Outrageously middle-class journalism

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

Remember that modest tornado in Kensal Rise last year?  I do.  And so does Caroline Phillips.

My home has always been my sanctuary, a place of exquisite beauty and calm. I read or sit undisturbed on our leather sofa in our family room with its off-white walls, stainless steel and sage-green stone surfaces, and gaze through its wall of sliding glass doors onto our fragrant cream and lavender garden with its climing roses, ancient apple and pear trees, camellias and jasmine.

All that changed in less than 10 seconds on Thursday when the tornado visited. The glass roof of the side-return exploded, tinkling down from the ceiling like sharp raindrops. Somebody's concrete windowsill crashed onto our worktop and now rests amid a quarry of shattered glass. A black roof tile speared the American walnut floating shelf, scattering our younger daughter Ella's birthday cards. "Congratulations! Nine years old today!" The words have been lacerated by shards of glass. Three bricks. Rainwater. Broken glass. A wooden bowl of Christmas clementines. These are vomited across our limestone floor.

If you dream of your home, it symbolises your psyche, what makes you you. It's your security. My soul was in that house. For three years, I'd indulged my passion for perfect decor. In January, it was to have been shot for Homes & Property. On Saturday Ella is, no, that's was, having three friends for a birthday sleepover. I am crying as I write this.

I was sitting in my first-floor office on Thursday morning, making a whirlwind of phone calls; speaking to Ella's classmates' parents, feeling explosive at hearing stories of bullying. There was a colossal thunderclap and gigantic explosion of lightning. I remember thinking it extraordinary, this physical manifestation of my psychic state. Suddenly I glanced out of the window. "Oh my God," I said, standing up. "Oh my God," I said into the phone.

There has been a terrorist bomb, I thought. A moustrous cloud of black smoke that spread the width of two three-storey houses and towered above them 200 feet away across our gardens was angrily blasting branches, missiles, bricks and branches into the air. With sudden terror, I realised that the "smoke" was moving towards me. The words "Wizard Of Oz" went through my head as I crash-dived under the desk.

The second my head hit the floor and I crossed my arms to protect my eyes and ears, there was an almighty explosion, then the sound of a 140-tonne aeroplane roaring through my office. I lay on the floor screaming hysterically, a primal sound. "Caroline, what's happened? Talk to me?" The voice of film producer Julia Barron came from the phone. I screamed and screamed. Once, I witnessed an IRA bomb in Olympia where a second blast was expected. In my post-tornado confusion, I was waiting for another bomb to blow me up. I've nver felt so alone. "Caroline! Are you hurt? Speak to me! Have you been hit by lightning?" I felt immensely relieved; lightning doesn't strike twice.

Piece of glass fell from my (miraculously uncut) legs. I'd had sash windows overlooking the garden. Now there were panes punched out and glass thrown with violent abandon. Outside, the entire street's garden fences were scattered like a pack of cards. A large uprooted tree from somebody else's garden had crash-landed on someone's roof... which was in my husband Adrian's lovingly tended garden. If I hadn't looked out of the window easlier and seen the tornado coming, I wouldn't have been able to see this scene of devastation. I'd have been blinded.

I called Adrian's mobile. He was at a job interview, having recently been cut from his work as a private banker. The mobile wouldn't connect. Hysterical, I phoned my brother Simon. He was watching his son George's Nativity play. "Our house has been hit by a tornado." He couldn't understand my screams. Watching our family boxer, Douschka, shaking and walking aimlessly in circles crunching glass, I rang 999.

Jamie, our musician neighbour and father of newborn Seth, was standing in our communal bomb-site. "Our roof has been lifted off," he said simply. "Look at our chimney dangling there." Incredibly, his wife and son had been spared. To the other side, builder Nathan Brown and film-producer Juliet Levy's top-floor bedroom wall had been ripped off. And 90-year-old Beryl's loft kitchen had lost its walls and roof. You've seen these in the aerial photograph in the newspapers. We are among the worst hit.

In the street at the front it was like a film set, so surreal was the scene and so many the people. But instead of cameras, it was being videod on phones. A group of refuse collectors stood in shocked dismay. The side of a removal van was harpooned with roof tiles, a Toyota was halved by a concrete lintel. Thank God our daughters Anya and Ella were at school.

Juliet came out and we hugged and wept. She'd seen the tornado and had run away, thinking only for finding her daughter, two year old Jasmine. (She was unhurt.) Juliet heard my cries through the thick Edwardian walls. "I thought they were the screams of a dying woman." A dishevelled man in slippers walked past. "I've got to get to my house," he muttered anxiously, "I need my medicine. I'm a paranoid schizophrenic." Eyes wide with fear, geography teacher Vanessa Ross Russell ran towards me. "I don't know if Claudia (her two year old daughter) is in the house." We ran up the rest of the street together. Normally we just share school runs. Her front door was opened by her nanny, colour drained from her petrified face. Claudia stood by her side, like a statue.

The emergency services came, along with my shell-shocked husband. I had only the clothes I was shaking in, and my mobile. I couldn't find a glass-free spot for Douschka. A fireman carried her to safety in the fire engine. Adrian went into our house. "Please don't go back in," urged a fireman as he came out. "TYhat chimney stack is about to fall." We'd lost part of our roof and all our back windows.

A neighbour, Chris Martin, an advertising producer, arrived. He survived the Hatfield rail disaster. On Thursday he had moved back home after three months of decorating. Luckily he was out when it struck. "You're in serious shock," he said. Emergency services treated people for shock, kicked down doors, vacated properties. They acted with kindness, spirit and awesome efficiency. Faced with a messy child's bedroom, one fireman seized the moment: "Looks like a tornado hit your room, love!" We spent 10 tremulous minutes waiting to hear whether our damage would be covered by Lark Insurance Services or disallowed as an act of God. "Well, are you?" asked a policewoman, her eyes bursting with compassion. We are.

I spoke to endless media. A need to be recognised when I'd almost been no longer. Then came acquaintances', friends' and family's touching offers of help, beds, cash and clothes. Deep-frozen, I'd already borrowed four jumpers from neighbours; I wore them all for three days. Amid the scene of devastation, a man tried to bring order to the world by washing his car. As rain poured into our kitchen, I dreaded an electrical fire stealing the remains of our home. I feared looting. Then we heard that a fiftysomething man had suffered serious head injuries. With rising foreboding, we went from official to official, from Mothodist Church Hall to the British Legion centre, to find out if it was our friend Chris Barker. It wasn't.

News changed by the minute. We were told that our house, though not visibly terrible, was the most dangerous in the street. There was rumour of its being demolished. When the cordon banning residents access to affected Crediton Road houses came down, apartheid prevailed for three houses. Ours was one.

Since then I've been in an emotional cyclone. I already had a brilliant trauma specialist therapist. I went to see him on Thursday evebning. I've felt a desperate need not to be alone, to keep in touch. (We've stayed with friends rather than in a hotel because I want to be with people I love.) I haven't slept much. I've shivered brutally. For three nights, I saw the tornado coming towards me whenever I shut my eyes. I've jumped at loud noises, panicked hearing sirens, cried endlessly. Sat in my car and screamed and screamed hysterically at such unfairness. Fought the desire for cigarettes and alcohol after 18 years' abstinence. Despaired of my loss of earnings. Felt like never living in my house again.

Now we've been allowed home to survey our own private war-zone. We don't yet know the extent of the structural damage, but it may take six months to repair. Neighbours Sunil Vijayakar and Geraldine Larkin have been told to throw away ALL their possessions, filled as they are with shards of glass. Simon Willsmer, our loss adjustor, hasn't yet broken that news to us. The insurance companies have taken a recent slating, but he was sensitive and honourable. He said we could stay in a hotel. Adrian explained that there is only one hotel in London: Claridge's. Simon did not demur. And he loved what's left of our specialist-polished plaster walls.

We're acknowledging our children's trauma, talking to them and giving them lots of treats. Staff at Francis Holland, Anya's school, have been magnificent in their sensitive handling of her feelings. We took Anya, 11, "home" on Friday. Her room was virtually untouched, being at the front of the house. But she feels displaced and traumatised. On Sunday we took Ella. She was devastated that her cat, Happy, was missing, possibly killed. She surveyed the destruction wreaked on her spotty Cath Kidson carpet, rosebud blinds and soft toys. "You always say my room looks like a bomb site," she said, smiling bravely. "Now it really does." Two roof tiles and 50 pieces of fist-sized glass lay on her bed. Just days before, unwell, she'd have been there at 11.02am. Tears filling her eyes, she picked up a pink rabbit, her favourite toy. A sprinkling of glass fell off his fur.

I attended Friday's crisis meeting in the British Legion. A room full of frightened people who'd scarcely slept in this makeshift refuge; many of whom had lost their homes and were too distressingly poor to afford insurance cover. I was offered a hard hat, possible council tax rebate but, so far, no counselling. Nearby were the Scientology Volunteers in emblazoned flourescent jackets; people preying (or should that be praying?) on the vulnerable. "Almost worse than losing my house is being accosted by Scientologists," I told the waiting cameramen outside. There was a tornado in Kensal Rise in the Fifties. Now I know about the Scientologists, I can't risk living there any more.

On Friday evening, stupidly, we met friends for dinner in that awful eye of the social tornado, Cipriani. I wore Tornado Chic - the grey pants and multiple jumpers that were still my only clothes. I screamed with grief in the loo. I fought the urge to shout: "Less than five miles from here, there are old people like Beryl who didn't even have enough money to paint her door, who have lost their roofs..."

The Apocalypse was not all bad. There was something comforting about watching the Salvation Army dispensing tea and sandwiches. Uplifting seeing people in crisis helping one another. And meeting kindly new souls in the street. As for the house, it's just bricks and mortar. We're not in a tent in Pakistan or even Brent council's temporary accomodation. In fact, we're staying with close friends. Thankfully Christmas isn't such a disaster – we already had plans to go away. Everybody is safe. Happy, Ella's cat, returned this morning.

Last night i didn't see the tornado when I went to sleep. I feel euphoric that I'm alive. I've got used to friends calling me Dorothy, a reference to the Wizard Of Oz. My family surmises that I'll do anything out of of cooking Christmas lunch. Oh, and now we might just get that communal garden we've always wanted.

That article made my jaw hit the floor.  It also displays some of the peculiar devices used in Middle Class Journalism:

*Introducing people by their name and their job: "A neighbour, Chris Martin, an advertising producer"

*Talking about their perfectly intellectual children which have names that sound like old woman, such as Ella

*They "agonise" over their posessions and are puzzlingly specific about them, as if they were a scientific formula: "American floating walnut shelves".  It's a shelf, dear, and it wouldn't make a fig of difference whether it was "American Floating and Walnut" or "From Argos".

*Events beginning with them, ending with them and occasionally touching upon their well-to-do neighbours

*Irritatingly hyperbolic self-pity

*And things like this: "In January, it was to have been shot for Homes & Property". 

There is nothing wrong with being middle class, but Caroline Phillips is one of the hatefully myopic middle-class whose sole identity is formed by her possessions and of how she is seen by the outside world.  I can think of one other revolting person like that, and it's Liz Jones.

For example: urgh.

She ticks all the boxes:

"Agonising" over possessions:  ..."wore a cream made-to-measure Robinson Valentine trouser suit, and £450 Bottega Veneta shoes with rhinestone-encrusted heels, and agonised over whether the cake was organic chocolate ganache or autumn berries, or the flowers creamy English tea roses or arum lilies"

"To be honest, although I spent my entire life trying to escape singledom, burying my nose in Vogue to find out how to banish cellulite, or the latest news on sugaring, or where to buy an Azzedine Alaia body for just £375, it wasn't really that bad."

Self-pity: "Why do I write about my life? I had never meant to. My column started out as a lighthearted look at single life in London, with all its rituals, dating fiascos and beauty treatments. I didn't know it was going to become a dissection of our relationship as it disintegrated over time. Once I started, it was hard to stop. The worst part, or the best part, I don't know, is that having a weekly deadline crystallises things; I will often force an issue, push him for an answer, because I have a deadline."

She's finally getting divorced so will have her "pristine" house to herself. Enjoy it, you cretin..

You get the picture. 

And they are all so rich and seem to feel sorry for themselves for being so rich.

Loathsome.  Any more?

[El Unicornio, mang]

Have I missed something? Since when does "middle class" refer to snobby rich people??

[Small Man Big Horse]

Christ, that's hideous stuff, I found it all but unbearable to read. I don't really like to endulge in schadenfreude, but I could help it here.

I've got to admit that I'm surprised by the Daily Mail's extremely tolerant reaction to beastiality though.



This line striked me as remarkably funny as well:

Now I know about the Scientologists, I can't risk living there any more.

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

Have I missed something? Since when does "middle class" refer to snobby rich people??

I am talking about that rather aspirational strand of middle-classness, keeping up with the (Liz) Jones', having the best house, the most objects, etc.  These people are rich but that ideal is a middle-class one. 

[El Unicornio, mang]

Well, middle class is pretty much anyone who works a white collar job, I'd say she's "upper middle class" at minimum. It would be a bit like reading an article about someone working down a mine shoveling shit 18 hours a day for 50p an hour and saying "how dreadfully working class!". I'm exaggerating a bit possibly.

"Middle class" is an odd term. In England it's used as an insult for people like the lady mentioned above, in the US it's used as an insult for people who don't make lots of money and have to actually work for a living. Technically most people on here are middle class though.

[monkhouse terror]

Then we heard that a fiftysomething man had suffered serious head injuries. With rising foreboding, we went from official to official, from Mothodist Church Hall to the British Legion centre, to find out if it was our friend Chris Barker. It wasn't.

MY GOD THE TIMES WE LIVE IN WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE SUBURBANITES

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Yeah..thank fuck it was only SOMEONE ELSE.

[The Widow of Brid]

Technically most people on here are middle class though.

On what would you be basing that assumption, and by which definition though? Financial? Background?

[monkhouse terror]

because the majority of the regulars are faux-angry internet forum users with lots of time on their hands with hobbies that require disposable income, broadband connections and the right kind of social circles that might discuss the latest BREAKCORE release or RADIO 4 COMEDY PANEL SHOW

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

Now now, attributing class to a cultural preference is very spurious.  You don't always get your cultural cues from your upbringing.  You develop them, and you don't have to go to a posh school to like Radio 4 or those funny black and white french films.

[monkhouse terror]

ah yes sorry my mistake we're all just a bunch of tortured intellectual working class heroes aren't we

[ziggy starbucks]

I'm mylene class

[buttgammon]

I'm in Mylene Klass. Wow. That's very classy, Mylene. How much will that be, love?

Edit: Bloody hell! Can anyone on here lend me a bit of cash?

[monkhouse terror]

you two, see me after class.

edit: especially mylene innit

[buttgammon]

Sorry for spilling Tippex on your desk. It is Tippex. Honest.

[ziggy starbucks]

I was in class 3BD in the third year at school. We were not affected by a tornado but we did have our own leather sofa and a fragrant cream and lavender garden.

Makes you think, doesn't it.

[hencole]

I am talking about that rather aspirational strand of middle-classness, keeping up with the (Liz) Jones', having the best house, the most objects, etc.  These people are rich but that ideal is a middle-class one. 

I can think of only one person I know well who I would hesitate to call middle class and that's my flat mate who's an electrician.

There are big differences in the middle clases, the biggest difference being politics, wealth and whether they send their children to private school or not. To put me in the same catogry as that obnoxious journalist is insulting and I expect the opening poster is middle class socio economically as pretty much everyone is. We don't all apsire to that at all.

[Mr. Analytical]

ah yes sorry my mistake we're all just a bunch of tortured intellectual working class heroes aren't we

  I was thinking about this the other day.  The fact that I've become more and more hostile to the trappings of middle class culture.  When my best friend turned up in a freshly purchased BMW I laughed in his face and I'm often heard muttering about public school boys whenever I watch the news.

  I don't really think it is about class.

  I don't think that class is that big a deal.  I think it's about sub-culture.

  In terms of economics, up-bringing, education and geography, I'm as middle class as you can get.  However, because society has become increasingly fractured, I actually have very little in common with other people of my up-bringing, economic status and geography.  The issue isn't necessarily that I'm too poor to be interested in renting a Tuscan villa for the holidays and worrying about the lack of good opted out day schools in London or why my corner shop refuses to sell organic weetabix.  It's that I'm not part of the sub-culture that is.

  I think that there was a time when being of a certain class tied you into quite a strict and narrow sub-culture with shared values, world-views, experiences and so on.  I don't think that's true any more.  I don't think I have a lot in common with a traditional working class person either but then, I don't think anyone on here does.

[biniput]

We are not faux angry we are actually angry and we have no more time on our hands than anyone else. As far as disposable income and internet connections and social circles are concerned i have not paid for my connection for months nor may i for ever due to the providers bugger up.  Anyone can be interested in comedy regardless of where they live.

[ziggy starbucks]

working class people don't listen to radio 4, they listen to local radio

obvious

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

I can think of only one person I know well who I would hesitate to call middle class and that's my flat mate who's an electrician.

There are big differences in the middle clases, the biggest difference being politics, wealth and whether they send their children to private school or not. To put me in the same catogry as that obnoxious journalist is insulting and I expect the opening poster is middle class socio economically as pretty much everyone is. We don't all apsire to that at all.

Not in the slightest.  I'm from that peculiar class who pays their internet bill before they pay for food.  I earn a very low wage, am from a working class background and was raised on benefits, I live in a tiny bedsit, I don't have any spare cash at all, don't go on holidays and I can barely cover my bills and can't afford groceries. I have been suffering from migranes for months because I can't afford glasses.  Without an internet connection, I think I would go bats.  I haven't paid the bill in some time.  But I still like Radio 4.

[Dusty Gozongas]

It would be a bit like reading an article about someone working down a mine shoveling shit 18 hours a day for 50p an hour and saying "how dreadfully working class!".

It's never been the same since Thatcher closed them shit mines. And to think there was such a hullaballoo and a hollerin' in me great grandpop's day too!  "Thars shit in tham thar hills" indeed. Poor bloke's turning in his grave I'll bet.

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

Well, middle class is pretty much anyone who works a white collar job, I'd say she's "upper middle class" at minimum. It would be a bit like reading an article about someone working down a mine shoveling shit 18 hours a day for 50p an hour and saying "how dreadfully working class!". I'm exaggerating a bit possibly.

"Middle class" is an odd term. In England it's used as an insult for people like the lady mentioned above, in the US it's used as an insult for people who don't make lots of money and have to actually work for a living. Technically most people on here are middle class though.

Her "distressingly poor" people being unable to afford insurance shows her warped perception.

[El Unicornio, mang]

It's all relative though isn't it? I was watching Airline one time and this horrible arrogant snooty woman was forced to buy another ticket and stay away from her work for an extra day and she turns to camera and says "Thank God I'm not middle class". God knows what she thinks of working class people. For what it's worth, I went to comprehensive school and from my point of view (at the time), people who went to public school were upper class or upper middle class. I mixed with everyone from the very poorest working class to the snootiest upper class at my school though. The sneering goes both ways. I find it laughable that 2/3 of Britons profess to be "working class" though, as if it's some badge of honour or something.

[23 Daves]

My problem is that if you gave me a stereotypical definition of a working class, middle class and upper class person, I wouldn't want to be bracketed as any of them.  The same seems to be true of most people I know who started out in relatively working class backgrounds and slowly progressed upwards in terms of both their education and their income.  We don't really feel that at home anywhere.  I sometimes don't think it's any huge coincidence that my wife - and the only person I would consider myself to have had a successful and non-conflicting relationship with - also came from a family who started off at a very low strand of society and slowly became more "middle class" in terms of income.  She can understand that the idea of holding house parties just to show your new furniture fittings to everyone is boastful, arrogant and actually quite boring, but also doesn't think that there's some sort of honour in ignoring certain strands of culture for the self-defeating reason that it's "not what people like us do". 

For all the above, though, the county I spent a lot of my time growing up in (Essex) was chock-a-block with aspirational working class people, and most of them were c__ts as well.  So give me a new category I'm happy with and I'll go and stand there. 

[daisy11]

So give me a new category I'm happy with and I'll go and stand there. 

I wish I loved the Human Race;
I wish I loved its silly face;
I wish I liked the way it walks;
I wish I liked the way it talks;
And when I'm introduced to one,
I wish I thought "What Jolly Fun!"

Sir Walter Raleigh sums it up perfectly. Although that use of "jolly" makes him upper MC nowadays I'd say :-)

[Funcrusher]

My problem is that if you gave me a stereotypical definition of a working class, middle class and upper class person, I wouldn't want to be bracketed as any of them.  The same seems to be true of most people I know who started out in relatively working class backgrounds and slowly progressed upwards in terms of both their education and their income.  We don't really feel that at home anywhere.  I sometimes don't think it's any huge coincidence that my wife - and the only person I would consider myself to have had a successful and non-conflicting relationship with - also came from a family who started off at a very low strand of society and slowly became more "middle class" in terms of income.  She can understand that the idea of holding house parties just to show your new furniture fittings to everyone is boastful, arrogant and actually quite boring, but also doesn't think that there's some sort of honour in ignoring certain strands of culture for the self-defeating reason that it's "not what people like us do". 

For all the above, though, the county I spent a lot of my time growing up in (Essex) was chock-a-block with aspirational working class people, and most of them were c__ts as well.  So give me a new category I'm happy with and I'll go and stand there. 

I think the changes in this country economically are starting to make the old upper/middle/working class divides outdated. Which is not to say we're becoming more equal. Far from it. These journos are seen as being middle class because they aren't (presumably) aristocrats with inherited wealth. But although I would be classed as middle class because my parents worked in office based public sector jobs and didn't live in a council house -although my cunty stepfather grew up in one - and I have a degree (from a rubbish Poly) and know how to talk proper, I have nothing like the wealthy existence of these journos. I live in humble rented accomodation, have no prospect of ever affording to buy a house and certainly don't eat out at The Ivy or wear designer clothes. Financially, life has generally been a bit of a struggle.

I also feel as if I'm someone who doesn't fit into any social class. I go to the cinema a fair bit, and on a typical weekend I might see a film at my local multiplex on Friday and then something on at an arthouse cinema on Saturday. I tend to feel equally out of place queueing for a ticket in both places. I stick out in the multiplex because I'm usually reading a book, and am clearly not a local Enfield geezer who drives a hot hatchback, and in the arthouse cinema I get the impression that I don't really dress or look like the 'right sort', and conversations around me are all about a much more monied lifestyle than mine and one upmanship stuff about food or holidays. So I feel out of place in both places.

[John Self]

Then stop reading books, get a hatchback, and never leave the house again: sorted.

I am talking about that rather aspirational strand of middle-classness, keeping up with the (Liz) Jones', having the best house, the most objects, etc.  These people are rich but that ideal is a middle-class one. 

Is it? Seems like a fairly universal (or at least widespread) ideal. Everyone's got some level of greed and insecurity- I don't think class has much to do with it.


Anyone who says things like "I never see myself as being of any class" are only doing so because they know that they're in the wrong one. I of course am upper class, I'm very comfortable with that, and I view the rest of you with a mixture of puzzlement, hilarity and disgust. But I'll admit there's a strange fondness there too, and I do appreciate that unlike me, you have your uses.

Now go sweep my gravel drive you peasants

[sick as a pike]

I of course am upper class, I'm very comfortable with that, and I view the rest of you with a mixture of puzzlement, hilarity and disgust. But I'll admit there's a strange fondness there too, and I do appreciate that unlike me, you have your uses.

I think the most upper class person I've met is Lord Bath, and that's exactly how he seemed to regard me and everyone else around him at the time.  Slightly baffled that we'd speak to him- each comment from us being met with a George III style "what what?!"

[Sebastian Dangerfield]

What baffles me about the upper middle-upper classes, especially the two I have mentioned, is their sense of entitlement coupled with a belief that they are hard done by.  I don't understand it.