India Inc.
F and I took the last of our anti-malaria tablets today. God knows we’ve whinged about taking them for the past few weeks. Complained about the nightmares they gave us, the nausea they incurred, panicked when we forgot to take them, shoved the missing ones down our gullets, and tried not to gag at the chalky quinine that covered our tongues. Now the packet’s empty, we both miss them. A broken link to an unreal place. So although I’m only half way through reformatting the photos, hardly touched typed up the journals, let alone fit them for public consumption I’m going to write up India before it completely fades from my mind.
The Flight
The screen in front of me, the one that marks our journey with a dot and too thick line of black, is lying. We did not turn right at Saudi Arabia, there is no such place. It’s never meant more to me than a badly drawn rectangle and a broken ankle anyway, and so this stupid screen will not make its existence any more tangible now. We have not crossed the Arabian Sea; we are not travelling parallel down the coast of India. India does not exist. Nothing exists. The world has ended and only we remain – F and I – stuck in this bright-lit box with its blocked up toilet and rows of irritating people. This is hell, with the added indignity of airline food.
This is hell. F is sitting beside me. We travel well together. In fact, if I had to pick one recurrent theme throughout our life, one memory that summed us up then it would be this, the two of us travelling through the night – in silence. I like that. Like that we do not have to talk our way through time, to make the journey shorter than it is. I’ve always been wary of those who feel the need to speak. Only, now and then, the touch of a hand upon the others, the glimpse of a jaw-line through eyelash fringed sleep, a half-sentence that cements the fact that we are together. Besides which I know, know from the look on his face that right now he is a million miles away from here, lost in notes as black as the sky outside, spread out into sound; that for him, the white noise whine of the engine, which is slowly driving me insane, is translating itself into a symphony. I envy that about him. All I have are words, which do not stick in the brain but slip unremembered through the gap between paper and pen.
No. Not the engine. The people. The people on this plane are driving me insane. I’m terminally allergic to the middle classes and this plane is swarming with them. There’s something about their tone (not their accent) that sets my skin to crawl and my tolerance to zero. Like Charlie Brown in a room full of adults, their wahwahwah bounces off the walls and buzzes around my head like a fly you can’t swat.
Take the woman sitting in the seat directly in front of me. God knows I’m praying for the plane to crash just so I can see her buy it. I’ll die happy if she gets sucked out of the gaping maw in the planes side a millisecond before I do. Not just because anyone with a mirror should realise that if Kate Moss can’t wear horizontal stripes then the rest of us have no chance, although on aesthetic sensibilities alone that’s a good enough reason for her execution. But, as soon as the seatbelt sign went off, her chair went back. Not in a smooth and considerate motion. Oh no. From 90 to 180 degrees with an acceleration that would have left Schumacher breathless with envy. I ended up with half a bottle of red, a litre of Evian and a large cup of black coffee cascading Niagara like across my knees. That it ended up staining the rather nice cream, brand-new never used calfskin handbag mum bought me for Christmas some years ago isn’t a big deal. Accidents happen. I know that.
What is a big deal is that she knew she’d caused the accident. She knew she caused the accident because in answer to my involuntary shriek of “ouch” as the scalding coffee hit my skin, she turned around just as I was attempting to salvage the handbag by holding it in the air and watching the stream of liquid pour down its side.
“Oh” she said, “That wasn’t because of my moving my seat back was it?”
Anticipating an apology and wanting to make it as painless as possible, I did the English thing. I smiled. “The seats do move back very quickly,” I said
Her (somewhat over plucked) eyebrows shot into the depths of her (over dyed) fringe and she turned round and sat back down again.
“This is the last time we travel economy,” she said to her partner. “Look at the sort of people you get stuck with”
(To any family members reading this. I know you’re thinking that I used that voice when I answered her. I wasn’t, I swear it. For the benefit of the uninitiated, that voice is imprinted in our families DNA. It’s extremely cold, clipped, and proper. Despite the fact there is nothing in the words that could possibly be construed as being offensive – in fact, it works better if there isn’t – somehow the overall effect is more insulting than to baldly state that the adversary’s mother sucks…oh well you get the idea. That was not the voice I used. I know when I use that voice because it comes with an involuntary squaring of the shoulders, straightening of the spine and walls of ice behind the eyes.)
The sort of people you get stuck with! The sort of fucking people you get stuck with. The ill-mannered, inconsiderate, over plucked eye browed twat. You know, I wouldn’t care if she were the only one. Truly, I wouldn’t. Law of averages means that you need one moron on a plane, its something to do with the thing staying in the air. But it’s not just her. They’re all the same.
I swear that in the last ten hours I’ve heard the words “it’s so filthy there” emanate from every single seat on the plane within earshot. I have. Just one question. If you have such a problem with how fucking filthy it is in India then why the fuck are you going there? It’s like people who sniff milk – say that it’s off, take a swig of it and then offer it to someone else so that that they can drink bad milk too.
I suppose I shouldn’t be so surprised. It started when I went with mum to pick up the visas from the Indian Embassy in Edinburgh. A tiny office shoved into the basement of the building. No-one had bothered to read the forms properly in the first place, even an instruction as simple as “please complete in black ink only” seemed to be completely beyond them and yet they complained vehemently about having to fill them in again. No apology to the rest of the queue about the delay, just complaints that the guy at the desk wasn’t going to bend the rules for them, wasn’t going fast enough for the amount of money they’d put into the parking meter. On top of it all some middleclass twat, standing in the centre of the room, telling the room at large “of course they don’t know how to hurry” He got a bit annoyed with me when I asked him who “they” were. Like I’d broken some unwritten rule. “Well them” he said and then lowered his voice, “Indians, you know”. “Oh” I said. “This your first visit?” he said “yes” I said. “We’ve been going there for the past ten years now. Twice a year. You wouldn’t believe how filthy they are, piles of rubbish lining the streets, oh and the stench, you wouldn’t believe the stench. Turns your stomach it does. But, it’s very cheap” he finished.
“It’s very cheap”….well most of this plane should fit right in then. Because a bigger bunch of cheapskates I’ve never seen in my life. They’re the sort that would get out a calculator to split a bill – work out who had what starter instead of just dividing the amount equally amongst the table and chucking in some extra for a tip. Hell, the couple over there - the ones with the child between them (and is it really fair to drag a child on a twelve hour flight unless it’s a matter of extreme emergency) are doing just that over the duty free bill. “Well the perfume I wanted was £20 but your cigarettes come to £23.50 so if I pay with my card then I need that from you”. For Christssake, you have a child with this person – buy them a box of cigarettes.
(Funnily enough, I’m typing this up as all that furore about Jade Goody/Big Brother and racism is stirring up a media frenzy. You know what? After spending two weeks in India and watching British peoples behaviour there - I’m surprised that so many people phoned in to complain. We are racist. And xenophobic and bigoted. It shocks me. God knows I’m the most intolerant person I know. But I don’t judge people on their skin colour, sexual preference, class, appearance, accent, or anything else like that. I judge people on what my gut instinct tells me about them. I completely agree with herebes latest post - shock horror! hendrixcat agrees with herebe! – but after spending 2 weeks in India, the inherent racism of the British people, their boorish, insensitive and downright ill-mannered behaviour towards the people who live there laid me on my ass with shame. This isn’t the “uneducated” British person either, it’s the educated ones. You just wait until I tell you the story of the Indian carol singers)
Got to calm down. But it’s difficult. Listening to music isn’t working and neither is reading a book. I’m nearly finished Green Mars (again – the whole trilogy is worth a second and even a third read) but I can’t concentrate. I’m too tired. We’ve been travelling for nearly 24 hours now. By my reckoning – even taking into account the 5 hour time difference we should be there now. That stupid black line says that we’re nearly there – about an inch and half away according to them. Why couldn’t they have made it so it looked like the map in Raiders of the Lost Arc – it wouldn’t have taken so much more effort as far as the animation went. I mean, a dot, a plane, it’s not that much difference.
Look out of the window. Try to calm down. Breathe. My stomach churns with too much coffee, my mouth burns with a nicotine craving, Slug back some whisky, hold it there till it burns the urge to smoke away. I am so tired. Tired beyond the point of pale, to the point where nothing is real anymore, where I am not here, I’m dreaming this journey in shades of shivering cold white, we are not flying but driving over the Pennines and the night is so dark.
Has there ever been a place so dark? It devours. Bites out those faint white lights that trail haphazard below. It swallows them whole. One moment they’re almost visible, the next fled. I thought we were still high above the ocean until I glimpsed their shine. Not the orange grid of the Saudi oilfields, square and vast, stamping a heavy pattern on the ground. These lights tumble fairy tale chains, like the lights that shine from the moors on weary nights when the wind blows cold. There is no rhyme or reason to them. They blink. On one moment off the next, while I sit, cheek pressed hard against cold glass and try to see below. There are no stars. Nothing above, nothing below, only this forgotten castle of lights that glimmers faintly to my left.
The plane has banked I think. Banked hard left, or right, it’s difficult to tell. Upside is now down. Left is right. It bounced three maybe four times hard, there was an indrawn breath of air that held for a couple of seconds then exhaled into a nervous laugh.
The lights are now above me in the sky. They grow closer, touchable and tiny houses hover over the ground. No streets they flow in haphazard low voltage swags impossibly close.
The wheels drop with a stomach churning sound. The plane brakes hard (too hard) to a stop. The world outside streams orange, the planes windows have steamed up. We grab our bag. Walk out of the plane. Stop for a second at the top of the steps…
Steam tent warmth, a fog so thick that just breathing in fills your lungs with water. The taste of the place is in my clothes, in my hair, it seeps through my skin, sliding under my nails like bamboo slivers. It tastes of mildewed books, dry spice, wet earth, hard rain, and fire. It tastes alive. This land lives like nowhere else I’ve ever been. Not the sleepy sun of the south of France; the gentle shuck of sea against sun, nor the somnambulant silver of the North East, wild winds of crystal cold and grey. This land lives. It is alive. It conspires. We have no place here. No dominion over earth. It will shake us off and cover us over and we will disappear without a trace. This land crawls inside your bones, infects your brain and if you are immune to it you do not breathe. This is a strange and wondrous place. A magical place. A place not of this world. I’m going to like it here.
January 23rd, 2007 at 11:34 pm
that was really truly beautiful.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:26 am
I want to go to India!!! The Pirate is going for two weeks in February. He asked me to come with him, but I couldn’t afford it. Bugger.
Beautiful write-up. I can’t wait to read the rest.
January 24th, 2007 at 5:28 am
yes i was wondering who those 40,000 people were as well who complained. Dare I say it PROBABLY NOT WHITE!
One of the most disallusioning moments of my life was the day that my parents may have given up everything to bring me and my brother to live in place that didn’t have institutionalised apartheid but it had an apartheid of the spirit which is much harder to dealwith. As a US black woman I know said ‘I can deal with discrimination there are laws I can use but there is nothing I can do about racism’.
January 24th, 2007 at 6:56 am
I’ve always been wary of those who feel the need to speak.
Wary of yourself then. Deep sis. Very deep.
And you are middle class. You’re just not one of the narrow minded, bigoted, racist, xenophobic skin job wankers who make up 99.9 per cent of the middle classes.
January 24th, 2007 at 8:11 am
Bering. Thank you. One of the reasons I haven’t posted regularly for a while is because thoughI’ve written loads of posts over the past couple of months, what I’m writing is getting more and more personal rather than the “accepted” (to me anyway) voice of this page.
When I woke up this morning my first thought was “oh shit, I posted the India stuff last night” (I’d drunk a bottle of wine while I was typing it up and so was braver than normal). It was a hell of a boost to see the first mail into my inbox was your comment and that I’m not being judged or reviled for what I’d written…
CB. GO. Beg borrow or steal the money to get there, but go! You won’t regret it.
Mary. Exactly. There is nothing we can do about this “apartheid of the spirit” except perhaps to make sure it doesn’t infect us and to ensure that any children we have are brought up free from it too.
Herebe. I actually didn’t mean it like that - I was referring to people who have to talk even when they might as well be reciting the alaphabet continually. But, having thought about it. I am wary of myself. Always have been.
Funnily enough though I don’t think of myself as being middle-class. Never have. Middle class to me is the 2.4 kids, the 2 cars, the “professional” job - people like the B’s for example. I’ve always thought of myself as working class (or of no social class at all) I suppose you’re right though. It’s not the class I object to - it’s the attitude of the majority of those who belong to it I have a problem with.
January 24th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
Wanna lend me 2,000 pounds? I have no idea how or when i’ll be able to pay it back, but i will eventually.
January 24th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
CB If I had it, it would be winging its way straight to you…sorry
January 25th, 2007 at 2:57 am
I know you would, and thanks anyway. But I only get 9,000 a year from my student loan, and from that I need to squeeze 8,600 for tuition, 4,400 for rent and bills, and whatever is left over for food and rowing expenses.
(And yes, I realized that 8,600 + 4,400 is more than 9,000. Hence the problem, nevermind a trip to India.)
January 25th, 2007 at 7:22 am
Funnily enough though I don’t think of myself as being middle-class. Never have. Middle class to me is the 2.4 kids, the 2 cars, the “professional” job - people like the B’s for example. I’ve always thought of myself as working class (or of no social class at all) I suppose you’re right though. It’s not the class I object to - it’s the attitude of the majority of those who belong to it I have a problem with.
That’s as narrow a defintion of the middle classes as a defining working class as someone who works down the pit. I think most definitions of the middle class would tend to have the word aspirational in them somewhere. By that definition, you are middle class. You do aspire. It’s just that you don’t aspire to what a large proportion of the middle class aspires to. (the house, the job, the car, etc).
To be honest, I don’t see what the big deal is about aspiring to those things is if it makes them happy. We all aspire to things. I aspire to a house by a lake, they aspire to a new build in a suburb somewhere. They want a BMW. I want a new guitar. The word suburb itself comes from the Roman Latin Suburba - which is what the Roman ruling classes used to call anywhere that wasn’t the central area of where the ruling classes lived. It was the place where the plebs and the scum lived. The working classes of Rome. The more things change, the more things stay the same.
January 25th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
It may be a narrow definition of middle class – but it’s my definition of what constitutes middle class. and even then I’m using it (and the B’s) as a shorthand to describe a paucity of the spirit which seems to permeate most of that ilk, what Hesse called “that fat and prosperous brood of mediocrity”
I don’t aspire. I never have. Not that aspirations are a bad thing – I just don’t have them. I am. That’s as far as it goes. I’ve never had a master plan for my life – The choices I’ve made I’ve made because they’ve appealed at the time – or not, as the case may be. I have no dreams, no desires, no expectations and no destination. I’m alive. It’s enough for me.
Funnily enough “aspiration” is the one word which doesn’t crop up in common definitions of what constitutes the middle class. Most (I don’t claim – all, I didn’t read all the definitions) define it in terms of property and profession (doctor, lawyer, teacher etc). According to that definition; as someone who owns no property and has no profession I fail to make the grade on both counts. Indeed, according to the definition of working class as being someone who is paid on an hourly rate with no security of tenure (which is a pretty prevalent definition throughout ) , I’m working class.
Our family are working class. It’s not a dirty word. My (our) grandparents live in council housing. That subsequent government initiatives meant that they could buy them is neither here nor there – had the initiative not been there – do you think they would have A. considered buying them? Or B. been able to afford to buy them on the wages they got from working in a factory? That doesn’t make them stupid people – it makes them poor. Poor is not an insult, although nowadays it’s perceived as being one. One of our great-grandmother s was a scullery maid, our great –grandfather (after fighting for his country) worked in a factory his whole life. Was he a craftsman? Yes. But he wasn’t middle class. On Grandma S’s side her father was a master baker – he was acclaimed as being at the top of his trade, but according to social status – he wasn’t middle class. Both sets of our grandfathers worked in the same factory for their entire working lives, one grandmother scrubbed buses and was a farm labourer and cleaner for her working life and the other was a housewife and mother. You can’t get more working class than that.
Educationally, If you agree with the definition of middle class as one who has completed tertiary education then yes I’m middle class. Personally I don’t agree with that particular definition. The graduate degree is now downgraded to the point where it is no longer a definition of intellectual ability (if indeed it ever was, which I doubt (I hardly think – for example – that dad or mum were any more intelligent or well read after they completed their degrees than they were before they started them – they’d just got the requisite piece of paper). My own personal view of university education is that it doesn’t teach people to think – it teaches them the correct responses to exam questions. In my experience, there is little in a – graduate- university syllabus which encourages individuality of thought.) Be that as it may, my own choice (had I been given one which at the time I wasn’t) would have been to leave school at sixteen, it would have made little or no difference to the amount that I learnt. In fact I would have read more (and more widely) without the constraints of reading as means to jump through the hoops set by examining boards. In addition it would have ensured that I’d had a much happier 5 years than I actually had to undergo.
Financially. I make less than the national average therefore statistically I’m counted amongst the working classes (actually I’m counted as being amongst those who live under the breadline but who’s counting?
As I mentioned in my previous comment - “You’re right. It’s not the class I object to - it’s the attitude of the majority of those who belong to it I have a problem with”. Maybe it’s extremely middle class of me to have the luxury of even thinking about which class I belong to. But while I have that luxury – I’m working class and will always consider myself to be working class. Because the alternative is to be like the B’s or the J’s and to be ashamed of it, to hide it, to pretend that your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were other than they were, to pretend that your house is better than it is, to not let your family into any social occasion where they might embarrass you or show up your roots, to constantly reassert your intellectual, economic and social superiority without acknowledging on bended knee the sacrifices that people made in order for you to achieve it. I’d die rather than to be like that.
January 25th, 2007 at 5:11 pm
I find it interesting how class-divided England still is. This sort of discussion would simply never happen in America. (That’s not a judgement, just an observation.) Sure the USA is highly stratified by income level (the divide between our poor and our wealthy is the widest now that it’s ever been, and it’s growing), but the discussion of poverty and social ailments is never framed in terms of “class.” It’s almost a dirty word, unless you’re talking about the middle class, which is the only politically correct class. Strange.
ps. my maternal grandmother was a barmaid, and my paternal grandmother was a… *whispers* “lady of the evening!”
January 25th, 2007 at 5:50 pm
CB. Thats one of the reason’s I do regret not moving to America when I had the chance. It’s also one thing that F has pointed out about his time in the states - that he was judged not on where he came from or what his parents did, but his ability to do what he said he could do when he said he could do it. Whereas in Britain he’s is judged first by his race/accent, second by his income and thirdly by his talent. Even getting a foot in the door in this country is ten times harder because of this.
Much as I’m proud of where I come from - I would like to live in a classless society. Unfortunately - as you pointed out - in Britain we don’t. Our society is riddled with it. We’re judged by our accent, what our parents do, whether or not we own not rent, where we live, whether or not we’re members of a profession, what our educational standard is, what university we went to etc… The thing that gets my goat is that people are ashamed of where they come from, that once they’ve leapt from working to middle class, the doctor son/daughter of factory workers for example - they are terrified that their roots will be exposed. Occasionally there’ll be one that will make a big thing about it but only to reinforce how far they’ve managed to get “against the odds”.
Even worse - and the bit I’m really taking exception to is this automatic assumption that all working class people are chavs and bigots, layabouts and racist while all middle class people are liberal and welcoming when often the very opposite is true. I’m not glorifying the working classes here, or even villifying the middle class -there are good and bad people in every walk of life but sometimes the rigid stratification of our society and the fact that people are terrified of being perceived as belonging to a class lower than they are means that they take a hardline view. Often in the struggle to get to a particular class any “human” quality is cast aside.
January 25th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
ok. ive come here three times now to try and comment. fuck it.
this was amazing. this post was fucking amazing. i am just in awe. that whole part where the door of the plane opens and the smell hits you? that made my eyes sting. jesus christ, you’re fantastic.
January 25th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
ps/
america is viciously classist. it just isnt expressed in those terms. people are very very conscious of what part of town you’re from, what nationality, what religion etc. and what that means about your perceived wealth and education. those things have become the code words for stupid, poor, trashy…or rich, smart and landed. i can speak with authority here because being able to ‘pass’ gives me a ringside seat to the show.
January 26th, 2007 at 5:15 am
Wow, an excellent emotive piece of writing. Looking forward to part 2. Your description the heat/humidity when leaving the plane reminded me of when I went to Africa, you just know your somewhere different/special.
January 28th, 2007 at 9:31 am
Brilliant post.
And isn’t flying above the ocean in the dark freakish?? I nearly had a heart attack when I flew to London. Luckily, I was stuck next to a pair of drunks which kept amused and stopped me from wondering if I was in a bad episode of Dark Shadows or in a Stephen King book.
And the class thing?? Goes on here, too. Supposed old friends find out what neighborhood we live in now (Oog, the bad one) and we hear ‘Oh, tsk’ and clucking of tongues. They don’t visit. Sod ‘em. Sorts out who our real friends are.
January 30th, 2007 at 5:11 am
I suppose, there is no escape from the class structure , however you want to dress it up. It started with the best hunter in the tribe being given the lions share of food and ends with the one who drives an SUV or has a detached house being lauded over the rest. But it still makes me mad! As I said earlier - I’m not exempt from intolerance, but at least it’s not based on perceived difference of class/type - it’s solely based on gut instinct.
Frobisher - that’s exactly it! It is an immediate shock of knowing that you’re somewhere different and special and it hits you like a slap in the face!
Babs. Night flying is incredibly freakish because it no longer seems as if there is a world - it’s extreme sensory deprivation. I must admit though that I prefer it. I can’t see how far I’ve got to fall should the plane crash therefore I feel safe. Even the turbulence we hit as we came in over the land didn’t phase me too much - because there was no point of impact I could measure the drop against.
January 31st, 2007 at 8:02 am
a paucity of the spirit - good definition.
aspiring to not aspiring is just as aspirational as aspiring to a BMW.
Funnily enough “aspiration” is the one word which doesn’t crop up in common definitions of what constitutes the middle class.
I don’t know what you’ve been reading then… The definition of the middle classes is always that whichever period of history you look at they are always rising. They are aspirational classes.
You are not working class. Sorry. By any definition. Just because our grandparents worked in a factory does not make you working class. Your mother (and mine) is a teacher, your father (and mine) a draughtsman. Both of which are professions.Even if you take into account Dad becoming a diver (broadly working class but still a professional class) his later manifestations as a businessman and a designer/manufacturer in various fields makes him part of the mercantile classes. These are not working class. Just because you work for a living does not make you working class. By that definition, everyone from the Queen downwards is working class. The old definitions were based on skills, income, social positioniality and social mobility - factors which are all but obsolete today. G Grandma being a scullery maid makes her part of the service class. G Granddad being a master baker makes him a member of the mercantile classes. He had a trade, he had a shop and as a part of the guild he had an important social position. Grandad might have worked in a factory all of his life but as Grandma will always point out he was a grammar school boy destined for University until the age of 14. When his father died, he went to work in the factory to support his family. Grandma might live in a council house and broadly consider herself working class but if you really start to talk to her about her origins, she doesn’t consider herself working class. As she quite memorably put it ‘working class people didn’t have tablecloths. We did.’
Educationally, If you agree with the definition of middle class as one who has completed tertiary education…
I didn’t. Tertiary education is a new term. Before that, we called it University education. Until the 1960’s, the primary beneficiaries of a University education were the upper classes (first and third sons, second sons going into the military) and upper middle classes. It was only in the Victorian Educational reforms that impoverished middle classes got to go on scholarships.
My own personal view of university education is that it doesn’t teach people to think …
Yes, that is true of a general trend. However, University education is not about subject learning but learning processes and methodologies of thought. IE learning ways to think regardless of the data input. The system is in a shit state due to an influx of middle managers with paucity of spirit and misguided government policy but the very true realiy is that the best pupils will learn to think as much as they learn the subject and the less academically able a) learn the subject b) don’t really care, they’re just there because they think that’s what you’re supposed to do between leaving school and getting a job.
I’m working class and will always consider myself to be working class. Because the alternative is to be like the B’s or the J’s and to be ashamed of it, to hide it, to pretend that your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were other than they were, to pretend that your house is better than it is,
Uncle J is head of one of the largest corporations on the planet. He’s a multi millionaire. And he still happily tells the story of going to watch Liverpool win the European Cup final in the eighties, getting blind drunk to celebrate and waking up in a fountain the next day with no idea where he was, no wallet and no ticket home. It’s hardly hiding the fact that he’s a working class scouser. The b’s house was valued at half a million last year. They hardly have to pretend that their house is better than it is. And they don’t. Aunt B cheerfully admits that they bought it for less than 50 k twenty years ago.
I’m working class and will always consider myself to be working class. Because the alternative is to be like the B’s or the J’s and to be ashamed of it, to hide it, to pretend that your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents were other than they were, to pretend that your house is better than it is, to not let your family into any social occasion where they might embarrass you or show up your roots, to constantly reassert your intellectual, economic and social superiority without acknowledging on bended knee the sacrifices that people made in order for you to achieve it. I’d die rather than to be like that.
That’s as restrictive, narrow and inflexible a view as the people you oppose. You want me to give you a list of the bastards, wastrels, working class and scum who rose to become great men and women in so many ways? How far would they have got if they’d constantly said ‘I’m working class and I’m staying working class.’ It’s like listening to a fucking yorkshireman. ‘I say what I like and I like what I bloody well say.’ I’m Yorkshire and I’m proud, Gods own country blah blah blah…. Where you came from shouldn’t get in the way or be forgotten on the journey to where your going. I really think that we’re arguing the same thing from different ends here sis. I don’t have bees in my bonnet about where I come from or who I am or the percieved class betrayal of members of my family. I really don’t give a fuck about their lives or how they live them. I’m too busy getting on with mine to worry about it. I’m equally sure that they’re too busy getting on with theirs to worry about mine.
the bit I’m really taking exception to is this automatic assumption that all working class people are chavs and bigots, layabouts and racist while all middle class people are liberal and welcoming when often the very opposite is true. I’m not glorifying the working classes here, or even villifying the middle class -there are good and bad people in every walk of life
True. The end.
Go on, have the last word. It’s an elder sisters right.
January 31st, 2007 at 3:41 pm
We want to hear more about India!!!
*bangs fists on table*
February 1st, 2007 at 3:40 am
Yeah. We do. Get a move on. Ever since I stopped being funny I need other people to write interesting stuff…
February 1st, 2007 at 11:26 am
it could be worse you could be ‘Trade’!
My friend K who’s granddad took over my familiys gallery/framing business HER mother was told she was marrying down into Trade when she married her father.
February 2nd, 2007 at 2:05 am
I’m going to marry down….
She’s bound to be shorter than me…
February 15th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
thanks for looking at our stuff for the compliment. I’m enjoying reading through your pages here very much this morning. So cold here I have no excuse to do more than keep the fire going and reading. Imagine that. I’m blogrolling you for the trip to India stuff alone. I’ve read and listened to so much new age northamerican hippy crap…I tell you. It’s like ab fab without the lughs over here. thanks again.
rock
February 16th, 2007 at 4:13 am
Hi Rock. Thank you for looking in (and blogrolling me). Hope you keep the fire burning bright. The place where we lived when my brother and I were children was right up in the Pennines in the north of england. It got snowed in for weeks at a time in winter, we had no central heating, no double glazing, 12 houses, six miles away from the nearest shop, one bus a week and we didn’t have a car! So keeping the fire going wasn’t an excuse but a necessity for survival!.
Really glad you’re enjoying the stuff…there’s loads more to come.