard-working, sensible and organised. They are also conscientious, kind and polite, though they can be scrupulous and judgemental. Teale respectability may be a relic of the Low Protestant sects their grandparents grew up in. The attitudes lived on while the chapels were converted into flats.

There used to be some Teales who would never discuss other people in any way. It made talking to them quite difficult. Was it  Protestantism forbidding “all uncharitableness”? Jen always knows when to stop talking for the two minutes silence, and when the clocks go back/forward. Poor Samantha Upward is always being caught out, and frowned on.

Jen retrained as an aromatherapist when the children became "adults". Christine is a wedding planner, Wayne a cosmetic surgeon. (Downmarket Sharon Definitely runs a nail bar.) Aromatherapy fell out of fashion, and Jen now helps Christine with her wedding business, thinking up elaborate, “unique” and expensive additions for your “special day”.

The early 60s were so Teale! They smelled of face powder, Yardley lipstick and lavender. Then it all went wrong and we were forced to whiff of patchouli and avoid ironing our clothes. Thank goodness the 70s brought the Teales back: American tan tights, A-line mini skirts, man-made fibres. Long hair parted in the middle became a symbol of conformity rather than rebellion as long as it was “healthy and shining” and went with over-plucked eyebrows, highlighter on the brow bone and a vapid smile.

Jen folds letters very neatly, lining up the edges and pressing down the folds. When her colleague Sam makes a mess of something she says: “I got carried away!” Teales, especially co-workers, take the Upward “scatty act” at face value, and are very disapproving.

But even Teales have their dark side. When not holidaying at nudist camps, they join suburban covens. And Geoffrey Crossick has written a book all about them.

Picture by Versluys and Uittenbroek.

More here.

The Stow-Crats: Update

The Stow-Crats, Harry and Caroline, are very self-deprecating — they can afford to be.

Poor Lady Lucan! The TV audience found her “cold”, and thought it incomprehensible that she’d had no contact with her children for 35 years. She said: “I bumped into George once in a park. We didn’t say much.” George is her son. Her abusive husband provoked her into emotional outbursts and filmed them as evidence that she was “unstable”, so that he could get a divorce and custody of the chidren. She made it clear that people of her class weren’t allowed to experience or show emotion of any kind. It was redefined as madness. (This was clearly a shock to people who are used to reality TV, and interviewees breaking down in tears on cue.)

From a Times obituary, 2014: After a rackety youth on the continent gambling and having affairs, she settled down. Her husband had to teach her how to make a cup of tea. When she moved into a flat, she wondered why it was so cold – she didn’t realise you have to turn radiators on.

It used to be the thing for Stow-Crats and Weybridges to despise all foreigners, while Bohemian Upwards fawned on them.

More here.

And more on the aristocratic lifestyle in David Cannadine's The Country House.

Choose Your Words Carefully 1

Does your vocabulary give away your class background?

When posh people can’t think of a word, or want to refer to something that’s beneath their notice, they call it a doofer or doobry. Middle-class Eileen Weybridge calls it a thingie, pronouncing the G. Upper-class Harry Stow-Crat refers to “the doings.”

Upper-middle Samantha Upward says “damn” or “bugger”. Her mother said “Oh, dash!” Caroline Stow-Crat says “sugar!”

Stow-Crat and Upward couples call each other “darling”, which makes all the other classes sick.

Sam calls the shop Marks and Sparks, Jen Teale and Eileen call it Marks, Caro never goes there.

Sam uses a lot of French phrases because it doesn’t occur to her that people might not understand them (joie de vivre, raison d'etre, de rigueur). The Stow-Crats obsess about their children learning French from the age of two because they’ll need it for skiing. Jen overcorrects foreign words and calls bruschetta “brooshetta”.

The Upwards and Stow-crats call all shades of blue-plus-red “purple” because lilac, violet, burgundy etc sound like colour names on a shade card. They’d say “primrose yellow” not “primrose”. They used to say “hairwash” for “shampoo” and “washing up machine” for “dishwasher” and “drying up cloth” for “teatowel” because shampoo sounds like a brand name, dishwasher sounds American and teatowel is inaccurate (and very Teale). Upwards still throw their rubbish into a “waste paper basket” and not a bin.

Sam tries to avoid neologisms and Americanisms. She would never use the word pants in the singular or call trousers anything but trousers. Her husband Gideon might say undercrackers for a laugh. Jen says knickers - her daughter Christine refers to undies, underwear or underpants.

Sam avoids Teale words like crispy, curvy, silky, herby, clicky because they sound like baby talk. And either something is made of silk or it isn’t. She thinks that Jen is mostly likely to talk like this, referring to tummies and botties, but there’s a certain kind of Stow Crat who says “We’ll meet soonsies”, and talks of Chrissy pressies and getting wetty in the rain.

More here, and links to the rest.

How to Talk Posh is now an ebook available here.

Holiday Hell Is Other People

On holiday, the middle-class Upwards like to visit… fish markets. (It’s free!), Jen Teale recoils in horror from the possible smell and live spider crabs and goes to a mall instead. Mrs Nouveau-Richards and Sharon Definitely shop in a gold souk. The Nouveau-Richards holiday in golf enclaves, or stay in country house hotels with equestrian centres, spas and activities for children—they’re very keen on horses.

Weybridge families have a new pullalong suitcase each, and at airports and railway stations move in tight groups, like herds of impala looking out for lions and crocodiles. Their children all wear new baseball caps. The Gatwick Express is the only train they ever take. Eileen Weybridge is rather hearty and was a netball captain and always kept her locker tidy. The nuns loved her. She takes to yachting in a guernsey, cooking sausages in the galley, sleeping in wet clothes and braving the ghastly ablutions.

Upper class Stow Crats are even heartier about boats and skiing and girls are expected to muck in and not mind diving into sewage-filled harbours to defoul the propeller with a bread knife. They must be good sports and not suffer “sense of humour failure”.

Caroline Stow Crat rents a villa in Tuscany and fills it with friends. She takes her children to Rock in north Cornwall because that’s where all their friends go to drink vodka by the pint at beach bonfire parties. North Cornwall has huge beaches, dull bungalows and not a lot else. Why is it such a posh hangout? Because since Beeching closed so many local railways down the working classes can’t get there. There’s another small node of Stow Crats around Holme Beach in north Norfolk (Hunstanton, Burnham Thorpe).

The Definitelys go to Center Parcs (Sam thinks the whole thing is under a glass dome), the Teales go to a Mark Warner holiday village. Teales who have made it big buy a second home in a gated holiday development where their children can socialise safely. It is rather Stepford Wives. (They’re what Jilly Cooper called Spiralists - they leave their past behind them and fill their too-new houses with neutral objects that have no associations.)

Some well-off Upwards are catching on to the holiday village idea: it gives them the friendliness and community that they didn’t know they were missing. And you can buy an architect designed “static mobile home” for around £100,000 and install it in a park in the Lake District which is restricted to similar homes. Camping or “glamping” is all the rage (saves planet, saves money), but your yurt must be pitched on the right site with the right people. (Thanks to Hugh Pearman for fieldwork.)


More holiday hell here, here, here and here. And here.

The Upper Middles on Holiday

Not another soul!

The Upward approach to holidays is largely an exercise in exclusion and avoidance (of the wrong parts of France).

Upwards have a horror of being organised. Samantha would never go on a package holiday, or take a guided tour, though she might go on a city “walk” in a group. Posher Upwards go on watercolour or piano holidays in chateaux run by friends of friends.

Samantha and Gideon go to European capitals to see big blockbuster art shows, or tick off medieval churches, cathedrals and wall-paintings. They complain that you can’t just go for a walk (which would be free) in France or Italy, you have to go along a prescribed route (randonnée) and probably hire a canoe, bicycle or donkey.

Samantha wails: “The British seaside is in decline!”, although 60% of Brits take holidays in the British Isles, many of them in caravan parks. She really avoids the seaside because it's too democratic – anybody can go. And most of its amenities (chips, mini golf) are not her style.

Sam drags her children on whistle stop tours of Important Cultural Destinations or takes them somewhere “miles off the beaten track” where you can really appreciate “the life of the people” (she calls it a “real holiday”). The kids long to stay somewhere with a pool and other teenagers so they can make friends and have a holiday romance.

Upwards like holidaying in deserts and wildernesses: “It was mahvellous – we didn’t see another soul!” And it’s now fashionable to take your children on an “adventure” – you’re helicoptered to a volcanic lake in Kamchatka. It costs an arm and a leg, but there are no amusement arcades, computers or TVs, and there’s nothing to buy and absolutely no grockles. Only bears.


More holiday hell here, here, here and here. And here.

The Holiday Code

An unspoiled beach
is an empty beach -
empty of everybody but you.

Want to know the classy places to holiday? Learn the newspaper travel section code:

Unspoiled: no tourists ie common people.
Hordes: tourists
Tourists: low-rent travellers
Sleepy fishing village: tourists don’t go there
Coach parties: common trippers
Travellers: our children with backpacks
Visitors: us

“Break” for holiday is very Teale. Howard Weybridge “recharges the batteries”. Stow-Crats and Upwards have a “bolthole” in Norfolk or the West Country (ie quite a large holiday cottage/house). They call visitors they don’t know “grockles”. Eileen Weybridge doesn’t want to stay at a “showy” resort - she wants to go somewhere that caters for the “discerning”.

“Of course, our coasts quite bristle with seaside towns, but they’re places people can’t go to because everybody goes there!” Blanche’s Letters, Punch, 1914 (Blanche was a raging snob, and referred to everybody outside her own little set as “les autres”.)

I don’t like beaches, or swimming pools, pretty whitewashed villages, bougainvillea, sightseeing, calamari, the sound of crickets. I don’t like camping, waterproof clothing, being outside - any of that. I don’t like France, Italy, Spain or Scotland - especially Scotland. Sam Wollaston Guardian June 4, 2008

ENGLISH RESORTS
For every Frinton there is a Clacton.
Frinton is the buttoned-up, manicured seaside resort in Essex that for many years banned pubs and fish and chips. Clacton is the nearby free and easy resort with fish and chips, pubs, caravan parks and self-built chalets (in Jaywick).

Groups tend to go on holiday to the same places. In Jane Austen’s day Brighton became London-by-Sea…

Shaldon: Iping by Sea (immaculate gardens, a bowling club, a lot of St George flags)

Totnes: Stoke Newington by Sea (Tai Chi and Yoga retreats)

Rock, Polzeath, Salcombe, Burnham Thorpe, Downham Market: Chelsea and Fulham by Sea (where the well-heeled relax)

Great Yarmouth, Clacton: Finsbury Park by Sea (whole council estates go on holiday together)

Walberswick: Primrose Hill-by-Sea (the intellectual aristocracy)

St Ives and Kyrenia: North London-by-Sea

Kassiopi known as Kensington on Sea


More holiday hell here. And here, here, here and here. And here.

You Are What You Eat

Overheard in a café in Cornwall: Child: This white bread is really nice! Mother (cooingly sweet voice): But the wholemeal bread we have at home is really much nicer, isn’t it, darling?

Middle class food in the 50s had to be dry, dry, dry (cold mutton, plain boiled potatoes). And you couldn’t drink while eating, or have any sauce or butter. Upwards and Weybridges used to complain that foreign food was “greasy” or “smothered in olive oil” – the same olive oil that they now deify because it's healthy and comes from Abroad.

Upwards are against sauce (especially when “heavy and complicated” and used to “smother” food). It makes food much too pleasant and easy to eat. They used to use sauce on certain vegetables, but you couldn’t improvise – white sauce went with beetroot and leeks, cheese sauce with cauliflower. When children, if they were allowed red currant jelly or chutney or mint sauce they could only take a tiny amount. Tomato ketchup, brown sauce, Piccalilli, Pan Yan and Branston were banned (too sweet). Upwards are very anti vinegar and anything pickled (apart from raspberry or tarragon vinegar in the 80s, and home-made chutney). Sweet chilli sauce has become instant chav. It’s now as universal as HP sauce (which probably started off as something similar, brought back by returnees from the Empire). Pickle companies are coming out with experimental trendier versions of their usual brands - ketchup with a touch of chilli, chilli Branston.

Jen Teale has a plastic salad spinnner; Sam Upward dries her lettuce by putting it into a tea towel and shaking it outside the back door. Sam buys iceberg, Cos or Romaine lettuce, flat-leaf parsley and rocket, which is impossible to eat neatly. (It ought to be like sorrel, added in small amounts chopped finely, the way Jen chops everything.) Lucky Jen and Eileen, living in "the provinces", can buy curly parsley and butterhead lettuce.

Sam doesn't like microwaves because you have to use plastic bowls – or plahstic as Caro would say. Jen gives Tupperware parties.

Though Sam despises fashion in clothes, she runs after the latest food fads: superfoods one year, probiotics the next. The Upwards flap endlessly about food and health (remember apple cider vinegar and blackstrap molasses? Now it’s goji berries. Or is it beet juice?) Weybridges hate food fads - they pour scorn on anyone who dares to go vegetarian or be allergic to anything, or even have religious food preferences—it’s just putting people out and making work for them. Teales are far too kind and polite to mind, and will try and accommodate food combining, veganism or the Atkins diet.

Upwards whinge that “ordinary folk” want increasingly sweeter, blander and softer food. And that’s why People Like Us eat hard, bitter food. Lentils must be crunchy, not mushy. Bread must be painfully crusty. Curry must burn. Lettuce must be crisp (and tasteless). Cheese must stink. Upwards are very fond of saying that revolting food (steak tartare etc.) is an “acquired taste”. Their ideal meal consists of dry, hard, crisp food that takes a lot of skillful knife and fork work. If not requiring finely developed motor skills, food must demand arcane knowledge.

But food is getting more democratic – we can all like Thai curries. And endurance food soon subsides into a tamed, Weybridge version of itself, e.g. bread that looks crusty but is actually quite soft on the outside (and covered in kibbled wheat), Brie that’s firm and fragrant (and actually edible). Health food used to be unappetising, stodgy and and bland. It’s now quite tasty and much too available - even in supermarket ready-meal versions.

Upwards say “Would you like some butter?” and proffer some kind of “spread” made of olive oil. Also their "salt" will either be Lo-salt TM or sea salt mixed with herbs and quite tasteless. Their salt cellar may even be carefully fixed so that nothing comes out however hard you shake. They have worked the same evil magic on sweets, spawning “child-friendly” jellies that have so little sugar or flavour that they’re almost pure gelatine. When Caroline hands round the Newberry Fruits, her family pick the lime, lemon or orange, Howard and Eileen pick raspberry and strawberry, and the Definitelies and Teales go for cherry, kiwi or pineapple.

The DDs get birthday cakes in the shape of a football pitch, billiard table or dog. Sam gets the local health food shop to bake a gluten-free, egg-free, fruit (but not nut) filled cake because of everybody’s allergies. She and the other mothers boast about how hyperactive E numbers and sugar make their children and the kids either play up, or piously decline red jelly and smarties.

Weddings and Funerals

The week before the royal wedding (of Kate and Wills), middle class Upwards moaned about wedding "hysteria" and people "fawning" on the royals, and ostentatiously stayed out of the country or spent the day gardening.

Jen Teale and Eileen Weybridge held a wedding party and watched the whole thing on the telly, wearing hats. Sharon Definitely camped out for two days outside the Abbey and wore a fake tiara and waved a banner reading MARRY ME HARRY! Howard said "We do pageantry awfully well."

The Stow-Crats were invited to the abbey - Caroline loved Mrs Middleton's edge-to-edge coat. Rowena Upward adored Beatrice and Eugenie's over-the-top outfits.

So what do they do when it's their turn to "tie the knot"? Wayne Teale invites his girlfriend out to dinner to a restaurant on the North Circular. He kicks off "We've been together for five years now..." and she thinks he's going to dump her. Instead he drops a diamond ring into a glass of champagne and asks her to marry him.

How different for Thalia Upward. Her boyfriend ("partner") doesn't propose. They have "discusssions" about commitment that are a bit like university seminars. Upwards can’t use clichés, which makes middle class courtship even more agonizing. What they're really afraid of is being conformist and conventional and joining an institution, without realising that they are rolling happily along the tramlines laid down by their class and education.

Every generation thinks they’re the first to get married because they want to, not because society wants them to. And every age thinks it's the first to allow women to be single ("Of course Bridget Jones worried about being a spinster, but we know better.").

Upward-Weybridges have to be seen to disapprove of girls who get pregnant at 14 or married at 21. Girls must get married later so they can pass exams and get a career and contribute to the economy. Besides, getting married young is common.

Sharon Definitely marries someone well-off, has a baby and gets a divorce (and alimony) within a couple of years.

“The female mind, though cruelly practical in daily life, cannot bear to hear ideals belittled in conversation.” E.M. Forster, Howard’s End. Upwards, especially females, love spouting ideals, while quietly getting on with the practical details of life. They may be as keen as any Teale on getting married and having children before time runs out, but they have to disguise it with a lot of stuff about living for the moment. (“I’m not ready to settle down, I’m having too much FUN!”)

Upwards and Definitelies think vaguely that cohabiting gives you legal rights (over your children, to your partner’s pension, to half the house if you split up or he dies). It hasn’t since 1753.

Stow Crat marriages were traditionally about land transfer, so it’s got to be legal. They don’t hire a castle for the reception - they use their own.

The very Bohemian Nightshades tie the knot on a beach, reciting vows they’ve made up themselves (it mustn’t resemble anybody else’s wedding plus there’s no need to hire a marquee).

Sam is horrified by the amount people spend. Brides become a footballer’s wife for a day, not a princess.

Caroline is shocked that brides wear strapless dresses in the afternoon (decolletage is for evening).

The Nouveau Richards hire a castle in Scotland and make all the men wear kilts.

Christine Teale goes into training for weeks before the wedding, getting a St. Tropez tan, botoxing her forehead and losing two stone. Teales “tie the knot”, “exchange vows” and have “nuptials”.

Many put off getting married because they think spending £30,000 is the only way they can do it. Then they hold the ceremony in a quainte olde Anglican country church because it will look good in the photos. But the olde church and hastily researched wedding music (there are several CDs, like Music for a Church Wedding) tell the world, not that the couple are making a commitment in front of all their friends and family (which is the reason they’d give), but that they’re assuming their correct position and level in society. The real ceremony is the rest of the day, with the humiliating speeches, embarrassing dancing and exhausting partying into the night (not to mention the previous stag/hen week in Sweden/Prague/Goa).

A friend sings a pop song as the couple go into the painfully rehearsed First Dance. Or else the happy couple and bridesmaids perform a galumphing choreographed routine they’ve been rehearsing for weeks.

The bar is constantly being raised. And the congregation, or audience, treats the wedding as a performance. Bride and groom laugh as they make their vows, everybody constantly talks, laughs and claps, and when the bride and groom kiss everybody goes “Ooooooh!”. The vicar/priest even says “Let’s give them a big hand!” after he/she has pronounced them man and wife. And of course the whole thing is video’d so that you can play it to your friends (or even watch it yourself, over and over again).

BEREAVEMENT
Teales are better at bereavement because they‘re not afraid of clichés. Definitelies send sympathy cards and play pop songs at the funeral. You have to choose “your song” before you go. Funerals are becoming more like TV shows, with people giving “eulogies” that are peppered with laugh lines. In the East End you can still sometimes see a traditional hearse drawn by black horses – parked outside a council estate.

Upwards used to moan that the Victorians were so much better at death – because Freud had told them it was damaging to repress your feelings. But once they’d paid tribute to Freud they carried on with the stiff upper lip. They prefer “celebrations of someone’s life” because there won’t be any embarrassing crying. They still haven’t recovered from the “outpouring of grief” (read “normal mourning”) at Diana’s funeral. They convinced themselves that all the emotion was manufactured by the media. But what really made them cross was being forced to face the fact that they share these islands with millions of people who aren’t Upwards.

Why Drive a 4X4?

Caroline Stow-Crat explains: In Chelsea and Fulham (moneyed parts of London), many residents drive 4X4s, to the annoyance of most other Londoners. So why drive a Chelsea tractor (4X4, ORV or off-road vehicle)?

1. You're high up above everybody else.
2. You can show off that you can afford one.
3. There's room for six children.
4. You can show off that you can afford to have six children.
5. Your children don't have to take the bus and mix with people who are a bit mixed.
6. It indicates that at weekends you all get into it and drive down to your country place where it's useful for travelling down muddy lanes and across fields. This is your /real/ life and you don't want to spend more time in a city than you have to.
7. If you don't have a country place, stay indoors with the curtains closed and spray the wheels with spray-on mud. (Though sadly the company that supplied it seems to have folded – you’ll have to collect your own from the back garden.)
8. When there are deep snowdrifts and roads are impassible to ordinary cars, you’ll be laughing.

Beating the Cold

Here’s how to beat the cold the Upward way!

1. Grit your teeth. Grin and bear it.
2. Convince yourself that being warm is bad for you.
3. Wear a string vest (the holes create pockets of warm air).
4. Always sleep with a window open.
5. Admire the frost flowers on the window panes.
6. Keep your central heating turned down as low as possible “to take the chill off”.
7. Don’t go out warm.
8. Run about to keep warm.
9. Set your central heating to go off for several hours a day. Tell your guests that there isn’t an over-ride.

And finally

10. NEVER have a heat source you can “huddle over” because huddling over fires gives you chilblains and probably pneumonia. And it will only make you colder.

Upwards spend all their money on educating their children and think double glazing is common. They are too fey to follow Caro Stow-Crat’s pragmatic heat-saving tips. What they really enjoy is feeling martyred and suffering – because it’s good for you. And they don’t like solving problems directly.

The Weybridges can’t be doing with such nonsense. They have pinch-pleated curtains that reach the floor (you draw them with a system of pulleys - or a remote control) and turn their central heating up. Upwards moan that at their house “the central heating is always at FULL BLAST”. (Upward curtains are too short, too thin, and never meet in the middle.)


Beat the Cold III
Beat the Cold II (the Upward way)
Heat-saving Tips II