Posh Bird speaks!

I'll be giving a short talk this week about the pleasures and pains of wearing stilettos in the country, navigating muddy paths and how to overtake a tractor (take the train) at a Literary Salon organised by the truly brilliant Damian Barr  (of Shoreditch Salon fame). It's at Aubin & Wills on Westbourne Grove on Thurs 18 Feb. Free but there are limited places so go to the Facebook page if you want to be on the guestlist.


You can buy Mud & the City: Dos & Don'ts of Townies in the Country on Amazon for a bargainous £6.49.

Recollections of a naughty grandmother

An old friend of mine came round for supper last week and was reminding me of stories about my very naughty maternal grandmother. Far from baking cakes, Kate used to give me whisky and cigarettes when I was a small child and my bed time stories would be about antics in nightclubs where waiters were bitten by pet tigers, or lovers that tried to double cross her and failed. She was tall and glamorous, never with a snag in her tights or safety pin for a button. Even at 80 years old, her legs would be the best in the room and she'd sit in the corner while people flocked to talk to her.

In her earlier years, for almost two decades, she had an affair with an Earl in Scotland. They wrote to each other daily and he gave her an owl. He promised he would wait for her to divorce so they could marry but then suddenly he met someone else and arranged to marry her within three months. She said later she was demented with heartbreak – which means that perhaps we may forgive her the next part of the story. But perhaps not.

On the eve of the wedding, she wrote two letters. One, to her former lover, said: "Darling R–, I am so sorry that you have been forced into marriage with this terribly plain girl...How awful it will be for you to be forced to look upon her plain face when you wake in the morning...What terrible circumstances have brought you to this. My poor love. Etc." The second said: "Dear M–, What simply wonderful news of your marriage. How happy you will be. With very best wishes, Kate."

And then she put them in the wrong envelopes.

Deliberately? But, of course.

U and Non-U: some things never change

With reference to blogs passim about how hard it is to find distinguishing marks of the posh, I'd like to draw your attention to this little snippet I found:

"...today, a member of the upper class is, for instance, not necessarily better educated, cleaner, or richer than someone not of this class. Nor, in general, is he likely to play a greater part in public affairs, be supported by other trades or professions, or engage in other pursuits or pastimes than his fellow of another class. There are, it is true, still a few minor points of life which may serve to demarcate the upper class, but they are only minor ones."

Oddly enough, this was not written last week but in 1956 by Alan S.C.Ross in his academic paper for the University of Birmingham: 'U and Non-U – An Essay in Sociological Linguistics.'

It was from this that Nancy Mitford wrote her own article on 'The English Aristocracy', for which she was revered and reviled in equal measure. (So, in fact, it wasn't Mitford who coined U - meaning upper class speaker, and Non-U, meaning not. I'd be pretty cross if I was Ross. But then again, he nearly was.)

Lots of the U and Non-U markers still hold today, although some of the "minor marks" of the upper classes, which include things such as the wearing of braces for tennis, use of the word wireless and how they hold their drink (gentlemen would, apparently, vomit in public but never be truculent when drunk) are no longer noticeable, shall we say.

Ross focuses on the addressing of envelopes (hah!), Mitford is more concerned with the definition of aristocracy (which she boils down almost entirely simply to having a title) and those linguistic things which mark out a Non-U. Those which still exist include:
Sweet: non-U for U pudding
Dinner: non-U for U luncheon (although hardly anyone says luncheon, they do say lunch)
Wealthy: non-U for U rich

Some I always used but didn't know I was being U in saying them:
Britain: non-U for U England (although I do know when to be sensitive about this. One has to move with the times. As you might have thought Liz Hurley would when she recently wrote an article headlined 'A Guide to Mumbai' and insisted on calling it 'Bombay' throughout.)
Home: non-U – 'they have a lovely home'; U - 'they've a very nice house'

But some I didn't know (and henceforth of course will pretend that that was what I always said):
Greens is non-U for U vegetables
Mental: non-U for U mad
Glasses: non U for U spectacles
Dentures: non-U for U false teeth 
Ill: non-U against U sick

To confuse things further, Mitford admits that some U-speakers will deliberately employ non-U phrases in an ironic manner (or perhaps in memory of their darling Nanny. It is a truism that the upper classes of the past were entirely brought up by the working classes, which is why they share so many characteristics even now). Also, of course, U and non-U markers change over the years.

Is it time for a 21st century version? Posh Bird throws her hat into the ring...