More Classy Quotes

Is your favourite biscuit a pink wafer? Chances are you read The Sun.

 That’s according to a massive survey carried out by Sainsburys, who have analysed the nation’s biscuit-eating habits. The supermarket chain crunched Nectar data from around 12 million shoppers between 4 July 2010 and 2 July 2011, and came up with several crummy conclusions. For example, if you’re a fan of fig rolls, you could be a northerner. The snack is the second-most popular biscuit in both the North East and Yorkshire. Further south however the cookie is king; it’s the second most bought biscuit in East Midlands, East Anglia and London. Jam rings are especially popular outside England, with Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish shoppers buying them in droves. Enjoy a rich tea? You might hail from the South West, as the snack comes second-place in the area’s biscuit league table. However, number one nation-wide is the humble digestive. UK biscuit lovers can’t get enough of the sweet-meal dunker, which sells 17 million packets a year at Sainsburys. That’s more than 12% of 141m packets flogged by the chain per year. The national top five: Digestives; Cookies; Jam Rings; Chocolate Fingers; Rich Teas. Back to newspapers, and the data shows Daily Mail readers like a nice Garibaldi, while readers of The Independent prefer coconut creams. Guardian readers have more exotic tastes though, such as ginger and chocolate cookies, amaretti, butter thins and almond florentines. Andre Erasmus, editor of Biscuit World (that’s a real magazine, we promise), said: “This little round entity is a strong cultural identity of Britain, and has been around since the 1600s. The digestive biscuit and the rich tea are both considered as a traditional accompaniment to a cuppa, so it's no surprise to see them in the top five favourites. The jam ring in third spot was more of a surprise to us." He concluded: “Well done the biscuit!”. Yahoo News

Harrods dress code: Jewellery One earring per ear. Pearls or diamond studs preferred. One ring per hand with exception of wedding & engagement rings. No visible tattoos, sovereigns, mismatched jewellery, scrunchies, large clips or hoop earrings. Guardian July 2 2011

I am thinking of trying the discount chains Aldi and Lidl for the first time as I am fed up with paying a fortune to feed our family of four. Do readers recommend them?…I tentatively entered a Lidl store about five years ago. The first thing to catch my eye was a panettone for £2.99 – identical to one I’d just paid £6.99 for in our local delicatessen…. It is noticeable in the last two years or so that there are more middle-class shoppers. Suddenly, it has become acceptable to shop at Lidl. Guardian July 2 2011

[American squillionaires’] lifestyles were bordering on the absurd, according to Gladys Montgomery, author of a new book on the great camps aptly entitled An Elegant Wilderness. She notes that at nearby Pine Tree Point, railway pioneer Frederick Vanderbilt hired artisans from Japan to create Japanese-style cabins and made serving maids wear kimonos. Camps commandeered French chefs from New York's best restaurants for the summer. And at Prospect Point, mining magnate Adolph Lewisohn would bring a valet, a stenographer, a chess partner and his own barber for the season. The Observer on the Adirondacks July 2011

And throughout the book there simmers a kind of misanthropy, even snobbery: a contempt for the kind of people, working-class and middle-class alike, that Fabian types have mocked for decades, sneering at their neat suburban homes and modest material ambitions. These are the people who actually enjoy shopping at Westfield, not because they are corporate drones or have been brainwashed or define themselves purely by consumerism but simply because they fancy buying some new clothes or a better television or even the latest book by Iain Sinclair. Dominic Sandbrook in the Financial Times on Iain Sinclair's Ghost Milk July 2011 (The Fabians were a genteel kind of socialist who thought they knew what was best for everybody. Perhaps they're still around.)

More here, and links to the rest.

The Mother-in-law from Hell

We've all heard of her by now. Carolyn Bourne, the dianthus-grower from Dawlish who sent her prospective daughter-in-law a critical email that went viral. Here it is, in case you missed it:

It is high time someone explained to you about good manners. Yours are obvious by their absence and I feel sorry for you.

Unfortunately for Freddie, he has fallen in love with you and Freddie being Freddie, I gather it is not easy to reason with him or yet encourage him to consider how he might be able to help you. It may just be possible to get through to you though. I do hope so.

If you want to be accepted by the wider Bourne family I suggest you take some guidance from experts with utmost haste. There are plenty of finishing schools around. Please, for your own good, for Freddie’s sake and for your future involvement with the Bourne family, do something as soon as possible.

Here are a few examples of your lack of manners:

• When you are a guest in another’s house, you do not declare what you will and will not eat – unless you are positively allergic to something. You do not remark that you do not have enough food. You do not start before everyone else. You do not take additional helpings without being invited to by your host.

• When a guest in another’s house, you do not lie in bed until late morning in households that rise early – you fall in line with house norms.

• You should never ever insult the family you are about to join at any time and most definitely not in public. I gather you passed this off as a joke but the reaction in the pub was one of shock, not laughter.

• You should have hand-written a card to me. You have never written to thank me when you have stayed.

• You regularly draw attention to yourself. Perhaps you should ask yourself why.

• No one gets married in a castle unless they own it. It is brash, celebrity-style behaviour. I understand your parents are unable to contribute very much towards the cost of your wedding. (There is nothing wrong with that except that convention is such that one might presume they would have saved over the years for their daughters’ marriages.) If this is the case, it would be most ladylike and gracious to lower your sights and have a modest wedding as befits both your incomes.

So far, so breathtakingly rude. But what shocks me more is the way some journalists have sided with her. Carrie Quinlan in The Guardian says "God bless you, Carolyn Bourne". India Knight in The Sunday Times joins in, and so does Victoria Summerley in The Independent and Mary Killen in The Daily Telegraph. They were happy, says Tim Black in Spiked.com, to see an adult telling off a graceless youth. And about time too! At least Ms Bourne has proved that class is not dead. One commentator called her "so Dawlish!".

More Quotes About Class

As we left [the natural park created out of old railway land] I congratulated myself for not spending any money. But then I went and completely blew it by visiting the Lewes farmers' market. The excellent ageofuncertainty.blogspot.com.

The hall-mark of so-called “vulgar people” is unrestricted display of uncontrolled emotions. Emily Post

For this is an ineffably British tale [about Twitter and superinjunctions] that draws together several strands of national character into one inescapable cobweb of farcical confusion. Prurience, hypocrisy, low-level public cussedness towards authority and high-handed authority's disdain for the public all have their part to play. So – as far as the clash between the rights to privacy and free speech is concerned – does the failure to decide whether to be prissily private Europeans or let-it-all-hang-out Americans. Also present are British lethargy in adapting to the implications of new technology, and the gift for conflating the utterly banal into a sovereign point of principle. Where else would tweeting about a shagging sportsman be heralded as a show of mass civil disobedience worthy of Gandhi? Matthew Norman in the Independent on the superinjunction kerfuffle, May 25 2011

Of course, this sort of colour is also designed to indicate social class, which, although we British are far too squeamish to say so, still fascinates most of us.” Re the papers quoting murder victim Joanna Yeates parents’ house price, Sally Baker, Feeedback, Times Jan 8 2011

“Britons always get sniffy about other people getting filthy rich, whereas Americans like to see success rewarded.” David Prosser Independent Jan 2011

“A lady never admits her feet hurt.” Lorelei Lee, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

Ottakar's were generally very astute at picking new sites for the bookshops, but they got it horribly wrong with Crawley. I was surprised, as a quick walk around the town centre would have confirmed that this wasn't bookshop territory - it was as if the middle classes had been ethnically cleansed. ageofuncertainty.blogspot.com

More here, here, here and here.

How to Be Engaged

GIFTS WHICH MAY AND THOSE WHICH MAY NOT BE ACCEPTED

According to Emily Post: The fiancée of a young man who is “saving in order to marry,” would be lacking in taste as well as good sense were she to encourage or allow him extravagantly to send her flowers and other charming, but wasteful, presents. But on the other hand, if the bridegroom-elect has plenty of means, she may not only accept flowers but anything he chooses to select, except wearing apparel or a motor car or a house and furniture—anything that can be classified as “maintenance.”

It is perfectly suitable for her to drive his car, or ride his horse, and she may select furniture for their house, which he may buy or have built. But, if she would keep her self-respect, the car must not become hers nor must she live in the house or use its furniture until she is given his name. He may give her all the jewels he can afford, he may give her a fur scarf, but not a fur coat. The scarf is an ornament, the coat is wearing apparel. If she is very poor, she may have to be married in cheese-cloth, or even in the dress she wears usually, but her wedding dress and the clothes she wears away, must not be supplied by the groom or his family. There is one exception: if his mother, for instance, has some very wonderful family lace, or has kept her own wedding dress and has no daughter herself, and it would please her to have her son’s wife wear her lace or dress, it is proper for the bride to consent. But it would be starting life on a false basis, and putting herself in a category with women of another class, to be clothed by any man, whether he is soon to be her husband or not. 50 If the engagement should be so unfortunate as to be broken off, the engagement ring and all other gifts of value must be returned.

Holiday Time

On holiday, Samantha Upward loves buying anything artisanal that’s been made by peasants who have the good taste to employ local, fresh ingredients and natural materials. Chavs, being alienated from the means of production (as Karl Marx so cleverly pointed out), make nothing – all they do is consume. Mainly tasteless plastic tat. (Marx also said that they'd been tricked into being passive consumers - so I don't see why we should despise them for it.) Sam’s children insist on buying deep-fried doughnuts and plastic blow-up alligators. It keeps them happy, but what’s she going to say when she meets anyone she knows?

Upwards used to despise package holidays (because originally they flew chavs to Marbella), but now you can get a tailor-made walking holiday in Murmansk (or a cheap deal on the Italian Riviera) they take advantage. Stow-Crats use very upmarket travel firms run by the children of their friends, who learned about Okavango/Nova Sofala/Wasgamuwa on an expensive Gap year.

On camping holidays Upwards stay in yurts, tepees, tree-houses and roulottes – French gypsy caravans. It’s called “glamping”. They may even stay at a “gastro-glamping” site. They bring a copy of Annie Bell’s The Camping Cookbook – it tells you how to cook fish in grass, though it doesn’t tell you how to stop your children whining for baked beans. Weybridges and Teales stay at sites that are identical but have wooden chalets. Definitelies stay in park homes (static caravans) on a site with a paddling pool, shop and bar with entertainment in the evening.

Weybridges have picnics seated on foldaway chairs at a foldaway table. They sometimes do this in laybys to the scorn of passing Upwards who are looking for that elusive perfect picnic place and reducing each other to tears of hunger, boredom and weariness. They eventually find a lovely field by a stream and sit in a cowpat and get bitten by horseflies.

More here, here, here and here.

Toilet Training

The Stow-Crats used to call it the “lav”, short for lavatory. Caro, Sam and Eileen still say loo (or, in public places “ladies”); everybody else says toilet. The DD’s want toilet, or go toilet. (They go other destinations too.) Twee euphemisms like “little girl’s room”, “must go and powder my nose” have gone out, but:

Sam says "I'm dying for a wee" and goes to the nearest facility. Jen and Eileen say nothing but discreetly absent themselves while everyone is looking the other way, and don't open the door and come out till the flush has ceased flushing. Then they sneak out opening the door as little as possible. When out with friends, they have to invent excuses (I just want to pop to the shop for a few postcards). Or simply say "I'll be back in a moment."

Howard Weybridge will never let anyone have a comfort stop. (“Can’t you wait till…” No I can’t!) He’s embarrassed if any of his party goes into a pub/café/hotel to use their ladies because he thinks you ought to buy something (and resents paying that sixpence for a box of matches/cup of tea you don’t need). He’s embarrassed because you have to go into common premises, and speak to unnecessarily, and ask a favour of, and then be beholden to, a common person. Samantha Upward waltzes into any hotel and uses the ladies without asking. It’s the near-Teales who cringe.

Maybe it’s because the middle classes think you should be able to overcome anything with willpower. They are also very fond of controlling each other.

How to Decorate

Jay takes me on a tour over four floors of hushed opulence, each several times the size of an ordinary London flat. "It's worth nearly £11m," he says. Under the kitchen is a cosy entertainment complex, complete with pool, Jacuzzi, sauna and a private cinema done out in suede, the pews so thick and warm you could sleep on them … Everything here is white, bright and glistening: white leather sofas, marble floors, silver candlesticks adorning pristine white walls.. Laurie Penny on Saif Islam’s Hampstead Garden Suburb pad in the New Statesman 15 March 2011

Caro lives in London during the week at her townhouse (though she’d never call it that) in West London. She met her friends Samantha, Jen, Sharon and Eileen at the local gym – they bonded the day the floor fell in during the trampoline class. They’ve all come round to her place to have coffee and admire her new curtains and meet her new acquaintance – Jocasta Nouveau Richards.

Caro: I got them at the Curtain Exchange!
Jen: You mean they’ve been pre-loved?
Sam: I don’t like things to look too new!
Eileen: I suppose you could call it Shabby Chic…
Caro: They match the rest of the room – most of the furniture belonged to Harry’s greataunts.
Eileen: I like pinch-pleats, myself – and pulleys are so convenient.
Caro: I prefer things to be appropriate. I don’t want to see an 80s house with a pool and gym filled with reproduction Chippendale, or sporting a Tudor inglenook. And I don’t go for modernistic décor in a Jacobean manor house, or Georgian “fan-light” doors on a council flat, or diamond-paned windows in a Victorian cottage, or a striped awning on an Elizabethan manor…
Eileen: We’ve got one of those! It’s got its own remote control.
Caro: (shudders)
Sam: My pet hates are fake half-timbering – and those Flintstones rock fireplaces that look like something out of an American hunting lodge.
Caro: Which is where they should stay! What made people put them into Victorian terrace houses? And post-and-rail fences round your lawn – they belong in a paddock. Ah, this must be Jocasta – we met at a charity do. She’s an A1 sweetie.
[Enter Jocasta Nouveau Richards)
Hello, Jocasta! We’re talking interior décor.
Jocasta: I’ve just got a new kitchen and it’s the size of a football field – I hardly dare go in there.
Sharon: We’ve turned our whole ground floor into an open-plan living area with a kitchen at one end – black granite worktops and everything!
Jocasta: I’ve got those too – and I want to get a heated marble driveway. Once you’ve got a separate wing for the dogs, where do you go?
Sam: Black granite worktops – they always remind me of those tombstones with gold lettering. And don’t they blunt your knife blades?
Caro: Why don’t we go out through the French windows onto the terrace?
Jen: You could have some nice decking here just outside the French doors.
Eileen: But it’s a lovely patio!
Jocasta: What a lot of plants! We’ve had our whole grounds landscraped.
Sharon: This is the life, eh?

The front yard is a gaudy stab at Versailles, with four-foot obelisks at each corner of the driveway, intricately tiled fountains and a series of steel sculptures that depict dolphins mid-dive, children at play and birds in flight. The 7,000-square-foot home, whose aesthetic is cruise-ship-meets-mob-mansion, has five terraces, a curved-glass elevator and an arcade room outfitted with gumball machines. On the second floor, there is what the residents call their “ice cream room,” furnished with an old-fashioned counter and soda fountain. New York Times March 2011

Read about the most expensive houses in the world here.
More on what your decor says about you here. And here. And here.