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.

Class and the Olympics

Upper-class Stow-Crats go in for eventing and dressage, sailing, sculling, badminton, rowing, canoeing, clay pigeon shooting, fencing and archery. They clap politely at sporting events, as do Upwards and Weybridges. These groups all eat picnics they have brought themselves.


Upper-middle Upwards play tennis and run marathons, but they never, ever become Olympic athletes – they don’t know how. They wouldn’t know where to find the canoe club. Or if they did, they wouldn’t let their children join because the other members might be common. They talked about escaping the Olympic “madness” and “craziness”, but then they got drawn into it. However, they’re outraged by how noisy sporting events are – everybody shouts all the time, and there’s loud disco music.

Middle-middle Weybridges are into tennis, golf and sailing. If they live in the provinces, they put their children in for music competitions and ballet exams. When the kids grow up, they go to salsa classes to meet people. Weybridges love Wimbledon, but they think women tennis players who shriek when they serve should be banned.

Lower-middle Teales become Olympic athletes. They are far-sighted and do their research. When they find out what's required (ten years of getting up at dawn to swim laps), they are hard-working and dedicated. They support family members who want to train as rowers. They clap and occasionally shout at sporting events – they also wave flags, wear wigs and dress up. 

Working-class Definitely sports are running, boxing, judo, aikido, taekwondo, wrestling and gymnastics. At sporting events, they yell, scream, jump up and down, paint their faces in the national colours, wave misspelled home-made banners, drink beer, and eat fast food.

Like wars, massive sporting events force the classes to mix. And then they all have rather a good time. They may even find they like each other.

What to Say...

Gustave Flaubert collected the witterings of the bourgeoisie into a book called A Dictionary of Received Ideas (it was published after his death). He subtitled it "What to say in order to be accepted as a member of polite society". Like him, I have collected the sayings of the top people and turned them into mini ebooks. First How to Talk Posh (or how the posh talk):

And now Clichés: A Dictionary of Received Ideas:

It's a mine of misinformation, and tells you What to Say About practically any topic, or What to Say When almost anything occurs.

Here's a sample:

Bagpipes: exist only in Scotland.
Cards: Each king in a deck of playing cards represents a great leader from history.
Center Parcs: Each park is enclosed in a giant, transparent weather-proof dome.
Dr Who: His new companion is always a feisty modern girl for our times, unlike Jo, Sarah Jane, Ace etc.
Facebook: Interactions are shallow because they're only a lot of noughts and ones.
Germs: Encouraged to breed by sudden changes in the weather.
Humanists: Worship Man.
Jokes: There are only eight jokes.
Mona Lisa: The one in the Louvre is a copy.

Keep Cool and Classy

Update: It’s so hot in the summer of 2020 that Brits are seriously talking about installing air-conditioning at home. They may come round to it, as they eventually embraced central heating, despite both being “American”. Unfortunately aircon contributes to global warming, and uses a lot of electricity. Americans are not “soft”, or more practical than the Brits – electricity is much cheaper there.

I remember ads on the tube for portable aircon units from the 70s and 80s – but that was before most offices were air-conditioned. In the summer we opened windows and turned on large fans. In an office or hall with no opening windows, turning on the aircon can be perilous. Sometimes it gets switched off because "draughts give you flu". As a teenager, I got on a bus on the hottest day of the year. Opposite me on the bench seat were three ladies in thick woollen overcoats. Sweltering, I opened a window. They frowned and said, “Are you warm? We are not!”

More tips for keeping your cool:

Sleep under a damp sheet, dampen your nightie.

Turn your room heater to “cool”, and place a tray of ice in its path.

Buy a plant spray, fill it with water and spritz yourself.

Direct the plant spray at the fan for a cooling mist.

Make a room spray by combining vodka and a few drops of essential oil in a small pump-action bottle. Spritz yourself, and direct at the fan. (Don't try drinking the scented vodka.)

If you have sash windows, open them top and bottom. Warm air exits through the top slot, cool air enters through the bottom slot. (From 50 Ways to Save the Planet, Sian Berry)

A friend advises: On a still, hot day, shut the windows and draw the curtains to create a cool interior. This is why Mediterranean houses have external window shutters. (You can also close the shutters and open the windows.) We could also borrow European tiled floors.

Upwards used to despise cold drinks, but in the 18th century these were thought to cause malaria. And in the colonies, ice in drinks might give you dysentery.

In hot weather, aristocratic Caro wears a linen dress, with a cardigan for the chilly evenings. She shudders at people who reveal “acres of sunburned flesh”. Young Stow Crats used to wear a jersey slung over their shoulders capewise, or with the sleeves tied loosely round the neck (never round the waist). Caro says “Create a through draught by opening doors and windows, and take up the (beautiful, Persian) rugs in the hall – York stone flags are so cool.” She makes her own lemonade using a recipe from Mrs Beeton. (1/2 pint cold water, juice of one lemon, 1/4 tsp bicarb, castor sugar to taste. Add the lemon-juice to the water, sweeten, stir in the bicarb and drink while the mixture is effervescing.)

Upper middle-class Upwards who live in Hampstead open the trunk where they keep all the summer clothes they’ve had for 30 years and take out an old cotton number which they wear with thick, flat, brown Clarks sandals. They are so out they're in, but they don't care. They drink Pimm's.

Lower middle-class Jen Teale says she’s got a tan in Morocco when she’s just gone lobster and damaged her skin. She drinks Campari and soda.

Samantha Upward can’t sunbathe because it’s a capitalist plot so she remains very white, like a Victorian lady. But she can’t take practical steps to keep cool (problem-solving is so goal-oriented!). She can’t wear a baseball cap to keep the sun out of her eyes because they’re American. She may wear a floppy hat, but fears friends will laugh at her. She could wear a straw hat from the Boden catalogue (called "Molly"), but only as a fashion statement. She can’t fan herself with a fan – she might draw attention to herself. She drinks Rocks elderflower, made very weak. She avoids fizzy drinks - there's something particularly corporate about the bubbles. And she can’t have an electric fan in her home. She is still convinced she's a rebel and a free spirit. When her husband Gideon cracks and buys some electric fans, she's still wailing "But a low setting will keep you cooler - and use less electricity - and save the planet - and think of the bills!" She's mortified that Gideon sits right next to the thing.

Working-class Sharon Definitely has one of those battery-powered hand fans and says “It’s really warm today!” (Upwards and Stow Crats say “hot” because they call a spade a spade.) She wears thong panties under white trousers.

Bohemian Arkana Upward (now Gardenchild) is thinking of building herself a Yemeni adobe house with thick clay walls. She'll call it the Adobe Abode. She drinks iced nettle tea made of real nettles.

Very Bohemian Rowena Upward carries a Japanese parasol and has a selection of beautiful fans. She installs a windcatcher on her roof and drinks Fanta.

Sharon and her friends go to the beach and get drunk and leave all their rubbish behind. Samantha and her friends have great fun picking it up and tutting. Thalia Upward goes beach litter-picking and makes a lot of posters and T shirts reading BAG YOUR LITTER AND TAKE IT HOME. Who knows, might work!

What Your House Name Reveals

What do you call your dog, house, children? Consumer classification company Mosaic will know.


Upper-middle-class Upwards avoid names like Holmeleigh - they sound too cosily made up. Over-complicated names, especially with added yyyys, are a failed attempt to look classy.

Manors and stately homes were called Something House (park, hall, court, castle, manor, place), or they had a single name like Pencarrow, Sezincote, Tyntesfield or Cotehele. Farms were often called after the family that owned them (Robinsons). But when the suburbs copy, these naming conventions become taboo to Upwards and Stow Crats.

So what can Samantha Upward call her house? Not “Thistledome” painted on a wooden slab in the shape of a dolphin. Or anything on a cast-iron plaque also featuring painted flowers and/or kittens. Or carved on a board in pseudo-Celtic lettering. Lower-middle-class Jen Teale adds a “via” to her address and puts the name of her house (if it’s got one) in quote marks. At the end of letters, she signs herself “Jennifer Teale (Mrs.)”.

If you live in a stately home called Beaulieu (pronounced Bewley), that’s OK. If you inherit a house name that’s fairly plain and descriptive (The Pines, Orchard End, Eden House – after someone who built it or lived there) you can keep it. Anything twee (The Nook, Honeysuckle Cottage) should be avoided, unless you actually live in a nook draped with honeysuckle. The Old Mill is descriptive, and The Old Electricity Substation might have some cachet. Inner-city converted warehouses proudly display names like Perseverance Works, or The Chocolate Factory. (“Factories” now produce art and music.)

Here are the UK’s Top 50 house names from the Halifax House Names Survey of 2003:

The Cottage
Rose Cottage
The Bungalow
The Coach House
Orchard House
The Lodge
Woodlands
The Old School House
Ivy Cottage
The Willows
The Barn
The Old Rectory
Hillside
Hillcrest
The Croft
The Old Vicarage
Orchard Cottage
Yew Tree Cottage
The Laurels
The Old Post Office
The Gables
The Hollies
The Beeches
The First
Woodside
Meadow View
The Stables
The White House
Holly Cottage
Willow Cottage
Highfield
The Haven
Fairview
White Cottage
Mill House
The Orchard
Treetops
Primrose Cottage
The Granary
The Nook
Corner Cottage
School House
Greenacres
The Old School
Honeysuckle Cottage
Lilac Cottage
Wayside
Oaklands

Of this list, most will pass with the Upwards, apart from The Haven, Fairview, Treetops, Greenacres, Wayside and Oaklands, which have a whiff of seaside bungalow or golf course. You can imagine an Agatha Christie mystery happening in any of them. (Inspector Spence retired to sandy, Home Counties Pine Ridge.)

Retired middle-class Weybridges live at: Badgers Cottage, Cuckoo Cottage, Curlew Cottage, Dolphin Cottage, Fox Hollow, Kestrels, Magpies, Mole End, Nightingale Cottage, Robin Hill, Rookery Nook, Squirrels Leap, Swallow Barn, The Jays. The Nouveau-Richards live at Two Hoots.

Countrified Upwards live at: Orchard House, The Orchard, Woodlands, Treetops, Oaklands, The Willows, Yew Tree Cottage, The Laurels, The Hollies, The Beeches and The Firs.

Golfing Weybridges live at: Hillside, Hillcrest, Sunnyside, Woodside, Meadow View and Fairview, on a sandy soil and with a lot of Scots pines in their garden.

Jen lives at: Thimble Cottage, Pippins, The Little House, The Nutshell, Whispers, Wishing Well Cottage and The Nest.

Pretentious Victorian seaside terraces have individual houses called: Ambleside, Blencathra, Eskdale, Rydal, Tarn Hows, Windermere, Lamorna, Tresco and Kynance in Gothic lettering on the stained-glass panel over the front door. Houses like this are also called after actual stately homes such as Normanby (Hall) and Dunvegan (Castle).

George Mikes in How to Be an Alien complained that the British are very reticent about revealing their house name or number. Perhaps they're still agonising over a name, or style of lettering, that won't be common. Who gets the solar-powered house number that lights up at night?