by Tabitha Hergest

Created on: March 03, 2010

Familiarity, we are reminded, breeds contempt.  This is demonstrable by people-watching.  From any pavement cafe vantage point, let's say, you can see any number of types of people; the chav, or Council House And Violent type, which are everywhere and in all walks of life; but one thing they have in common is their base values.  Because they are everywhere, they attract no attention save if a mutant strain starts on the offencive, whereupon the Uninformed Officers of the Local Farce, the Constabulary, move in in their particular, bull-headed fashion, to contain matters, one hopes.  In the former case, the contempt is the contempt of anonymity, in the latter, it is the contempt of the crass and the common, which forces its way into your sphere of attention.

Then there are the office bunny, girl Friday types, who barely register on any scale but for their work-a-day innanities.  They are not bad people, in and of themselves, but they live in constant confusion, for being working class people doing vaguely middle-class occupations, with working-class brains.  They work, they party, they get drunk, throw up, and go to work again, and the cycle continues.  Obviously, they grow up into whatever mother nature has planned for them, but their babies'n'Bacardi banter usually interests nobody, so prevalent is it.

But when you get to film stars, Lords of the Realm and so on, who are usually noticeable to the trained observer by the subtle, tell-tale signs which betoken breeding and comfortable status, things become interesting.  You begin to notice them, perhaps look twice and imagine that well-worn cravat accompanying his Lordship on a shooting expedition or Skiing in Klosters or Gstaad.  Perhaps you, too, start to daydream of what you imagine is the high life, even if the reality is much the same as any person with business interests, only with a better standard of education.

Cars, too, come in yobbish - any car, but usually a Subaru Imprezza of Mitsubishi Evo - with a big bore exhaust pipe, and probably driven by someone wearing a baseball cap on the skew; they come in office-bunny - generally any car under about a litre-and-a-half's capacity with a small boot and a silly manufacturer's claim (Batman drives a Metro - remember that?), probably built within the last ten years.  And there are the aristocrats - but don't confuse them with the nouveau riche types - the stockbrokers and footballer "working class hero" types. 

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