For those among the dizzy
echelons of the, still surviving, English Landed Gentry, there is but one sentence which, when delivered
by their young, is enough to make the ancestral suit of armor in the hall fall
to the flagstones in a dead clank: "Mummy,
I'm going to be an interior designer."
The idea of choosing how one's
surroundings should be decorated, or, God forbid, moving with the times, is a
truly alien concept for the landed gentry.
As Grayson Perry, Britain's most
celebrated potter/transvestite, said, "Brits have an in-built
class GPS."
The upper classes he tells us "have their taste dictated to them by
their ancestors beyond the grave".
One of our most cutting political
put downs came when Baron Jopling dismissed Michael Heseltine, a self made
millionaire, with the cruel barb: "The
trouble with Michael is that he had to buy his own furniture."
Hyacinth Bucket: "...the Bouquet Residence, the lady of the house speaking! If there's
one thing I can't stand, it's snobbery and one-upmanship. People who try to
pretend they're superior. Makes it so much harder for those of us who really
are..."
