The Trivial is Just That

 

Appearances deceive, and things are never quite what they seem; it would seem. Digging into this week's bumper Summer Edition of the New Statesman, having read about Picasso's rather less than savoury interpersonal nature, a review of a book about digital - mostly social media-driven - anger, and the letters page; I tackled Charlotte Stroud's byline about elitism and social immobility ['Out of the Ordinary']. Citing Dickens' Great Expectations, she argues that cultural capital - the kind of stuff much referenced in, I would say, times now thankfully passed; where people from the 'slightly lower orders' would fret endlessly about cutlery usage, abstruse food item consumption rules, and what the beejesus to call a piece of furniture or room, or the bog, even - is in some way potentially elevating.

Fessing up to being working class and in growing up lacking in that cultural capital so liberally and easily disposed among the elites [by dint of the fact - duh - that they invented the whole facade], she admits to the middle-class tropes of trying to eradicate evidence of her assumed cultural ignorance - what to name your bog, or the room you live in, or the big multi-person chair in that room, etc. She talks of being over-faced when it comes to eating lobster, artichokes or oysters; not having been schooled in opening a bottle of Champagne correctly: as if being taught this kind of stuff is actually in any way important. My suspicion is that any of this stuff only really matters to the metro-centrics who still suffer from class guilt inadequacy.

For those of us who escaped from the hot-house environment of the city in early adulthood, it all seems pathetically trivial to even acknowledge these tropes, outside of re-runs of 'Upstairs, Downstairs' or 'Downton Abbey'. Why on earth would anyone care what they call their banquette/sofa/settee; or their living room/lounge/drawing-room; or their lavatory/toilet/bog? Why on earth would you imagine that ignoring such trivia by the Left is in some way a race to the bottom - of what? Culture is so much more than etiquette or reading Classics at Oxford [the easy option for the academically less-gifted Upper Crust]. Enjoy food, wine and culture with alacrity, and engage with science and politics with an open and enquiring, critical mind. Ignore the rest and don't sweat it. Just give your children access to books, either through the local library, the interweb, or if you can afford it, the bookshop.

An open mind is all that's required: I grew up in a poor household in Winson Green, where free-thinking was encouraged, and a meagre but stimulating library was available. Read; read widely, and encourage, gently, your children to do likewise: it will make so much more of a difference to their lives and society as a whole than otherwise. It might not be easy, but it's worth the effort: ask the Welsh quarrymen who taught themselves everything the quarry-owners would rather they didn't know. Oh, and I do know the correct method of opening and serving a bottle of Champagne: my grandfather, who was in service to the posh as an Under-Butler, taught me when I was a kid, growing up in Brum...