I don't really mean that, after all, I'm middle-class myself, and anyway, I'm sure God has more pressing matters to attend to. It's just that the post-modern middle-class are so unbelievably stupid that they never even consider the possibility that they are stupid! How stupid is that? Now it doesn't matter if their stupidity confines itself to blogdom where it provides mutual entertainment as we compare and deride each other's stupidities, but it is when this middle-class stupidity oozes out into the real world and actually has an effect that I begin to worry and become grumpy.
I am provoked to this by the sight last night on my television of the ineffable Rachel North blathering yet again on the absolute necessity for a third? or is it fourth? enquiry into the events leading up to the London bombings. The real reason for her agitation is because the other enquiries failed to produce the answer that Rachel North thinks they should have reached. You see, Rachel North knows the answers but what she yearns for is some third party to confirm it for her, even if it means that hard-pressed security officers are taken off the jobs they are doing in order to be pilloried by Ms. North and her cohorts. I'm not saying Ms. North is wrong in her conclusions, I have not the slightest idea one way or the other, but what I do know is that having been subjected to three or four enquiries the matter should be dropped, the security services should stay on the job and the whole matter should now be left to the historians.
To be fair to Ms. North, which I am not so inclined to be, she was merely a catalyst in my near-terminal grumpiness. Last month I received a letter which I assumed (wrongly) was from my Parish Council telling me there would be a meeting to discuss the future development of my village. Normally, of course, I would have binned the letter but that old devil, curiosity, got the better of me so I went along. The room was filled with middle-class people, like myself, but spiced with a few token 'ooo-arrrs' as I call the local yokels. A very 'naice' lady then gave a long welcoming speech in which she told us everything that the 'main-man' organiser was going to say! He then stood up and repeated what she had said, and so only 15 minutes into the meeting I was already contemplating homicide.
It transpired that this was not organised by our elected Parish Council but was set up by a bunch of busy-body middle-class nitwits with more time than brains. They began the meeting by asking us all to stand whilst they asked a series of generalised 'either/or' questions concerning possible activities in the village and then asked us to choose either 'a' or 'b' as our preferred choice by moving to one side of the room or the other. For most of the questions I caused some consternation by remaining rooted to the centre of the room. When asked by the 'naice' lady if it was a case of not being able to choose, I replied that it was because, in a very real and fundamental way (the vicar was there) I didn't give a stuff whether there should be more sport or more arts in the village - or whatever the daft questions were. Anyway, like the 'News of the Screws' reporter of yesteryear, I made my excuses and left!
Pondering on it later, I became more and more angry. These 'naice' middle-class people couldn't be bothered to dirty their hands by standing for election to our Parish Council and trudging out in all weathers once a month to decide whether the branches of the oak tree in Friar Street should be lopped, or, the pot-holes in Manor Lane should be filled this year or next; no, no, that's for the little people, they wanted to influence the big picture and, once they had this semi-public meeting over, they would,no doubt, conduct their affairs from the comforts of each other's sitting rooms over an awfully decent Chianti they picked up in Italy last year.
Now, I had to attend two Parish Council meetings a couple of years ago over a matter that effected me and I was seriously impressed by the folk who took on that onerous and eye-stabbingly boring duty . I could no more do what they do than fly in the air. They do their best, no doubt they get it wrong from time to time, and if they get it too wrong, then they have to stand for re-election in due time and answer to the villagers. But now we have this self-appointed group of interefering busybodies who are answerable to no-one other than themselves and their own cosy cabal. They are the adult version of those pig-ignorant 'students' who can be seen at demonstrations wrecking our cities everytime someone, with more malevolent brains in their little finger than a thousand of them possess amongst themselves, tells them that what they should do. This 'grown up' lot are no better, they're just more polite and smell 'naicer'!
OF course one hates the middle class, but which class is preferable then? Just wondering! xo
Posted by: Sister Wolf | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 09:56
MY class! Small, I grant you, but exceedingly exclusive consisting, as it does, of just one person - me. As in me, Me, ME!
Posted by: David Duff | Sunday, 03 May 2009 at 11:06
Middle in intelligence; middle in imagination; middle in sensitivity; middle in compassion; middle in all things in the hope that if the balance swings up or down they can shift their allegiance to the stronger side - but only, ever for the instant.
Posted by: tony harding | Monday, 31 May 2010 at 19:09
Tony, greetings and welcome to D&N. Sorry it has taken me a while to respond but I am just back from France - where you are based, I notice.
Your succinct summary encapsulates the best, and the worst, of the bourgoisie. They infuriate me, too, despite my being a fully paid-up member. Through gritted teeth I am forced to conclude that their effect as a sheet anchor to society is, on the whole, to be desired.
Posted by: David Duff | Thursday, 03 June 2010 at 18:51
Dear David, thankyou for responding to my rather splenetic outburst. I do agree with you when you commend their contribution as 'a sheet anchor to society' but since I'm involved in the arts I have the biased tendency to consider them more in the light of being the damp flannel that suffocates. Hope the French visit went well for you. Have a good weekend. Best wishes, Tony
Posted by: tony harding | Saturday, 05 June 2010 at 19:05
"the damp flannel that suffocates".
Yes, I like that one.
I, too, in a literally amateurish way am involved in the arts but my interest is in theatre and in my club there is a constant war between the traditionalists (who constitute most of our audience), and the modernists (not to say, post-modernists) who constitute more and more of our youthful directors' list. The unpalatable fact, or at least, unpalatable to most contemporary artists (of all disciplines) is that the dreaded middle-classes have the final say, such that, over time, their thumb, either up or down, is the decider. Makes your teeth grind but there it is.
I went over and viewed your paintings and two things struck me. First, you never respond to comments on them. I think that is probably wise in most cases. In my view, reaction to all art is, in the first instance, visceral. In the current jargon, it either presses certain personal buttons or it does not. It is only after the event that one attempts to justify the visceral with the intellect.
Thus, my second re-action to your work was that I instantly warmed to it and if I tell you also that I am a great lover of Paul Klee's work you will know why. Klee was a man who dedicated his life to experimenting with colour and it seems to me that you are doing the same. However, to be honest (and I am never less than honest when it comes to art), I think you now need to move on into greater complexity of form and colour. Feel free to tell me to piss off and mind my own business!
If you check my recent blog entries you will see that France was France, that is, a delight, but the weather was atrocious. C'est la vie!
Posted by: David Duff | Saturday, 05 June 2010 at 19:57