Nasty Habits

The British upper middle classes think they are the best people in the country – in the world! But they have a few unappealing traits.

In the UK, the classes don’t mix much – which is probably why they are so suspicious of each other (benefit scroungers! toffs!). The top layers live in bubbles and only mingle with people from the right “background”.  Who said that these days the classes only mix on the race course? Is this why everyone loves Downton Abbey and Upstairs Downstairs – because you have all the classes in the same soap opera? (Apparently DA shows aristos and staff being fearfully matey with each other – which would never have happened. Employers treated servants as non-people.)

Middle-class Upwards and Weybridges like to say “illegitimi non carborundum!” (Don’t let the bastards grind you down). They think other people are grinding them down, not the other way round.
They are obsessed with queuing – they really don’t see why they should spend a nanosecond in any queue of any kind. Their blood pressure rises on the tube (people are going through the ticket barrier before meeee!!!!), on trains, and especially in supermarkets where they time the people in front – who can never find their money fast enough and then pay in small change!!! Other customers may even misuse the shopping divider. (They still can't quite believe they are shopping in the same place as other people to whom they have not been introduced. And there are so many of them. And they bring their uncontrollable children. Some childless Upwards think that children should be banned.)

The top layers of society loathe intrusive security at airports. To be patted down – touched! – by common people! And treated just like everybody else! It’s an outrage! Don’t they realise who we are? "Don’t you feel guilty passing through customs even though you’ve got nothing to declare?"

Do you respond when someone lets you cross the road? All you need to do is nod, smile or wave - but to a stranger???

Top people often don’t reply when shop staff chat to them. They don’t think of it as being rude. These are common people they don’t know – why should they speak to them? They like to say: “I hate being sold things.” The shop staff have probably been told to smile and chat (and also hover to see nobody nicks anything).

They like to say: “We can't live in fear.” They are very afraid of fear. We should just shut up about paedophiles because all this talk is making people too afraid. That’s why they flapped over Harriet Harman wearing a stab vest in Peckham, and when Jacqui Smith said she didn’t like walking alone late at night. We mustn’t say that our streets aren’t safe because it would make people afraid. “Being mugged in Spain yet again hit my wallet hard. But the real cost is in losing trust in people.” (The Guardian, May 5 08)

And people shouldn’t show weakness, or emotion in public. Yachtswoman Ellen McArthur is not a national heroine because she whinged all the time in public. And she’s had too much attention and besides she’s common. John Prescott talking about his bulimia is “self-pity disguised as honesty”. And he’s definitely common. And they despise Nick Clegg for saying sorry. He’s an “apologiser” now. (September, 2012)

They hate vacuous celebrities. They are afraid their children will be unduly influenced. These celebrities are celebrated for common achievements like pop music and football, or else they’re just “famous for being famous”. They want their children to see Olympic athletes as role models instead. Or is that just everybody else’s children?

But they adore rather plain middle-aged male actors like Ken Stott, Jim Broadbent and Ian Holm. (Such a mahvellous actor – and he could be me!) They don’t idolise really pretty people, and never go mad over actresses.

Thanks to Twitter and the always wonderful Middle-Class Handbook.

Classy Quotes Eleven

A few years ago I finally admitted to myself that I wasn’t interested in going to look at ruins, and a lot of “untouristy” places are actually every bit as touristy as Malaga, except with lemon groves and aioli. (Middle Class Handbook’s blog)

I get prejudged a lot for being posh. People assume well-spoken means posh means wealthy, which then means smug or aloof. That’s just not true. (Rupert Penry-Jones, The Times, Sept 1 2012)

I’m often surprised at the amount of competitiveness involved, the obsession with class and money. I see snobbery, antisocial behaviour, one-upmanship. (A wedding photographer, Guardian Aug 4 2012)

There's a plain and simple teak monastery bench for £280. (Guardian review of Vintage Archive)

You have to think you are unique. (Grayson Perry on decor)

When you bring out the edited highlights, can we have an "atmosphere of decorum... leave out the unseemly bits such as lowbrow cavorting in parks and the like" (Complainer to BBC re Jubilee coverage)

I never look at bossy, mostly useless use-by dates. Eyes and nose are a much better guide. (@lickedspoon) Expiry dates: Look, it's mostly just common sense, isn't it? (@MiddleClassHB)

In principle, I don’t believe in "kids’ food". Children should, as soon as they can, take part in family meals, learn to sit still at the table, and take on grown-up textures and flavours. That’s the theory, anyway. (Joanna Weinberg, Cooking for Real Life. Here's the BBC on why children don't like sprouts.)

The real significance of supper, I think, is that it implies the user is familiar with an altogether grander style of meal held in stately halls, the formal dinner with copperplate invitations, waiters, silverware, port and speeches. (Grayson Perry, The Guardian, Aug 4 2012)

[They like] cooking, reading books about left-wing politics, and going to concerts/protests/poetry [readings]. Generally, this makes them very boring…”

When [they] reach the final year of their arts degree they are faced with a horrible realization: their degree is worthless.

[Middle class] women have a lot of fantasies about idealised lives. [They all] believe they deserve more than they have.

It is their dream “to be able to resolve all conflicts by complaining to unrelated parties”.

It is also a proven fact that dogs are often used…  to attract members of the opposite sex.

All from Stuff White People Like by Christian Lander

Classy Quotes Part Ten
Classy Quotes Part Nine
Part Eight here.
More here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here.

You Are What You Eat IV

Upper middle-class Upwards only eat dark chocolate, which they pretend is nicer than milk chocolate. They apply this formula to many foods. They used to insist black treacle was better than golden syrup. They can only eat sweet food if they disparagingly call it "comfort food" (warm, wet, smooth, bland and filling), or say how guilty they feel for eating it. They love feeling guilty about actions that aren't sins. The middle classes are anti-sauce, it makes food too like babyfood (too  easy to eat and tasty). They sneer that they don’t like food that’s “smothered in heavy or complicated sauces”. (The rules are relaxed for Christmas dinner, which everybody loves.) They loved 70s hippy food because it’s sooooo cheap (and also you’re sticking it to The Man, as we didn’t say then). They bought dried chick peas and spent more on fuel to boil them for hours than they would have spent on a tin of the things. (“Commoditized!”)

For several reasons, Upwards are very against fizzy drinks. Too sugary, giant corporations, capitalism, bang goes sixpence… They love using their children as an excuse to display their right-on attitudes. They make the kids drink watered-down fruit juice to protect their teeth. But the parents fixate on the “fizz” (Perrier somehow doesn’t count – but they used to twirl gold swizzle sticks to reduce the fizz in champagne.) In fact “fizzy drinks” is code for “mass-produced sugary drinks in cans”. And the fizz in Coca Cola is bad for you because Coca Cola is American and so aggressively marketed. (Upwards hate the idea that someone is trying to sell them something, and think they are immune to the hard sell, the soft sell and all other kinds.) Of course no amount of aggressive marketing can make air bubbles bad for you. They are only allowed to drink Coke if they have diarrhoea – but it has to be flat. (It replaces lost water, and the sugar and salt it contains enable you to absorb the water. Also the sugar replaces lost nutrients.)

Upwards also wail that “we” throw away almost half the food from “our” weekly supermarket shop. Working-class Sharon Definitely walks to a corner shop and buys what she needs when she needs it. She can’t buy too much because she doesn’t have a car. So she is more eco-friendly than the environmentally aware Upwards, who are convinced that she lives on greasy fast food.

Their latest hate is “bossy” sell-by dates.

“I rely on taste and smell rather than bossy rules from supermarkets - [unlike] the nervous middle-aged who are so sensitive to commands on packages.” (Angela Huth in the Times January 16, 2012).

“It isn't difficult to tell if food has gone off. In most cases, you only have to smell it. But since 1980, when sell-by dates were introduced on food labelling, we have been terrorised into throwing food away when it is still perfectly good to eat. The consequence is that we chuck out an estimated £12bn worth of food every year, including many millions of unopened pots of yoghurt, loaves of bread, chickens and slices of ham.” (Guardian, 2011)

“Sell-by dates are for wimps… I stopped being a gormless pillock and realised it’s all just a profitable arse-covering exercise, and that every year shoppers are chucking £12 billion of edible food in the bin.” (Carol Midgley in The Times, 22 Dec 2012)

It’s worse than a robot voice telling you that there’s an “unexpected item in the bagging area”. Nobody tells Upwards what to do. They are the officer class and issue orders. Also they still haven’t quite come to terms with the idea that they shop in supermarkets now, with crowds of other people.

Earlier in the year, the NHS warned people not to risk their health by ignoring sell-by dates. A Times commenter points out that your immune system gets tougher with age – and your sense of taste and smell declines.

WHERE YOU EAT
In the 70s, dinner parties were a genteel form of speed dating. We were too poor (or too middle class) to go out. There wasn’t a great choice of venues that we could afford, and most places were either too up-market or too down-market. But we needed to meet each other, so we gave dinner parties and “bring a bottle” parties.

Lower-middle-class Teales never go to greasy-spoon cafes, but Bohemian Upwards may. Though mainly you have to wait until you get home and can eat “proper” food that you can trust. Upper-class Stow Crats used to pretend to be very baffled by canteens and self-service.

Firepits have replaced barbecues (sooo suburban), and the latest thing is restaurants where all the food is cooked on an open fire.

WHAT YOU EAT
Chilli-flavoured tomato ketchup appeared briefly in corner shops, but seems to have disappeared again. From HP on, exotic Eastern sauces slid rapidly downmarket.

Single malts are the new white burgundy.

Upwards can’t eat or drink anything cherry flavoured – especially black cherries (very chic circa 1963).

In the 50s and 60s, Upwards used to shudder with horror when presented with a cake on a paper or (worse!) plastic doily. You can still buy them, so somebody must be using them.

Eileen Weybridge and Jen Teale are shocked and bewildered that Samantha Upward tips instant coffee straight into a mug without measuring it with a spoon. And they’re outraged when she eats the rind off the Stilton (It’s all mouldy! And you don’t know where it’s been! And I thought she was “well-brought up”!)

Teales used to call all pasta “spaghetti”. Upwards bone up on all the different kinds (orechiette, conchiglie, farfalle). Pasta manufacturers start marketing it as “pasta” and calling farfalle “bowtie pasta”. Upwards move on to ditalini and stelline.

People are deserting the digestive (Nice, sponge finger, rich tea, Bath Oliver) for fancy biscuits (much sweeter, lots of chocolate and possibly pink icing). Old attitudes are changing (dull biscuits are good for you, only chavs eat biscuits that are too nice etc etc. More than that, they’re deserting the digestive for the kind of outrageous, expensive, highly coloured, ultra-sweet fancy cake that existed in the 50s but we were never allowed to eat.

“Porridge is ace. But, as it crosses all the classes, the MCs like to go organic to put our stamp on it. And add bananas.” @middleclasshandbook responding to a tweet about “steel-cut Irish oatmeal”. (Steel-cut oats are not pre-cooked and you have to soak them all night.)

And of course the currently fashionable regional Chinese cookery is unbearably hot. Upwards still think that food should make you suffer, and the only food that gives you bragging rights is painful (chillies) or disgusting (what’s the new steak tartare? Wood-ear fungus?). There was a 70s version of wholemeal bread that has quite disappeared. Eating a slice was like munching a carpet tile spread with honey. (You always had honey in the house because you used it instead of sugar.)

Part I here.
Part II here.
Part III here.

Plum Jobs and Plummy Voices

Writers know that the adjective "plummy" is somehow associated with the upper classes. It is – it refers to the way an aristo talks as if he had a plum in his mouth. That's a "plummy voice". It has nothing to do with any type of dessert the upper classes may eat.

Many misunderstandings result, and they're getting more and more baroque:

If you want to know, he said, in a puréed-plum voice (he trained at the Central School)... (Adam Mars Jones, London Review of Books, Nov 2012)

The 11the Duke of Marlborough has the garbled, sticky plum-crumble diction of the irredeemably posh. (Sarah Dempster, The Guardian, Nov 17 2012)

Posh TV cook Nigella Lawson’s voice is described as “plummy” but actually it is light and unresonant.

The Guardian even has TV presenter Kirstie Alsopp working for a couple of “plummy magazines” (May 9 2006).

Then there were their lovely families – every member of them worth so much more than the floppy-fringed Oxbridge plums their sons were trying so hard to impress and infiltrate. (Barbara Ellen, The Observer, 12 Aug 2012 Upper-class people are not known as “plums”.)

Full of great stories about the great old guard in the plummy old days of his rich, old town. (Time magazine - they mean "palmy days".)

[The plum] symbolized fertility, abundance, and often featured prominently in religious rituals. Over time, this association with prosperity and wealth led to the name Plum gaining popularity in noble and upper-class families, signifying their privileged status and opulent lifestyle. (ancestry.com. PG Wodehouse was known as "Plum" – his first name was "Pelham".)

You can plume yourself on getting a plum job - it's a bit like preening.

How to Talk Posh I
How to Talk Posh II
How to Talk Posh III
How to Talk Posh IV

How to Talk Posh is now an ebook available here. 

Class and Innovations

Is there a word/phrase for that process where people first complain about technological change, then accept, then embrace it? writer and blogger Lee Jackson 

Middle-class Upwards and Weybridges are not early adopters – they chase fads, not things. And there weren’t all these innovations when they were young: every time a new gadget comes along they act as if it was the first they’d ever encountered. They have to go through a stage of calling the remote control the Herbert and leaving silly messages on answering machines. Also they have to act very puzzled about the whole concept. Video? Why would anyone want to watch a film at home? Email? Why send a document from one computer to another? Talking books? For the blind, or maybe while you’re driving or ironing. (They’re doing it now about Kindles. “People can’t remember books they’ve read on a Kindle so well because Kindle makes it too easy.” Daily Telegraph Jan 2011)

"One of those audiobooks in which some plummy thesp intones a classic novel" Richard Morrison, Times November 11, 2011 (Audiobooks have been around for 25 years and they’re usually read by character actors.)

When the first few got videos, they used them to watch the RSC's Nicholas Nickleby. And they insisted on turning them on for you if you went round to their place. Nobody knew how to programme their video (except me). And they never set the clock, so it blinked all the time. “The pictures are better on radio” must date from 1951. Remember when they insisted black and white TVs were just as good if not better than colour? Colour TVs were something terribly vulgar that Americans had. Eventually they explained that they had “given in” for the sake of the nature programmes. (Now they’re complaining that benefit scroungers all have flat-screen TVs. Possibly because they’re the only kind you can get.)

Although Upwards have had phones since the 1880s, they went on being terrified of expensive phone calls while spending hugely on drink and awful private boarding schools. When telephones first came in, Upwards had one “instrument” in the house in a stuffy cabinet under the stairs. If guests were allowed to use it they had to leave two pennies to cover the cost. (These were households with butlers and maids, and the guests were being fed three-course meals cooked by a chef.) When watching American films of the 50s, they were rather surprised that Americans had wall-mounted phones in their kitchens, with a long flex so that you could have a conversation while doing other things. According to Debrett’s (1980 version) it used to be unacceptable for women to add a phone number to their visiting card.

Gadgets are made of metal and plastic and they are the same for everybody. You can get one encrusted with pink rhinestones, but not an artisanal one made of natural materials. When mobile phones arrived Upwards supposed vaguely that they might be useful for plumbers. Actually they were outraged that mobiles were immediately taken up by plumbers, builders and anyone who saw how useful they were. The Upwards had to fight a rearguard action by getting them banned from railway carriages and joking about people who rang up just to yell “I’m on the train!”

The Evolution of Adoption
1: Affect great puzzlement about what it’s for.
2: Contempt for those who buy/do the thing.
2b. Smugness about not using it.
3: Grudging acceptance.
4: Hysteria about a drawback: RSI, radiation poisoning, complete social breakdown.
5: They buy one but a phone that doesn’t take pictures, or a TV that isn’t flat-screen/colour.
6: They’ve all got one and boast about how many apps they’ve got and how theirs is bigger/more expensive/classier than anybody else’s.
7: They carry on as if they were the first to discover it.
8: They carry on as if they’d invented it.
9. They won’t allow that you (who have been using computers and social media for about 20 years longer than they have) know anything at all.

Once they’ve adopted the technology, Upward etiquette lags behind and they shove their camcorders into their friends’ faces while shrieking with laughter, or email vast numbers of holiday snaps, unfunny internet jokes, virus warnings or chain letters to everyone in their address books, not blinding the email addresses. If they’re not too snobbish to have Facebook accounts, they “like” a page that sends spam to all their friends.

Upwards used to be very shocked if a fellow Upward admitted listening to radio phone-ins. Now it’s Twitter and Facebook. Facebook is funded by the CIA, and Twitter lets the whole world into your living room. Upwards don’t even like to think that there are people living in the UK who aren’t Upwards. Twitter might connect you to people who live in the wrong part of West London. And Twitter was created laterally, not top-down. It’s not run by or for Upwards.

“Children… have been routinely counselled to use FB infrequently and with enormous caution, thus protecting themselves from – to name some of the more obvious traps – obesity, time wasting, stalkers, bullying, invasion of privacy, bitching, hideous embarrassment, isolation, career damage and unwitting complicity in Zuckerberg’s latest schemes for monetisation…” Catherine Bennett on FB’s sudden reinvention as a must-have, or acceptance as a normal part of life. Now it’s the people not on FB, she says, who are pathologised. Aug 12/12.

Are the middleclass parents who won't let kids join Facebook (or the 21st century) for fear of trolls and bullying the same ones who "won't wrap kids in cotton wool"? What happened to "children must learn how to manage risk"? (It’s a bit like not having a house in case you get burgled.)

“I'm not on Facebook" is the new "I don't even own a TV." @rainnwilson

Adding “xxx” to text messages “is a way to be friendly without resorting to dreadful emoticons”. Carol Midgley Times May 9 2012 I bet she went through “those dreadful mobile phones”, “those dreadful text messages” first.

Lower middle class Jen Teale has been using emoticons for years - she used to write PTL! and a smiley face on postits and stick them to the fridge (it stands for “praise the Lord”). And emoticons and acronyms were being used on “primitive” social media in the mid-80s and their origin is probably earlier. Teales moved seamlessly from home movies and holiday slides to camcorders.

And innovations are always dangerous – until they’ve been accepted and are just part of life. Microwave ovens would cook your innards if you left the door open, didn’t use “real heat” so the food wasn’t really cooked, and got as hot as a nuclear reactor (thanks to Giles Coren). TVs were bad for your eyes and killed conversation. Upwards put them in a special room (they had one to spare), and watched them from a great distance with all other light sources turned off. The game was played out again with computers: radiation, RSI, protective lead garments for pregnant women… And mobile phones give you “texter’s thumb”.

Try Googling “we finally gave in and got a”: laptop, taxi, tanning bed, gas powered mower, fake Christmas tree.

When travelling, I often bump into an elderly and aristocratic couple who want to make it quite clear that they are slumming by using the same mode of transport as ordinary people (and a cheap mode at that). They have bitter public disputes about how to use lifts or read departure boards. You meet them in self-service restaurants too, pretending to be baffled by the procedure (“You get the eating irons, Freddie.”) They are always sending one of their party off to check the departure time, bag a table, go on to John Lewis etc etc. Before mobiles, this meant a 75% risk that they’d never find each other again. But maybe that was the point: you’d either lose Araminta, or have an excuse for a lovely prolonged row in which you accused her of waiting by the wrong pillar.

“My doctor told me to drink decaffeinated tea but I can only get horrible bags. Can I get proper leaf tea that’s decaffeinated?” Letter to Times

Upwards were never going to use teabags or eat flavoured yoghourt. Ahem… Here are some innovations they used to ban – or at least hedge around with prohibitions – and now accept:

Teabags: they contained the sweepings of the factory floor.

Supermarkets: the muzak sent you into a trance and you bought more than you needed and it feels like stealing. Supermarkets were American, and so ipso facto common. Then they came round to Sainsbury’s and Waitrose because you can drive straight there and buy everything you need surrounded by like-minded people and don’t have to walk along streets and go to corner shops and mingle. They told you to shop at Sainsbury’s rather than corner shops “because it’s cheaper”. But now they’re against supermarkets again and are supporting corner shops (but they have to be delis run by people like them, not Costcutters).

Central heating: American. Dries out your nasal passages.
Ariel (bio washing powders): Cause a skin rash.
Hula hoops (the toy, not the snack): Cause slipped discs.
Miniskirts: Cause cystitis and chapped thighs.
Mobile phones/bras/deodorants: Give you cancer.
Platform shoes: Cause twisted ankles.
Sony walkmans: Cause road accidents (now it’s mobiles and soon it will be in-car television).

The Tellytubbies: Will encourage our children to speak badly. (The great Tellytubby flap is entirely forgotten and the kids are all right. Now we’re whingeing about In the Night Garden.)

The Internet: Causes sex addiction. Or just Internet addiction.

Twitter and Facebook: Encourage people to make nonexistent “friends” with thousands of people, or follow stupid “celebrities”. It will mean the death of privacy! Both Twitter and Facebook give you instant access to everybody in the world. (This one is still current.)

The Twist (it was a dance, me lud): Causes slipped discs.
Convenience food: It’s OK now you can get it at M&S.

Comics: Will stop children learning to read (and you earned a lot of brownie points if you didn’t let your children read them). Now it’s texting that will stop your children learning to spell.

Fruit-flavoured yoghourt (only plain was allowed): When yoghourt came in Upwards refused to put sugar on it. But they believed magical claims about it eg that it helps you live to 100.

And these are the people who are always complaining that the media whips up utterly unnecessary panics about paedophilia, swine flu, foot and mouth… Some (a dwindling band) still refuse to use any machine invented after 1960. More about technology refuseniks here.

Social Media in the Media

Newspaper staff are all middle-class now you need a degree and can only get a job by working unpaid as an intern for months. Here's how they react to developments in social media:

1. They’ve never heard of it.

2. They put it in quote marks and add a “popular beat combo, me lud” explanation (Twitter – the micro-blogging site).

3. They quote from it, but only the select the lamest posts/tweets.

4. They reluctantly admit that it’s where news will break.

5. They pontificate about it endlessly – what it’s going to do to our minds, society etc etc etc.

6. They invent an innovation-specific disease like texter’s thumb (“Twitter causes solipsism” Nov 16 2011)

Proper Deportment

Poor middle-class Upwards and Weybridges are constantly hectored by parents and teachers: Stand up straight! Don't slouch! Don't touch your face! Don’t put your hands on your hips! Don't bite your nails! Chewing gum is a disgusting habit! Don't push your sleeves up! Walk tall, shoulders back, step out briskly! Look people in the eye! Always have a cheerful smile! Don't look like a dying duck in a thunderstorm! Sticking out your chin was known as “poking”. Some Upwards over-compensated so far that their chin is permanently pulled into the neck like a bridling horse. (And then they had the gall to tell you to “just be yourself”.)


White Van Man walks with the “Essex swagger”, and working class girls have a slouching, sexy gait. Sharon Definitely shows her bottom teeth when she talks, and doesn’t close her mouth when she’s not talking (Samantha Upward and posh Caro Stow Crat would say she speaks “sloppily”). Sharon’s gestures are relaxed too. Upward gestures are stiff and tense.

Lower middle-class Jen Teale and Sharon open their eyes widely without smiling. Sam thinks it makes them look idiotic, but actually it’s rather sexy. Sam opens her eyes wide but smiles maniacally at the same time, or else she fixes you with a frown and an unblinking stare as she goes on at great length about the hobby horse of the moment.

Middle-middle Weybridge females have to be sensible and outgoing. Teale girls are obliged to be bubbly and animated. They sometimes have a wistful smile – sad eyes but a wide smile with lots of teeth. It goes with a gentle, breathy voice. Upward women try hard to look cheerful and laugh like hyenas at nothing, but on the whole Upwards and Stow-Crats are far less ingratiating – they don’t have to be.

Stow Crat girls used to be sent to finishing school in Switzerland, or to the Lucy Clayton model school, to learn "deportment" – when you're wearing a ball gown, you can't stride as you do across a hockey field.

British upper lips really are stiff. A smile that shows a lot of upper teeth is too “stage school”. And it might look as if you were showing off your whitened, straightened gnashers. As children, we were constantly told to shut our mouths: “Are you catching flies?” (And doors: “Were you born in a barn?”) The rationale? An open mouth made you look moronic or adenoidal - but maybe it was just common.

If you do all the “wrong” things (poke, slouch, hunch, sneer, let eyelids and mouth corners droop) you look like a porn star. Actresses on East Enders are ostentatiously slack-jawed.