The three main classes bring to mind interesting stereotypes. Say 'working class' and my mind immediately conjures some bizarre amalgamation of The Kray Twins fused with Peter Kay - an abomination violently demanding cups of tea, as it is compelled to 'pick a pocket or two' in a Victorian London populated by sea urchins and Guy Ritchie's phallus-like camera - all to the sound of 'knees up Mather Bran' on an ale-house tinkler.
On the other hand, say 'middle class' and I immediately see a dull 1960s train carriage full of Magritte-like bowler hatted, faceless androids - silently trundling toward Surbiton while their medicated wives glide through Waitrose, handling Organic avocados like one of them might contain semtex.
If I hear someone say 'Upper Class' (note I subconsciously capitalised this term - praps for fear of upsetting my noble masters?) and I am instantly transported to a corsetted, perfumed horse carriage cradling a semi-human reptile lady - whose ice cold eyes appear to murmur a millenia of restraint and cruelty. Faint chamber music accompanies a Lord taking a shit on a chambermaid's face. Foxes being crucified en-masse on a perfectly tended croquet lawn.
I picture these classes as not so much at war with one another, but engaged in some kind of politico-sexual daisy-chain wherin ecstacy and agony are blurred like a streak of Francis Bacon's paint.
But examining a society that contains yourself is inherantly impossible. Like Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle proved it was impossible to test perfection, or like it's impossible to look at a picture of Michael Barrymore without picturing him bugger-drowning a gay lad. We try to see ourselves as living outside class. Like we are somehow above such conventions. It is possibly some kind of strange survival mechanism. Perhaps free will is essential for us to be controlled. Because as much as we deny it, us Brits sort of all do fall into either Working Class, Middle Class, or Upper Class. Sorry, but you can't deny it. It is beyond us. It is centuries of breeding - intentional and random. It is genetic. It advances and retreats. But this doesn't stop people wearing the mask of a different class to profit or survive.
The number of upper middle class kids I went to school with who pretended for six straight years that they were the salt of the facking earth. How would they achieve this? One - change their accent. Two - beat the shit out of people. And by the same token - I've been to sprawling Essex mansions with enough faux grecian vases and gold-leaf bannister trim to make Nicky Haslam gag on his own hand. As much as we detest it - there IS such a thing as class. And there is, I find, something alien about being among a class you don't belong to.
As part of my work I often find myself in very upper class houses (I'm a freelance butler) and there is a strange feeling of vulnerability when you are outnumbered by those of another class. I think of myself as a social chameleon, but nothing can hide your true nature when you are faced with a gang of them. You feel excluded, not just socially, but also physically. Like they are hiding another limb under their polo shirts and they're all secretly laughing because they fucking KNOW for a fact you don't have one. And as sure as you will never have three arms - however much cash or influential friends you might aquire, you will never be one of them. Unless you already are. There is a distant, unnamable mark in the scent of the Upper Classes. Sort of like old furniture and dried pheasant blood. However hard one tries (However many times one uses the term 'one' instead of 'you' when writing) - you can never totally assimilate. Like Captain Picard when he became Borg. He was never really fooling anyone. That bald head - you could spot him a mile away.
On the flip side, I remember walking into a south east London estate pub one rainy night (echoes of an urban Slaughtered Lamb) with a few mates and even before we reached the wood of the bar the landlord (a Northern version of Frank Butcher) told us we had 'NO FUCKING CHANCE' of being served. We waited for him to laugh. He didn't. We left. We didn't belong. I think we all felt a little bit like C3PO being barred from the Mos Eisley cantina that night. I remember thinking 'Am I really a gay robot?'
But I am secretly happy to be middle class. Even a bit proud. I know - it sounds horrific, anomalous, as if I'm admitting to liking shit weather, or soggy cornflakes, but I tells you guvnor, it's most rightly true. I think when you stop pretending you are someone else you can actually begin to live properly. And paradoxically - it is only when you acknowledge how little control you have, that you can actually change things. It's like 'Posh' Spice will never really be posh. And Jamie Oliver, even if he covered himself in dirt went back in time and made a massive eel pie on the circa 1920s Old Kent Road - he'll never really be working class - no matter how many times he gurns like Les Dawson performing cunnilingus. Just wanting it doesn't work.
So yes, I like buttered muffins. I listen to classical music. I squeeze baguettes like someone feeling for a pulse. I drink wine. I will inevitably, one day, (oh Christ) listen to radio four. Like a violent reoffender - I am preprogrammed to do this stuff. But I remind myself that underneath this socialised banality, there is a fountain of strangeness. As Magritte dressed up in a suit and bowler hat and walked around his block once before returning to his own house to paint. As David Lynch ate the same lunch for twelve years, As Einstein wore the same suit. We shouldn't be ashamed of apparent conformity, of the colour grey. We should quietly cherish it. As Flaubert wrote 'Be regular and orderly in your life, so that you may be violent and original in your work.'
Next 'Week' : MORALITY or 'You might be able to dissolve a corpse in a bath tub, but should you?'
