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.

Romance and Sex, the British Way

The lower and lower middle classes, the Definitelys and the Teales, have proximal relationships (they’re friends with people who happen to be nearby). The rest have distal relationships (they’re friends with people who live miles away but are the right kind).

Sharon, Jen and Bryan hang out with people they work with or go to school with (or fight alongside in wars), or who live in the same close. When their kids go to the local school, they meet other parents. Upwards, Weybridges and Stow-Crats choose their friends (in fact they are much more choosy), and have to make much more of an effort to “keep in touch”. They can’t meet very often but when they do “it’s good to catch up”.

Romance
You can get Commitment rings from the Freemans catalogue and “affinity jewellery” from high street shops. Couples don’t give engagement parties any more, but they “make a commitment”, possibly inventing their own ritual – except for the Upwards, who don't do "romance theatre". Their love lives are deliberately drab. They're very suspicious of romance and always have been. They don’t dance barefoot in the park, they discuss the state of their relationship or give each other poetry books. They think Valentine’s Day is a commercial plot (imported from America!). They don’t say “I love you” because it’s a cliché. They’d sooner eat a Macdonald’s hamburger than have their proposal put up on a railway departures board, or towed behind a plane, or announced by a Radio 1 DJ.

Upwards don't really do dating, either, but who does? Forty years ago Upwards were - or pretended to be - terribly worried about what to call people's live-in lovers. They didn't think living together was illegal or immoral (and besides, they liked to think of themselves as unconventional), but how would you introduce these people at a party? Nobody says “live-in lover” any more. They use non Upward terms like Significant Other or just SO or partner. The truth was that Upwards couldn’t say “boyfriend” and probably still can’t. They desperately tried alternatives like young man or fellow. (How antique that sounds. There's nothing so distant as the recent past. The really distant past sounds quite like now.)

Sex
Sharon has a bunch of mates who live nearby. They've known each since primary school. Every Friday or Saturday night they all “go out” in a group, spending hours getting ready – plastering on fake tan all over, spraying on glitter and climbing into tiny outfits. They go out to a “club” where they pretend to pole dance, fall about, scream and laugh like hyenas. It’s just a mating display. They may pull and have sex with a drunken stranger. They either never see him again or immediately become an item and marry him in a few years.

The Upward children have to go to university to do all this, minus the fake tan and pole dancing. They go through a prolonged adolescence and then have a horrible “came the dawn” moment in their early 30s when they realise that everyone else in the club is 16 and all their friends have paired off and got mortgages and there’s nobody spare for them.

Or else they wake up and go “Omigod, I’m married with two kids! How did that happen!” If male, they immediately have an affair with someone rather plain and vulnerable. They claim to be madly in love on the lines of Dante and Beatrice or Abelard and Heloise, and then they betray themselves to their wives accidentally on purpose and all three go to therapists. The men stay with their wives, who tell all their friends that Gideon had an awful time with a dreadful neurotic woman who threw herself at him.

The Nouveau Richards stay with their husbands because they don’t want to become the Nouveau Pauvre and not get invited to dinner parties any more. If Mr Definitely has an affair, his girlfriend turns up on his wife’s doorstep and tells her all about it. Mrs D then shoves all his belongings into black plastic bags, puts them out with the dustbins, and changes the locks.

Teales, of course, are sensible. They don’t have to follow those restricting Upward rules about being spontaneous and different. They’re the ones who say: “We’ve got a five-year plan: we’re going to go to America, earn some money, come back, buy a house, have kids.” But then Jen reads in a magazine that you're supposed to leave a trail of nightlights and rose petals up the stairs to entice your husband to your bedroom, which is decorated neatly but impersonally like a boutique hotel - and full of scented candles. (The boutique hotel effect is achieved with a folded quilt laid in a wide stripe over the middle of the bed.) You then massage each other amateurishly – with scented oil - and spend hours in foreplay. (But perhaps "massage" is a euphemism.) This is called “putting the sparkle back in your marriage.” No wonder husbands become addicted to lapdancing clubs and Internet porn.

The Squeezed Middle

Dear Caro, I had lunch recently with my cousin Rowena (she used to be Rachel, I can’t understand why she changed it). She lives in a ghastly ranch-style 50s house outside Haslemere in a “close” of other houses exactly the same. They don’t have fences round their front lawns, and Rowena has a clump of pampas grass in the middle of hers! The house has a cat-slide roof and a chimney built out of boulders. We really don’t have much in common. Love, Samantha

Samantha: Apparently everybody – 71% – thinks they’re middle class now apart from the 24% who think they’re working class. There was some survey recently… (BritainThinks, April 2011). So why is “middle class” a term of abuse? And Ed Miliband calls us the “squeezed middle” and Nick Clegg says we can have mobility too… I’m confused!

Rowena: Well I think mobility is a marvellous idea! I intend to save money by moving down the social scale.

Sam: Downsize! Simplify! Declutter! We’ll holiday in Cornwall…

Rowena: Prestatyn – the caravan park.

Sam: …an unspoilt fishing village. And I’ll rip out those awful eighties kitchen units and just have a wooden table and a dresser. And make all my own bread…

Rowena: Did I show you my lovely kitchen I got out of a skip? Genuine 50s budgie blue!

Sam: And we can eat peasant food – polenta, rocket…

Rowena: How about British peasant food?

Sam: Bath chaps? Melton Mowbray pies?

Rowena: Bacon rolls with brown sauce, chips with everything – have you seen my deep fat fryer? More tea?

Sam: I don’t suppose you have any Earl Grey?

Rowena: Sorry, only got PG Tips.

Sam: And we can swap our clothes with friends – or update them with bright embroidery – or buy French children’s school overalls – there’s no need to follow fashion – find a style that suits you – dress for yourself…

Rowena: I’m getting all my clothes from Primark now. And the kids love the local secondary.

Sam: The “kids”! (shudder) But what about university?

Rowena: They’ll be much better off learning a skill –

Sam: Stone masonry? Textile restoration?

Rowena: Hairdressing, plumbing. And I think Gareth has a talent for designing video games.

Sam: Gareth! (shudder) I thought you called him George at a Humanist naming ceremony.

Rowena: Oh, we’re Catholics now! First Communions are soooooo tacky!

Sam: (shakes head sadly) I still don’t understand why “middle class” is an insult. And somebody called me “terribly English” the other day – I don’t think he meant it kindly.

Rowena: Cheer up – have some more tea – genuine Melmex camping ware from ebay! Don’t you just adore melamine?

Sam: Maybe I'd better be off to the station - don't want to miss the 4.50 to Waterloo.

How to Talk Posh IV

Here are some phrases to weave into your conversation (continued from How to Talk Posh, II and III):

...of catastrophic proportions
...whatever that means!
...who has so far eluded us

a bit iffy
a bit insalubrious
a bit of a frost
a bit uncalled for
a certain hollowness
a distinct disadvantage

abiding pleasures
absolute hell
absolutely
ace
actually
ah, the classic ....
all very fine and large
an absolutely ghastly hat
an immense amount
and then we foregather at the cottage
answer came there none
apparently...
appears to have
appropriate
Apslootly! (absolutely)
aquapuncture (for acupuncture)
as far as I'm concerned
as I recall
as is my wont
at a low ebb
attain
august journal
awfully

And here's how to be genteel...

back on an even keel
bailing me out
bang in the middle
banking on
belated attempt
bitten by the hang-gliding bug AB
bog (for toilet)
bore a striking resemblance
boring beyond belief
bowels of the earth
bring forth
budding laureates
bunged me into hospital
burning issues of the day

chilled to the bone
Choosez!
classic error
cockers pee (for cocktail party)
come down with Dutch elm disease (references are always out of date)
come Michaelmas
commensurate with
commme d'habitude
copious amounts of...
cost a bomb
crackling merrily
crashing bore
cringingly embarrassing
cripes
crumbs
crush/bash/thrash/throng (for party)

Dare I say it
darkest Pimlico
dead chuffed
deathly hush
deemed
depression sets in
despite
dindins
dire
discerned
disembark in the nick of time
dispiriting (it was all rather dispiriting)
distinct impression (I got the distinct impression)
dizzy heights
do a X
doing your slightly insulting number/bit
Don’t be damned stupid.
Don’t make life difficult
Don’t talk to ME about...
Don't all speak at once!
down in the bowels of the earth
down with bubonic plague
drastically reduced
draw a veil over
dreadfully
driven barmy

eating irons (knives and forks)
emboldened to ask
engrossed in a book
ensconced in the sitting room
epitome
evinced
excellent
exceptionally stroppy
excessively
exhortation
exorbitantly

faintly off her head
fallen by the wayside
far-flung
fashionable
fell on stony ground
fester
filthy lucre
flare up
follow suit
for my sins
for some unknown and obscure reason
for the nonce
force to be reckoned with
frantic search
from cover to cover
from some august, farflung journal
frozen north

galore
gave him bottled hell
gave up the unequal struggle
generous allocation
ghastly
given that...
given the boot
go berserk
God forbid!
golly
golly gosh!
gosh
got lumbered with

haven't got a bean
hells bells
hence
hides a multitude of sins
hold the fort
How are you? Oh, surviving.
How very enterprising of them!
humongous
Hysteria's a funny thing.

I am in a position to...
I assumed a nightdress
I begin to revive
I can already hear a chorus of
I do see what you mean.
I dread to think
I endeavour to...
I find dressing up a bit of a grind. AB
I haul myself out of bed with reluctance
I knew not how
I KNOW
I may well do
I mean
I must be getting forgetful in my old age.
I nearly had a heart attack
I plucked it gingerly from the mat
I promise to throw myself into a veritable frenzy of epistolary efficiency forthwith.
I rather gathered that.
I read with interest
I say
I simply loathe... (overstatement)
I suppose
I surely will do
I take your meaning
I think
I thrust her lunch at her and she departs
I volunteered/vouchsafed the information that
I wander around the garden
I was literally petrified.
I was riveted.
I was somewhat irate.
I wonder if Michael Portillo's going to be there with collecting bucket (Web overheard)
I’ll do just that
I’ll have a dekko
I’m all for...
I’m doing a spot of accounting
I’m first and foremost a...
I’m literally...
I’ve just had the most hideous thought
if they so wished
I'll do a recce
I'm all for...
I'm first and foremost a...
I'm going to be inundated. (A lot of people are coming to stay with me.)
I'm literally...

immersed in a newspaper
immoderately
improve the shining hour
in a funny sort of way
in durance vile
in evidence/much in evidence
in full swing
in hot pursuit
in one fell swoop
in orbit
in that quarter
In the dim and distant past
in the fullness of time
in the nick of time

indulge in: heavy petting, horseplay, the most extraordinary antics in order to get noticed, ritual slaughter, feminist politics...

inexpressibly dreary
inflict: I don’t want to inflict myself on you
initially
inmost secrets
inordinately
intensely
intrepid new members

It was a bonus.
It was a major event (something utterly trivial)

keep sane
keeping/putting a brave face on it
kind of
kiss of death
laden with various foodstuffs
learnt a particularly painful lesson
less than charitable
like a lost soul
looks like a deranged tortoise
looks like the wrath of God/a bomb has hit it/ the wreck of the Hesperus
Lord help us!

made the effort to put pen to paper
making inroads into the mashed potatoes
manoeuvre yourself
marked lack of success
mass exodus
migrating throng
mindblowingly awful
mindless monotony of strikes/violence
more accomplished
much given to
muttered something about...

my epic novel
My eyes have been opened.
my own humble opinionmyriad activities

nearest and dearest
neck of the woods
no bones broken
No names, no pack drill
No thank you very much!
not exactly a howling successnot madly...
not particularly edifying
not very inspiring
nothing would induce me to
numerous

of any description
of catastrophic proportions
of that nature
Oh, my sainted aunt!
on a bed of sickness
on its last legs
on the blink
on these occasions
one dreads...
one of life’s abiding pleasures
only a solitary Oxfam shop
or whatever
or words to that effect
organised chaos

our illustrious/humble abode/palatial residence
our venture
out of all proportion
outrageously
overwhelming support
overwhelmingly ghastly
owing to the exigencies of two small children...

palatial
Panic not!
panic stations
paraphernalia
park your bottom
part of the world (place)
peace supervened
peculiarly revolting
pertains to
perusing

positively gasping (hungry)
prepared to divulge
profuse apologiesprofusely grateful
quite astonishingly horrid
quite considerably
quite why...

rather grim
really
residing
resonates
round off

screech to halt
See you anon!
seem to
seems to be a sort of
seriously
She always looks a hollow million.
She finally attains the phone
sheer coincidence
sick of the palsy
sit thee down
Sit ye down/sit yourself down
sleeping the sleep of the just
slightly spectacular style (litotes)
so hungry we were positively gasping
somewhat tatty and wormeaten

sort of
sort of thing
speculation was rife
sprogs
squirelly bananas (mad)
staggeringly nasty
stick out like a sore thumb
stood awkwardly to attentionstrangely enough
stricken in years
strict instructions
Stygian gloom
such a bore
such was my alacrity in grabbing these proffered sums of money
suitably contrite
summon up the energy
sundry
superannuated

take a pew
tend to
thank you very much
that was my master plan
the apparatus (knives and forks)
the bitter end
the classic symptoms
the contemporary opera thing
the domestic front
the dreaded...
the frozen north
the habits of a lifetime
the infamous...
the kiss of death
the lesser spotted...
the mysterious/dreaded/famous/infamous...
the order of the day
the proverbial (not a proverb)
the scales fell from my eyes

there was this man
therefore
they are mostly bills which I glance at with a shudder
they demolished the...
they stood awkwardly to attention
thin on the ground
things seem to tend to
this I do insist
this must be one of these ... we hear so much about these days
thrilled/thrilling
thus
to all intents and purposes
two of the more notable members of the...

undaunted
under duress
under strict instructions
unduly
unearthed
unremittingly
utterly riveting

various esteemed mandarins peered forth gloomily
vast sums
very much
virtually
waxing lyrical
We are not alone in ...
we glean from
we had a pile up of catastrophic proportions
weighty tomes
Well may it
Well, quite.
well-earned rest
wet/weed/twit/nit
whatever that means!
whereby
Who was possessed of...
who/which has so far eluded us
whole bang shoot
whole shooting match
whopping great
will remain permanently etched upon my consciousness
with impunity
with their customary alacrity
with which we shall be inundated
within the august portals
without undue effort
world class sweetie
Worry not!
would not come amiss
writhing in an agony of indecision

X has taken a dim view
X is in a bit of a state
xxxs galore
yonks

And here's how to be genteel...

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.