Quotes About Class (and Kirstie Allsop)

Labour MP @SimonDanczuk, humiliated by @OwenJones84 on BBC2, yelled "It's alright for you, you come from the posh part of Stockport!" (‏@mrmarksteel, 2 July 2013)

I was astonished to find that it was possible to spend your life surrounded by great literature and remain (or become) paralysed by snobbery. (Julian Barnes, Guardian, July 2013)

A London of struggling writers "living in a middle-class style on a working-class income”. (John Goode on writer George Gissing)

Cashed-up bogans... It is a term my middle-class tribe uses disparagingly to make us feel better about being educated, but comparatively poor. I am not the first privately educated university graduate who wishes she had done a truck-driving course instead. (BBC on Australian chavs 2013-02-24)

Nothing is more bourgeois than to be afraid to look bourgeois. (Andy Warhol)

The journey was mind-numbingly tedious: a sequence of Ms and As with various numbers attached, interspersed with service stations that appeared to be patronised solely by people who had recently been released from prison. Where were the middle classes? There's a gap in the market – I'm sure a service station that incorporated a contemporary art gallery and a sushi restaurant would be a huge success. I'd go there. The Age of Uncertainty

The old class stratifications have gone – it’s much more nuanced now, says the BBC 2013-04-03 commenting on its new survey. (People have said this every year for the past 30 years.)

JOLLY HOCKEYSTICKS!
In girls’ school stories by Angela Brazil and Enid Blyton (they flourished from the 1900s to the 50s), girls allegedly expressed approval with the phrase “Oh, jolly hockey sticks!”. NGram Viewer shows that it appears in the mid-60s and rises sharply to the present. worldwidewords.org says it was invented in the 50s by Beryl Reid for her radio character, the schoolgirl Monica.

It has become What To Say About TV property expert Kirstie Allsop, who went to the progressive and non-hockey-playing Bedales school.

As always with Kirstie, it's all very jolly hockey sticks. She's an Enid Blyton head girl on a mission and she's starting with the hall… She's right, it is much more satisfying to pick up a vintage one-off or to make something yourself than it is waiting for your ticket number to come up at Argos. And you'll never run the risk as having the same curtains as Maureen down the road. But while all of this is very nice, does anyone in their right mind really have the time to design their own stained glass window, weld their own bookends or crochet a five-sided gift box "perfect for chocolate, soaps or even a plant”? (thisisleicestershire.co.uk)

Jolly hockeysticks? That's all Nancy Mitford, Kirstie Allsop, "Ooh rah, time for games!" isn't it? (Facebook) (Nancy Mitford never wrote school stories.)

Kirstie is terribly jolly hockeysticks. (stephaniepomfrett.wordpress.com)

Kirstie used to seem naive, jolly hockeysticks, flirtatious. (mumsnet)

Kirstie’s jolly hockeysticks persona is a bit unusual in TV these days but I think she carries it off. I like crafts but I find her craft shows a bit too twee. (mumsnet)

The world presented in the movie is a kind of jolly-hockeysticks rural idyll where kids can run around the countryside all day unimpeded and the locals are eccentric yokels. The threats to this way of life come from city-dwelling interlopers and the loss of good manners. (Review on ciao.co.uk of a Nanny McPhee film. “Running around the countryside” does not involve hockeysticks.)

goodreads.com has a category of “jolly hockeysticks books”.

More classy quotes here, and links to the rest.

Yesterday's Papers

The upper middle-class Upwards whinge when all the press gives huge coverage to events like Wimbledon, assuming that everybody in the country likes the same things. Upwards are always trying to assert their difference from the rest of the country, and they have never really got over the introduction of 24-hour news (about 25 years ago).

They adored the royal baby watch, using the word “fawning” in every sentence and grumbling about BBC flannel. Upper-class Caro sheds a tear and pours herself a gin and tonic, middle-class Eileen Weybridge and Jen Teale share a baby watch party and love every moment. Working-class Sharon goes to Kensington Palace and leaves a cuddly toy and a card.

Journalists, Upwards and Weybridges agree, get everything wrong, write sloppily and are despicable human beings. This doesn’t stop all Upward graduates trying to get a job in the media. And if you are a journalist, people assume you write for one of the broadsheets (not for one of the hundreds of magazines that still exist despite the web – 3.7m sold every day, says answers.com), and spend all your time meeting celebrities and going on free trips abroad. (So when do you fit in door-stepping the bereaved, stalking the royals and rehashing press releases?)


Whenever snow is predicted, the middle classes will panic because they think everybody is going to panic – or even whinge. And they’ll go on about it too much. (Translation: the BBC will try to be prepared and tell us about it in advance.)

Upwards and Weybridges spend a lot of time moaning that newspapers and news programmes are full of stuff they aren’t interested in. They like to say:

Newspapers? All opinion or trivia. Haven’t contained any news since the Anglo Saxon Chronicle. Are full of ads which will hypnotise you into buying things you don’t want. Are full of porn. If a newspaper writes about anything you know about, you’ll find it’s got the facts wrong. Only need to capture the attention for a day. Ephemeral. Yesterday’s papers wrap today’s chips. Print media is dead!

This is a quote from my mini ebook Clichés: A Dictionary of Received Ideas ("Everything you need to know in order to be accepted as a member of polite society" Flaubert) A paperback version is now available.

More clichés here.

Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

When Miss Manners' Guide to Excruciatingly Correct Behavior was written in the early 1980s, author Judith Martin adopted the persona of a refined lady of the 1880s. This update reveals that Americans are still strangely obsessed by “engraved” invitation cards, and wearing a corsage on the correct wrist. Martin is in favour of being polite, well-mannered, kind and fair, and deprecates bad behaviour of all kinds. Her style is catching, but I will never share her sincere love of “service plates”.

If Miss Manners hears any more contemptuous descriptions of etiquette as being a matter of “knowing which fork to use,” she will run amok with a sharp weapon.

Presence, the dignified precursor of what deteriorated to Poise... and then disappeared into a pottage of Assertiveness and Sensitivity from which it has not yet managed to surface.

“It is what we used to call postmodernism,” she continued, making it sound unattractively dated.

Much as we would love to believe that we saucy and imaginative moderns are responsible for introducing misbehavior into a previously fun-free world, Miss Manners is afraid that the population, even back then, consisted of actual human beings.

First names for parents are in vogue from time to time.

Speaking for someone else is a vile practice.
Are we to have only temporary friends whose experiences happen, at the moment, to match ours?

If it is wrong to make cracks about the elderly, and an aging population is working hard on that, then it should be wrong to make cracks about the young.

It is the meek and mild mannered, polite children that often get bullied. The same children are often at risk for being victimized by adults.

The sensitive child will notice that grown-ups worry endlessly about the judgment of their peers and can be thrown into agonies of embarrassment by trivial transgressions of conventionality.

Miss Manners realizes that parents cannot hope to protect their children for long against outside influences, however nasty.

What pretentious people call “body language” and make fortunes writing paperback books about, Miss Manners considers merely details of etiquette that vary from culture to culture. In a way, it is more important to learn these when going from one society to another than it is to learn the more obvious forms.

People often fail to realize that such behavior as eye contact is learned, and they pounce on it as being psychologically revealing.

The only truly safe and proper subject for a joke is oneself. Many a person who thought this privilege extended to his or her spouse, parent or child, has lived—but not very long—to find otherwise.


RELATIONSHIPS
You are quite right to seek advice from an etiquette column, rather than a psychologically oriented one. Miss Manners believes that the true value in people is not what is in their murky psyches… but in how they treat one another.

When he cuts off intimacy with you, it is called experiencing a crisis and investigating a relationship, and when you cut off intimacy with him, it is called prudery and eye-for-an-eye revenge.

The other person cares for you more than you care for her. Like you, everyone describes this as being possessive and crazy.

The spontaneous demonstration has, as you recognize, a strict code of behavior.

Reciting to innocent people a list of the sort of behavior to which one has been subjected by others in the past and the declaration of never putting up with it again has become one of the rites of early courtship.

Pickups, to seem respectable, must be contrived to seem accidental.

In the proper world, romance is supposed to develop out of friendship. A gentleman and a lady both pretend that they are cultivating each other for common interests, shared humor or whatever—and then they both act surprised when passion strikes.

Miss Manners had hoped that the plague of social originality among lovers had been stamped out.

Attempts to obfuscate, such as “I love you, but I need room to grow,” don’t fool anyone. The patronizing sweeteners customarily added to these explanations are particularly galling.


WEDDINGS
A ceremony is not a show, and the emotion connected with it is supposed to be derived from participating in a known ritual, not from being diverted by jokes and surprises. The tendency to undercut ceremonies—which is being done frequently, not just at graduations but at weddings and even funerals—all but directs the participants and audience to be bored.

Now that weddings have become drama festivals, the marriage proposal has turned into a pageant that serves as the curtain raiser.

Miss Manners hopes couples will “plan weddings that will be pretty and festive, but not to attempt to make them grand on a scale unrelated to the rest of their lives”. Weddings are “not an occasion for people to attempt to play grand and unfamiliar parts in a fantasy”.

Perfectly charming people can plan perfectly charming weddings, only to have these events sabotaged by a variety of wedding-related outsiders who have their own ideas of what a wedding should be like and put them into action without asking.

…that nasty double standard which we keep thinking we have banished, only to see it repeatedly hauled out of retirement.

The habit of teasing perfect strangers persists.

If you want something to look at while you listen, you can go to the opera and watch people stab one another.

We still have the old form of naïveté, which says that people should judge everyone on what’s inside, not what they’re wearing.

When the female equivalent of the male suit first began to be widely worn [in the mid-60s], it provoked outrage.

I would rather not wear all of these rings at once for fear that I may be inclined to start calling people “daahhling” and ordering them about.


TITLES, FAME

The further away the title holder is from earning his distinction, the more distinguished he is considered… [Old titles are best.]

It has been perceived that fame leads directly to such fortune-making opportunities as book contracts, lecture fees and photograph sessions in which the subject can keep the jewelry.

When the television people instruct you to be “lively,” “spontaneous,” “controversial” and full of “energy,” what they mean is that you should feel free to ridicule others, interrupt, toss off opinions from the top of your head, argue with cleverness rather than evidence, and display intolerance for any opinion but your own.

Before the first World War, ladies did not put on makeup in public for the sensible reason that they were pretending that they never wore any… In recent times, onlookers revolted against both smoking and grooming at the table... They have therefore been banned by the new school.

Murder on the Home Front

Murder on the Home Front: A True Story of Morgues, Murderers and Mysteries in the Blitz describes Molly Lefebure's work as secretary to a forensic pathologist during the war and after

Molly, a nice middle-class girl, loved her work in the morgues of London and southern England. It took her to places she would never otherwise have been able to visit.

Sometimes she travelled to the “amazing no man’s land of the suburbs”, returning with “relief, to stewed fruit and junket”. If they were in a hurry, “sausage rolls” were “gobbled”. But if they were lucky, they got “sausage toad-in-the-hole” followed by “chocolate mould”. (This is a kind of English cuisine few are keen to revive.)

Sex was described in odd terms: “Presently he began to suspect intimacy between them and on the Sunday before the murder he accused them of this. Both denied any such thing. Rosina’s mother said they were ‘not playing the game’. Her father told them ‘to keep the courtship clean’.”

She thought the 30s were “The decade of unemployment, chips on shoulders and sloppy thinking. Religious conviction waned, the old values declined.”

When visiting crime scenes, she notices the “eau-de-nil décor”, “a pair of uninspiring china figures” on the mantelpiece, and “rexine” furniture. (It’s “an artificial leather leathercloth fabric”, according to its manufacturers.)

She is curious to see the flat of a prostitute, and notes the cold, dirt and discomfort of the "model dwellings" where the poor live - all with grandiose names like "Briar Rose Court".

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Class in the Novels of Barbara Pym

No Fond Return of Love, written in the 50s, concerns two women in their 30s who have both been disappointed by men (one fiancé, one crush). Dulcie and Viola end up sharing a house, and in a very genteel way start stalking Viola’s love object (Aylwin). Dulcie (deserted by her fiancé) is a gentle, intelligent woman who could “make more of herself”. None of her friends guesses that she is an outrageous snob, always spotting the signs that someone (such as Aylwin’s mother-in-law) is from a slightly inferior class to her own.

Aylwin has a “Florentine leather stud box”, showing that he has travelled to the right part of Italy. But the box is a touristy souvenir, despite its good taste.

“It would have to be one of those classically simple meals, the sort that French peasants are said to eat and that enlightened English people sometimes enjoy rather self-consciously – a crusty French loaf, cheese, and lettuce and tomatoes from the garden.”

“Variegated ivy” is a regrettable sign that a garden owner is not quite-quite. And as for “tradescantia with striped mauve leaves”! These appear in the flower shop where Stephen Beltane, the son of a neighbour, works.

A “hand-embroidered duchesse set” is being offered at Aylwin’s mother-in-law’s sale of work. A duchesse set consisted of three doilies intended to go under the powder box and pin trays on your dressing table. The name is pretentious (French and aristocratic), like “duchesse potatoes” – which are mashed potatoes piped into little suburban swirls.

“Each ‘bloom’ had cost one-and-three.” We’re back in the (over-priced) flower shop. “Flowers”, never “blooms”.

Academic women have a limited choice between “frightening elegance, frowsty bohemianism, or uncompromising dowdiness” ponders Aylwin (he is intimidated by them all).

Maurice, Dulcie’s ex-fiancé “held up his hand and contemplated his nails delicately”. There were two ways of checking that your fingernails were clean – Maurice’s method, or with a lightly curled fist and the palm of your hand towards you. His gesture betrays that he doesn’t move in the best circles – or is he gay?

Aylwin wonders “how he could stop a mat in his lounge from curling up at the edges”. Fifties houses were full of mats that tended to slip about on the linoleum floors. You kept them under control with  ugly rubber net backing. And he calls his sitting room a lounge! He is not as middle-class as people imagine.

“The fluffy little woman in the mauve twin-set, wrapping up the pottery donkey” – Dulcie’s negative judgement of Aylwin’s ex-wife. Pottery donkeys, brought back from European holidays, were the depth of fashion. She is pointed out to Dulcie as wearing a “lilac” twinset. People of Dulcie’s stratum in society only referred to colours by their names (mauve), not by something that might be that colour (violet, lemon, primrose).

“The kitchen was warm, and comfortable in a rather old-fashioned style, with deep basket chairs and a round table covered with a red plush cloth.” This is where a friend’s cook lives and works, and it sounds lovely. Whatever happened to kitchens like this?

Dulcie’s neighbour Mrs Beltane, who dotes on her tiny dog Felix, “was of that school which prefers to worship in a garden or some lovely ‘spot’: indeed, she would probably have maintained, if challenged, that one is nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth.”

“Felix yapped vigorously.” Middle-class people don't have yappy dogs.

“I have a black lace mantilla which I wear when I want to cover my head,” brags Viola. In a Catholic or Anglo-Catholic church, far classier than a hat. (If you want to wear a mantilla, remember that the middle point of the triangle goes over your forehead.)

“…what she thought of as ‘mean’ little semi-detached houses”. Dulcie being judgmental again.

In a churchyard, the area in front of the headstone is “filled in with green chippings, which looked like bath salts”. Not in the best taste.

On the train, “The furtive sandwich eating and the bringing out of the flasks of tea was accomplished with hardly any embarrassment.” People like us are not ashamed of eating in public.

Mrs Beltane is “using a new watering can of some white iridescent material – plastic, he supposed – in the form of a swan”. Oh dear!

“‘That’s far more what poor old Basil himself would have wished,’ said the woman firmly. ‘A few natural flowers – whatever there happened to be in the garden, even if it wasn’t very much – rather than an expensive sheaf of wired flowers from a Kensington florist. He would have hated the idea of wired flowers – he abhorred cruelty in all its forms.” Middle-class people still give this speech almost word for word – especially when complaining about the “heaps of flowers in cellophane” in front of Kensington Palace after Diana died. (In the book, Stephen Beltane spends most of his time at work wiring flowers into place.)

“‘What an odd smell,’ said Marjorie. ‘I suppose it’s the dust burning on the fire. When they aren’t used much they do get dusty.’” Marjorie is Aylwin’s ex-wife, and his mother, who runs a hotel, has an electric heater instead of an open fire.

“‘Oh, that academic stuff – where does it get one,’ said Viola impatiently. ‘One only meets people like Aylwin Forbes, and what use are they?’” Viola realises she has been wasting her time with the “right” kind of people, and marries someone who works in a shop.

What Your Name Says About You, Part III

“Mister is a courtesy title, so shop and hospital staff should call me Mr Weybridge! Anything else is impolite!” Yes, Mr, Mrs, Miss and Ms are courtesy titles – that means they have no legal force, unlike aristocratic, military, legal, religious titles. It’s against the law to call yourself “Major Weybridge” or “the Rev Weybridge” unless you are a major or a minister. Lord Weybridge is the lord of his domain. It’s not about being polite. Manners change, and a democratic smiley friendliness is now the norm, thankfully. (Howard Weybridge will now have a conniption fit about the use of “thankfully”. “Who’s being thankful? It’s a dangling modifier!” He enjoys all this very much.) Wikipedia explains that courtesy titles began as titles for the younger sons of Dukes.

Posh Caroline Stow Crat fills us in: "To the Normans, a person called de Launay owned land in a place called Launay. So calling yourself 'de Snooks' in an attempt to look more posh only makes you look silly."

Middle-class Upwards like “old-fashioned” names – their grandparents’ generation. Working-class Definitelies like names with no history because they don’t know any. They call their daughters Madison and Tayla because they think it sounds pretty (it does).

Upwards never call their children Tulip – unless they’re Rowena. She may call her kids Brandi, Cullum and Kane as a gesture. Arkana called her kids Gandalf and River – but there were still five Gandalfs in the playgroup (run by a co-op whose members could never agree about anything and eventually split into three. All three parts failed after a few months.). Lower middle-class Teales used to call their daughters Heather, Sorrel, Fern and Bryony. Middle-aged Weybridges are Cherry. Sharon Definitely's gran is Rose. What are the flower names de nos jours?

At the risk of sounding snobbish, I… favour children who have good old-fashioned Victorian names such as George, Henry and Victoria. And, if a child has a name with a Latin or Greek derivation such as Ariadne or Helena, all the better. It indicates the parents are well educated. (Katie Hopkins, Daily Mail May 2013) She says her children know she likes them to befriend high achievers. And she’s worried about sounding snobbish? Read the whole ghastly farrago here.

Expect a notable absence of men called Derek, Roger or Nigel from the garden centres of Britain today. #UKIPConference (James O'Brien‏/@mrjamesob)

Part II here.

Gentrification IV

Wise words from housing-watcher and London-lover @robbieds: "Emerging [neighbourhoods] means they've pretty much emerged already though." (‏@RobertaWedge)

The trappings of gentrification – expensive coffee and bike shops, junk sold at a premium as “vintage” and, soon after, bitterly resented chain outlets… The crowds these areas attract also look pretty samey, and… can also seem just as aspirational and judgemental of others as the primmest suburbanites… with each community maintaining separate cafés, pubs and even grocery stores. I didn’t see much inter-class mixing among my neighbors either, publicly or privately. (Feargus O’Sullivan) (But why does he assume suburbanites are aspirational, judgemental and prim?)

I was wrong about Stoke Newington – it hasn’t become Fulham (though London Fields may have become Notting Hill). Instead it is full of young men with short beards and their vintage-clad girlfriends. At weekends, they all like to go out to breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner and then to a club, so there are lots of cafés, pubs and clubs that cater to their tastes. At the moment they may outnumber the couples with large houses and children. They have taken over a lot of Dalston and Stoke Newington High Street. Every week another under-used pub gets a clean-up and a paint job and becomes a packed gastropub. The 30s tearooms are still a bit ironic - but Ladurie macaroons are plain luxury. We middle-class Upwards are ashamed of luxury so we disguise it as something else. We pretend we prefer the shabby and run-down because it’s all we can afford. And the last thing we want is for people to say “But they’re just you with more money.”

And God forbid anybody should suggest we are these young people, 30 years on.

Working-class Sharon Definitely and her partner Darren want to move to Australia where you can get your own house for far less and have lovely weather and a pool and be near a beach. They have transferable skills: Sharon works in a care home and Darren is a builder. Of course the kids will miss their friends, and they’ll miss their friends, and leaving their elderly parents will be a wrench… maybe they’ll stay put and just get a caravan somewhere.

Upwards don’t move to Australia or New Zealand despite the stunning scenery. No culture, no theatah, no decent telly, no art galleries – no Radio 4! No Archers! Except they could listen on iplayer… But basically, no People Like Us. Everyone can afford a more luxurious lifestyle in the former colonies – just like in the olden days.

When Upwards think “I deserve better than this poky flat!” they move to France.

Many more have bought lovely properties in rural France and then found themselves isolated, both physically and culturally, especially in winter when much of rural France effectively closes down. (Daily Telegraph July 2012)

It's the dream of every Samantha Upward to live in the country and support herself by writing and illustrating children's books. If Sam writes a novel, the central character will be a woman who does just this. No need to commute, or wear a repressive uniform (smart office clothes), no need to conform, no need to suppress your individuality, no need to Work For The Man… Some Upwards live their whole adult lives in London or another big city while thinking they really ought to be in the country. The empty countryside they think they want to move to is of course “tranquil” and “idyllic” and a “rural idyll”.

It's important to realise that while many people with jobs in cities feel like they absolutely must have a house with a big yard, it still is a choice. (Economist blog Nov 7 11)

More here.