Gentrification II

Middle-class Upwards are very keen on indigenous culture, and a sense of community, and a village feel, and preserving old ways of life. But they are colonising Newington Green bit by bit, and they and the original inhabitants live side by side, their lives interleaved with each other. People who live in Hathersage or Besant Court, or on the Milton Gardens estate, shop at Costcutter and have a cup of tea and a burger at Jesshops, the Flamingo or the Gate. Turkish people go to the Turkish Social Club and the Basak Patisserie. Upwards go to the Trattoria, the Acoustic, the Cellars Pub (or is it the Edinburgh?). They don't go to the Weavers, but perhaps everyone meets at the Alma, which has Sunday roasts and sport on big screens.

I've filtered pictures of the Green into Set A and Set B.

More about gentrification here. And here.

Classy Quotes Part Ten

She bought the home at a discount because the exterior was covered in pebbledash, unlike any other properties on the street. Now that it has been returned to the brick exterior the neighbourhood has breathed a collective sigh of relief. Times May 11, 2012

More than half of the current generation of young women, for instance, will choose a husband from their own social strata, according to figures last month from the Institute of Public Policy Research think-tank. Mail May 4, 2012

Throughout most of the movie the two leads go sight-seeing on the beach, at a rock quarry and other exciting locations. In between these adventures they talk endlessly about the environment, vegetarianism, fossil collecting, the duty of a proper citizen and proper diet, all things I want to see in a comedy. They bore anyone who will listen to them. imdb commenter on Nuts in May (1976) Ray and Candace-Marie are obviously Upwards.

We’ve kept the gym, the beauty salons, the bowling alley and the cinema. But we’ve only used the cinema once and I’ve never been in the pool. Petra Ecclestone, 23, Times April 2012

The 1950s were the end of the golden age of motoring. Suddenly the middle classes turned against cars… round about the time working class people could afford to drive. There’s a surprise. Simon Hoggart Guardian April 28 12

Chavs: the sort of people who live in two million pound houses with tar macadam'd drives, have neighbours and street lighting - just like the council house tenants they look down on upon. Commenter on Middle Class Handbook

Debrett’s latest guide to neighbourly etiquette draws a delicate but precise line when it suggests that neighbours should be invited only to “big parties” and “al fresco events”. In other words, you mustn’t allow them indoors by themselves and you shouldn’t know anyone who wouldn’t call a barbecue an al fresco event. Guardian March 2012

People from deprived areas visited both other deprived areas and prosperous areas … residents of better-off communities… tended to only visit other privileged neighbourhoods. New Scientist April 2012



Classy Quotes Part Nine.

Part Eight here.

More here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here.

Class and the Telly

Middle class people want fame and fortune, but they also want respectability, and that severely limits the [TV] shows they're willing to go on. (Friend RK writes)

Upper middle-class Upwards accepted television in this order: no TV, black and white, colour, set in a separate room (possibly called a twee name like “the snug”), set in the living room. (Then there were the "only BBC2, no ITV" variations.) They’re not yet ready for the Definitelies' wide-screen plasma, or the Nouveau-Richards' vast wall-filling flat-screen disguised by a picture that slides away at the touch of a button. They couldn’t possibly have anything in their house that rose, sank, opened or closed at the touch of a button. Samantha Upward is so glad those awful dimmer switches have gone out.

Upwards pretend not to understand Freeview, and despise cable. Only one person in the family knows how to turn the telly on. In the days of video, they never worked out how to set the timer, or the clock. (But they’ve all got iPads and smartphones.) You can sit on a sofa to watch their telly, but it’s never big or comfortable enough.

The Upwards and the middle-class Weybridges never got round to having a second set in the kitchen and whinge endlessly about their husbands hogging the remote and watching sport when they want to watch costume dramas. The Nouveau-Richards have cable piped to every room and everyone has their own telly they can watch their own choice on.

The Weybridges used to keep the Radio Times in a leathercraft cover, or an arts and crafts magazine rack. Their telly lived in a teak effect cabinet with doors that closed. They now buy an entire teak effect unit with slots for hifi and CDs – there are still doors that close over the telly. And I’m sure you can get one in antique repro style to match the rest of the furniture.

Posh Caro Stow-Crat puts her telly on an antique piece of furniture to one side of the fireplace so it doesn’t disturb her sofa arrangement (her sofas are arranged in a hollow square with the fireplace as the fourth side).

Some Upward professors still call it “the tele-vizzeeeon” or complain that the word is a Greek/Latin hybrid.

Classy Quotes Part Nine

Like bankers, landlords have mythical evil status among a certain class of Guardian readers, who seem to think anyone who has had a bit of success has done so by sacrificing babies at full moon. Letter to Guardian Money 11 Feb 12

I had a friend who wore pearls all the time, thinking she looked elegant. She spoke of eloquently of music, travel, fashion, cuisines and tried to speak a French word or two. She managed to get into parties and certain social circles. elegantwoman.com

A lot of Britain's problems are encapsulated in the very fact that politicians feel perfectly comfortable pontificating so patronisingly about "ordinary people" at all. Yet they all do it. Labour even boasts that it's "ordinary people" that the party exists to champion. Deborah Orr, Guardian January 2012

Reminds me of an overheard at the open-air art show in Hampstead. Cute little girl, about five, looking at pictures: "Oh Mummy, here's an effective one!" (Friend RN writes)

John Lanchester braves the shopping hell that is Oxford Street Guardian headline 16 Dec 2011

Clissold House café, run by Company of Cooks, will sell "beef and horseradish stew and leek and Barkham blue tart". It will also sell "curious cakes such as beetroot & seed and orange & lavender" @northsixteen (After a "class war", it has promised to sell cheaper food including beans/cheese on toast.)

To put my Peppa-mania into context; when I was growing up I wasn't allowed to watch what my mother sniffily referred to as "commercial television", a marvellous snootiness I have nursed ever since when it comes to my children, partly because I was reared on BBC 2 worthiness, and partly because it prevents them hyperventilating over adverts for electronic toys I'm too mean to buy them. Daily Telegraph Dec 2011

Richmond - an affluent suburb of London that was quickly changing from old money into a ghetto for post-apartheid South African exiles, American business execs and semi-retired rock stars. I think my mother was the last working-class person to grow up in Richmond. There should be some sort of plaque on her old house. Age of Uncertainty, March 2012

Part Eight here. More here, here, here, here and here. And here. And here.

Doctor, doctor!

A very grand woman goes to a psychoanalyst. He says: “Now I want you to say whatever comes into your head.” She replies: “I was just thinking what a common little man you are.”Surveys show support for alternative medicine is “more likely among well-educated, upper middle-class women” in the US and Australia, says Cosmos magazine.

Middle-class Samantha Upward complains that doctors use too many military metaphors, but talks about people “battling” cancer. She and her friend Eileen Weybridge from Surrey also “fight off” colds by taking paracetamol (which makes them feel better but does nothing to shorten the cold).

Sam supports alternative therapies and can’t follow the logic behind double-blind trials - she thinks they’re a conspiracy and can’t understand why doctors don’t prescribe placebos if they work so well. She says antibiotics “only suppress the symptoms” because she doesn’t read the instructions to finish the course even if you feel better. When she feels better, she stops taking the tablets and the symptoms come back (because the bugs that cause the symptoms haven’t all been killed and are now breeding again). She doesn’t mind revealing that she doesn’t know what “antibiotic” means. She’s very against treating symptoms because you should be treating the whole person and besides suffering is good for you.

She won’t do what doctors tell her, either, because she’s a member of the boss class and it’s her job to tell others what to do. No wonder she’s hopeless with computers, and can’t put IKEA furniture together or learn a skill.

Forty years ago, Upwards had a theory that all symptoms were caused by toxins working their way out of the system. So you should never take Imodium for diarrhoea. They used to be contemptuous of people who took “patent medicines” (probably over the counter aspirins). The were outraged by the idea that people could just go and buy something that would make their pain go away. Why weren’t these things being rationed by Upwards? Why weren’t Upwards in control?

When women writers for The Guardian have a baby they are the first person in the history of the world to undergo the experience: “All my life I’ve been used to being in control—at school, passing exams, university, relationships, planning my career!” And now they’re being bossed about by common nurses and midwives, and in the grip of a natural process.

When Sam’s friends are ill, they have to be positive because it’s faith that cures you. They have to have a story to tell about going to a homeopath and encouraging the body to heal itself because of course they “don’t want to take drugs all their lives”. (It may just be a story.)

Elderly Weybridges despise those who “go to the doctor for every little thing”. They decide their ailment is minor, and they refuse to understand that their taxes pay the doctor’s salary, and if nobody ever consulted him he’d be out of a job. Lower middle class Jen Teale doesn’t want to “bother” the doctor, and is afraid of wasting his time. But some Weybridges can turn any health chat into a discussion of waiting times. They join health insurance schemes like BUPA that promise waiting rooms like hotel lobbies and a whole hour with the doctor.

Sam agrees that doctors don't give you enough time. She can’t afford BUPA, but she’ll go to any alt. practitioner who’ll listen to her. The NHS is too democratic — anyone can get the same treatment — except that if you are a Guardian reader doctors tell you much too much about your ailment. Also doctors know better than you and may tell you to lose weight, drink less and give up smoking. They aren't paid to massage your ego, but you can always pay an alt. medic to do that. Homeopathy is better than the NHS because you get a half-hour chat about the uniqueness of you. Plus it’s a treatment you have chosen.

For Upwards, illness is a wonderful opportunity to feel guilty for being weak enough to be ill in the first place. Even though they love being in control, many Upwards can’t be ill unless someone in authority tells them they are. Or else they suffer from Reverse Munchausen’s Syndrome by Proxy - they won’t let anybody else be ill, either. They accuse each other of having "sniffles" rather than real flu, and may send their friends to psychotherapists to find out “why they chose to be ill”. Fatalists they are not.

Posh Stow Crats and Upwards loved the word “neurotic” and loved using it as a stick to beat each other with. Upwards in particular should never have been allowed near the word “psychosomatic” – what Stow Crats call “making a silly fuss”.

Gideon Upward refuses to go to bed when ill but hangs around the house waiting for any passing female to treat him like a baby, because that’s what his mother did. Jen infantilises any patient and uses words like “meddy” and “tummy” – or even “tum-tum”.

Jen eats probiotic yoghourt. Like the women in the ads, she uses the genteel euphemism “bloating” for constipation. She’s not ashamed of using Buttercup cough syrup, with its nauseating advertising jingle. Sam calls it “cough mixture”, Caroline Stow-Crat “cough medicine”.

Jen says self-righteously: “I don’t take tablets.” Caro calls them pills, Sam calls them “drugs”, and thinks they’re all the product of a conspiracy by pharmaceutical companies to medicalise life - and sometimes she’s right. Eileen refers to her “medication”. Caro still believes health myths that are 50 years out of date – Vitamin C cures colds, aspirins help you sleep, but you shouldn’t take painkillers because you’ll get “used to” them, and when you really need them they won’t work. Or do you become dependent on them? (This may be a folk memory of times when laudanum was available over the counter.) Very posh people fall for “marvellous little men” operating weird black boxes, and trust anyone with an address in Harley Street.

All classes go into work with terrible colds and give them to everybody else on the tube, train and bus and in the office, despite advice to the contrary. They hope their colleagues will tell them to go home and take some days off, but they have to prove their genuine illness first. If they call in sick, they put on a croaky voice even if they’ve got appendicitis or ingrowing toenails. This is so the colleague on the other end of the phone can say “Yes, you do sound a bit rough.” If Jen’s embarrassed to explain what’s wrong with her, she says she’s got a migraine. (If you don’t have an explanation, your colleagues will think you aren’t ill at all, so you have to be prepared with a) symptoms and b) how you are treating them. Of course it’s easy to make all this up. Cue anecdotes about employees who insisted on taking their entire quota of sick days as of right.)

Say It With Flowers

If middle-class Samantha Upward gives people flowers she has them wrapped in paper, not cellophane.

It’s difficult to find bouquets that aren’t in trendy colours like purple and green (including ornamental cabbage) which are probably grown in the third world and involve air miles and a union-less labour force. In the 80s Samantha loved flowers hand-dried in a shed in Norfolk by somebody with a double-barrelled surname, especially those giant seed heads. They were a terrible dust trap and were eventually thrown out never to be replaced.

According to John O'Farrell in Things Can Only Get Better, in the 80s some people were so politically correct that they thought flowers were right-wing. I really did know someone who thought cut flowers were murder.

Eileen Weybridge, or possibly her husband Howard, creates elaborate arrangements with dead leaves and red berries that last all winter. Nature morte, or what Sam sneeringly calls “dead life”. Bryan Teale buys Jen a bunch of daffodils from a street stall or petrol station. She cuts off the ends and puts them in a plain glass square vase and may call them “blooms”. Her women’s magazines used to have flower-arranging tips but now they’re just full of celebrity gossip. She also has a floor vase with sticks or curly twigs that she bought at a knick knack shop near the London Dungeon. Eileen puts rosebuds in a green glass bud vase.

Pound shops still sell plastic flowers, so somebody must be buying them. Slightly passé cafés and unsuccessful businesses have papery fake greenery impersonating trees in a tub in the foyer or creepers around the dado. The cafés also have lustre-cum-marble tiles and diamond-shaped mirrors. And the failing businesses have 20-year-old pink and grey carpet tiles. They'll get "listed" status one day (maybe not the carpet tiles).

The Definitelies leave bunches of flowers (still wrapped in cellophane) outside royal residences and at the sites of local murders with handwritten messages (MISS U 4EVER UR A STAR IN HEVEN LIL ANGEL). The Upwards shudder and write complaining articles in the broadsheets. It offends them on several counts:

showing emotion in public
caring about someone you don't know
plastic is unnatural and made of chemicals
it looks untidy
it reminds them that the non-Upwards they share these islands with are far more numerous than they are

“Public sentiment has evolved its own crude form [of mourning] – bouquets are left in their cellophane to show they were shop-bought, not humble cut flowers. This un-English sentimentality dates, of course, to the mass hysteria that followed Diana’s death, when Kensington palace was turned into a charnel house of putrescent daffs.” Spectator, July 31 2004

You Are What You Eat III

Middle-class Upwards all go on the January detox because we all drink and eat too much in December – don’t we? But it’s not enough to give up drink – they insist on going on very exclusive diets. Exclusive as in “excluding most food groups”. They spend January munching a mixture of swedes, lentils and pumpkin seeds washed down with spring water, which makes them miserable and depressed. They keep falling off the wagon and eating chocolate biscuits washed down with chardonnay but their spirit, their self-image and their reputation have had a massive hit of Puritanism and they’ve had the fun of boring on (and on, and on and ON) about it and even writing articles about it in the broadsheets. They don't really like self-denial, but they love the attention-seeking. (But isn't it just what we used to call a "slimming diet"?)

Sam still suffers a faint twinge of Puritanism when she hears or reads of somewhere being a holiday destination because of its “great restaurants”. She knows we’ve moved on from “food is just fuel for the body”, and plain boiled cabbage, potatoes and cold mutton, but… visiting somewhere just for the food? Are we allowed to do that? Even though we fuss about food 25% of the time? (That may be a junk statistic.)

Upwards also shudder at the American use of “restaurant” to mean a fast-food joint. You dress up to go to a restaurant, and expect to find polite waiters who treat you like members of the aristocracy, velvet-covered chairs, linen napkins and French food. Otherwise you specify the country of origin. You expect Italian and Greek places to be cheaper and more relaxed, but they’re still restaurants. Chinese restaurants are quite downmarket unless you go for a region, like Szechuan Cuisine (this may be rather 80s). Upwards and Weybridges haven’t quite got to grips with Japanese restaurants - there may not be any in Winchester – but Teales are game. They’ve come a long way since they regarded pizza and paella with suspicion in the 70s.

Upwards also wince whenever an acquaintance says they have “given up dairy”. It’s “dairy products” - but you can’t say that either, because only someone trying to sell you something would use the word “product”. Falling for silly diets is a middle class thing – they can afford the expensive nutritionist who tells all his clients to give up dairy, gluten and relatives of the deadly nightshade. (It used to be leavened bread and alcohol, as all clients were diagnosed with candidiasis. Next year, who knows?)

Doctors recently advised us to drink moderately, eat sensibly and exercise all year round - but where's the fun in that?

Part One here.
Part Two here.