I enjoy this blog and the many debates it sparks. This week there's been much talk of class. Class does still seem to be a major issue with people. It seems there is still the snob and the inverted snob in us all.
Only last week newspapers such as the Independent sneered at Kate Middleton's middle-class mother Carole. Nothing was right about her. Her name, the fact that she was once an air hostess, that she said 'pleased to meet you' rather than 'how you do you do' to the Queen (who really should get over these things). She just wasn't posh enough. It's ridiculous. However she did chew gum at a passing out parade and, not that I've ever been to one, this is surely non-u by anyone's standards.
So where do I stand on class? Well, I don't exactly come from nothing and we weren't poor. My dad worked in publishing and were relatively well off. My mum didn't have a career but she did work. We didn't really want for much, though money was not free flowing. Things changed when we moved to the Middle East, where a tax-free lifestyle benefited us all. It was goodbye to the local comp and hello boarding school, which was a bit of a shock for me. People were very grand. I wasn't. I coped. I can now mix seamlessly.
My dad's parents were middle class and comfortable, my gandfather being a customs officer. My mum's father worked for the Ordanance Survey, but my mum's mother was one of 13 children brought up in abject poverty in Wigan, where it was four to a bed, breakfast was a jug of tea passed through the school railings and no shoes til you were seven. She managed to get herself up the stick with my granddad and she moved down south where she remained until she died aged 93.
So I suppose I must consider myself middle class. I don't there's anything wrong with that. It's what I am.
When I was a student I was dying to be working class, but everyone could see right through me. Every student professed to working class. It was trendy. Why? Why is it that if you're working class you're blanketly okay, salt of the earth, good egg, etc. If you're middle class you're intrinsically evil. Look at how the middle class is portrayed on TV - it's the devil's work. It's tiresome. Not everyone's like that. There are good and bad people in every strata of society. It's a terrible mistake to generalise.
What do you call yourself?
2 comments:
You won't be delighted to hear that Spinsterella has given up blogging for a while. Boo. She is very good.
Oh, and I would describe myself as middle-class, by virtue of what I do, and the fact that my grandparents were all working-class, but my Dad became a professional by educating himself. In a way, I'd like to think I was classless, but that doesn't wash in British society, does it?
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