Tuesday 5 July 2011

A Class of Diggers

I have been criticised for my frank ambition in life, which for anyone who doesn’t know is to marry for money, (okay I know there’s no way of me defending that but hold on) that is if my unrealistic dreams of going into fashion or becoming a human rights lawyer fail.  I was warned by my mother at the recent House and Garden sponsored “Spirit of Summer” fair that it was during the week that our stall would be most busy and when those with the cash came. But who was making this cash if the women were at the fair? When I looked around at these middle class women, all of whom I’d first perceived to be successful and sophisticated were actually just a bunch of the well dressed unemployed. Most with the same blonde hairstyle, trying to get their hands on the same commercial items, cashmere scarves, chiffon kaftans etc...  And each trying to outdo each other with decor and having the trendiest shade of paint in their houses, Farrow and Ball you're not fooling anyone with names like “Wimborne White”, and “Slipper Satin”... they all look like cream. There was no sign of that rebellious generation that lived through a time as careless and innovative as the sixties.

A great moment came whilst I was standing in one of the stalls watching pair after pair of overpriced swimming shorts being sold when my mother got an email on her iphone (of course darling) from “Neighbourhood Watch”.  Living in the Nappy Valley suburb of London that is Wandsworth we of course have this phenomenon. I couldn’t help but laugh at the hilarity of someone warning their fellow neighbours about a flasher on Wandsworth Common. The Working classes have knife crime, my white suburbia apparently has flashers, god forbid any Sweaty Betty clad runner should come across him again.

I may sound like the lowest form of harlot in this world of feminism but I at least have the idealistic notion that when I’m rich I’ll have the time to do something meaningful. (Going once a year to the Trinity Hospice Party, running the Walk for Life and having kids doesn’t count) I just bemoan all the women who have sold themselves short for their ambitious husbands, whether in “the City” or the American equivalent “Wall Street” .
There is not much to do about this, maybe encourage these women to take a sneak peak at that racy tattoo they’ve had hidden for so long or take a drag of the spliff they haven’t enjoyed in years. Or maybe I ask that before you judge me on my soulless ambition that you first take a look and see that the generation before us, through sheer accident and upbringing are themselves a class of diggers.

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