Between the Commons is where you live if you are 40, white, rich, and with a young family, if you want to be surrounded by people exactly like you. It's where Ian and I should supposedly aspire to live. I drove through it this morning, through its annoying speed-humped 20mph zone full of the worst kind of cyclists: middle-aged white people on heavy Dutch bikes that Ian says are called "nodders" because they nod as they ride in a slow, undulating, I-might-crash-into-you-as-I-hum-Brahms, sort of way.Before this morning, I hadn't driven a car since Esme was a newborn baby. But I have a car again, a very old banger, and she needed new tyres fitting at HiQ on Chatham Road, in the heart of Nappy Valley Between the Commons.
A grey-haired man on a heavy Dutch bicycle was swaying all over the road in front of me. Not having driven in three and a half years, this was the last thing I wanted. I wasn't feeling nervous, but I wasn't feeling 100% sure of myself or what this old banger could do, either.
"Oh, come ON, for fuck's sake," I said. "You might be waiting to die, but I'm not."
"Don't get wound up," said Ian.
"I'm not," I said. "I'm enjoying myself. I haven't had a good swear-behind-the-wheel in over three years. Come ON you useless old TOOL. Not you, darling."
"Don't get tense," said Ian. "Relax while you drive."
"I am relaxed! Swearing is how I relax! Look. I'm sitting back, I'm not gripping the wheel, I'm enjoying myself. Oh for FUCK'S sake, you old git. Not you, Ian. Him. See! This is how I unwind. Move OVER, you wobbling fucktard."
We arrived at HiQ, Ian silently thanking the Powers That Be for delivering him safely from a car with me at the wheel. We dropped the car off. We had an hour to kill while they worked on her, so we went for a poke around Northcote Road, because it's supposed to be good for poking.
It was a nice morning. Jumper weather. Or if you live between the Commons: trailing, boho, cable-knit poncho weather. Or loose, vague Cardigan Thing With Matching Ugg Boots weather. It was not too hot, not too cold: it was just right, and everyone looked very pleased with themselves.
They had a Crew outlet, for people who want to go yachting in Waitrose and need to be correctly attired. Space NK. Trotters. Farrow & Ball. All very high-end shops. A cafe that looked like a greasy spoon from a distance turned out to be a meze bar. We had to walk a long way to find a cafe that didn't have immaculate white table linen and wineglasses the size of Oscar's head.
We passed a LOT of junk-curio-antiquey shops selling white birdcages and wonky chairs in distressed pastel paint.
"Shabby chic," I remarked. Ian sucked air through his teeth.
"I hate that expression," he said. "'Here! Buy this, it's broken.'"
Eventually, we found a non-poncy Starbucks that sold coffee and cake. A man was standing outside, distributing leaflets. Every now and then, someone who had read one of the leaflets would come back to him and start arguing with him. I bagged one from a nearby table: he represented a group who were opposed to the opening of a new "free" school proposed by parents who didn't want their kids to go to the local State.
Inside Starbucks, the tables around us were filling with bulky pushchairs and their screaming occupants.
"Daisy! Really. Daisy, this is uncalled-for," entreated an Ugg-booted parent.
We'd finished our coffee and cake, and it was nearly time to go anyway.
On our way out, we passed the man with the anti-school leaflets. A man in expensive yachting knitwear was arguing with him while his ruddy-cheeked, salon-bleached, bus-shaped wife sat beside him at a table on the pavement, two golden spaniels matching her Ugg boots. Sometimes she'd support her husband's argument by clapping her gold-ringed hands in the air and bellowing "Good point!" while nodding emphatically at an entire high street of people who were totally ignoring her.
"Can we go to the toy shop?" asked Esme. We had time, so we said yes, and we went. It was rammed, of course, with forty-something, white parents and their children.
"There seem to be a lot of things on your birthday list, Thomas."
"Darling, I don't think so; it's for younger children."
I got Esme a couple of Playmobil figures and a little something for Ian, and we fought our way to the counter. As I was being served, a crinkly-faced, wire-haired mother came in with her young son and leaned over the counter impatiently.
"Hello?" she bellowed. "I'd like to exchange this." She wielded a cricket bat. "It's too inferior for him, and part of it's plastic." I found myself physically recoiling from the volume of her voice.
We made good our escape. Ian was already waiting outside. Then we went to a wholefood shop, because we have a Bloody Vegetarian coming to stay. As we were leaving, a man with a thick cockscomb of grey hair and an expensive yachting outfit came in.
"Ah!" he bellowed. "Mmm! What is that marvellous aroma?"
We exited hastily.
"AC-tually," I shouted as we walked along, "that ar-O-ma is coming from my anal sphinck-ter. I am so the-rilled you like it."
"When I eat a lot of or-GAHN-ic vegetables and squid ink pah-sta," shouted Ian, "I develop digestive FLAT-ulence in my lower in-TES-tine."
"Oh, God, in the toy shop," I said. "You missed it. A woman came in with a voice like a fucking posh foghorn. 'I'd like to exchange this, it's beneath my son.'"
"'He's VERY advanced,'" shouted Ian in a falsetto voice.
"'Do you have an extra-large Hadron Collider?'" I shouted.
"'It has to be organic,'" shouted Ian, and we fell about laughing. The people walking past us looked at us in horror for taking the word organic in vain.
Crossing the road, I stepped carefully over some fresh shiitake mushrooms that had fallen from a broken bag.
"ArrgghHH!!" I exploded.
"What?" Ian said.
"These people! Why! do I hate these people?!? I'm supposed to aspire to live round here, but the people ... why do I hate them? They're like me. I have a private education, a four-syllable name and three mantelpieces. I grind my own coffee in the morning and drink it out of Cornish Blue crockery. I smell of Space NK and paint my walls with Farrow & Ball. Why do I hate these people so much? Do they represent what I hate about myself? Is it a reverse snobbery thing? Is it because they're all huddled together between the commons like exclusive Wombles? Why?"
"Well, they're just awful," Ian offered.
I thought about other people. Not Between-the-Commons people. Skint people with scraped-back hair who attack my ankles with their pushchairs. Crabby West Indian women with crap wigs who tell me how I'm caring for my baby all wrong. Pie-faced people lumbering out of the chippy, painted like Crusaders' flags for the World Cup game. People of all colours who drive around South London with their windows open so we can all hear their whiny R&B CDs. I thought about rich people who shop in Knightsbridge with their stick-on 2" talons, trout pouts and Ferraris. The genuinely posh, not aspirational-posh, old Sloane Ranger ladies who treat shop staff like dirt. I relaxed.
"It's okay," I said. "I just remembered I hate everybody."
"Yes."
"Well, not everybody, but it's not a class thing. I hate anyone who thinks they're *better* than everyone else. I don't like anyone who takes themselves way too seriously, anyone who can't accept that their way is best for them and not necessarily better than anyone else's way. Anyone arrogant. Rude. I only like nice people who can laugh at themselves. That's all it is."
"What bothers me," said Ian, frowning hard, "is that I hate the people around here for thinking they're better than everyone else, but I think I'm better than them."
"It's catching," I said. "Anyway, they're better educated than us, and better at rugby, I'll give them that. Oh, here. I got you something in the toy shop."
"Me?"
"Yes. Here you are."
"That's brilliant," said Ian. "This is how I feel.""It can be your spirit animal."
"Yes, I'll keep it on my desk at work. Look! If you take its sword away,
it just runs along making obscene gestures at people. This is definitely my spirit guide."And then we picked up the car, and I swore at people, of all demographics, all the way home.
45 comments:
I feel that way all summer when the yachts come into the marina. Not so much in the winter when the four feet of snow has driven them away.
I mean! Obviously I'm better than someone who can be driven away by a mere four feet of snow!
I'm trying very hard to be less of a constantly swearing driver. Mostly because when my 13 year old daughter is in the car, she tends to remember me saying, "You fucking stupid cocksucking motherfucker, GET IN YOUR OWN LANE." And I'd like to think that she has a few years yet before she starts driving and needs to be exposed to that vocabulary.
Also, I tend to hate equally. It makes it more interesting, I think, than to hate for outward classist, etc, reasons.
I can generally be pretty tolerant, until they have children, fucking children I have to work with them and then I get to tell them off for being wankers, if they're with their parents I have to put up with them!
a) I tend to conduct most of my drive-time swearing in Spanish - I'd make any Castilian father quite proud.
$) Vegetarians are only bloody when we've been cut, thank you very much.
n-1) I shall have to remember the descriptive "bus-shaped". I expect it shall come in handy at some point.
I say "bloody vegetarians" with a great deal of love, you understand. I far prefer cooking for you than for meat-eaters.
Northcote Road is, as my friend Tim likes to say, full of posh cunts, but please go to Northcote Cafe next time you're there. It's a greasy spoon haven run by a guy named Tony who has salt and pepper shakers that look just like him: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lmbrowning/4267056123/in/set-72157622962317408/
Tim swears by the bubble and squeak there, which I think is positively vile (I'm American and he's from South London), but it really is the perfectly greasy antidote to the rest of Northcote.
I live in Godalming which is almost as bloody posh as Nappy Valley. I LONG for the day that I'll have freshly sharpened my machete so that I can go crazyapeshitbonkers in the aisles of Godalming's Waitrose and kill every last motherfuckin' one of them. Hate, hate, hate, stab, stab, stab. And this comes from someone who drives an (albeit fairly old) Range Rover. But they're all caramel coloured with honey coloured streaks and immaculate mani-pedis and at least 4 sizes smaller than me. They shove their trolleys in front of me when I'm perusing the shelves, like they can't see me standing there with my faded purple hair with a one inch grey parting and my teal green toenails. I mean, I'm probably better educated than the lot of them put together but they still look at me like I've emitted a bad smell (actually, that might be the sprouts). Still, fuck 'em, they'll be the ones on antidepressants because Jeremy's job's gone tits-up in the City and Cassandra will have to be taken out of Prior's Field to go to a - gasp - comprehensive, while I'm drinking cheap beer with my mates down the pub and 'avin' a larf!!!
Yes!
I just came back from a day spent in East Sussex with my ridiculous posh siblings-in-law. Their ear-meltingly awful topics of conversation included:
a) the sinking standards of private airport lounges these days.
b) the fact that they only have ONE acre of land, while Humphrey and Kate have EIGHT acres and Milo and Unity have TWELVE and how could they only have ONE?! Yes, it's because they're 'poor'. Yes, they actually said that. I died inside.
c) if you've got a big garden the woman doesn't go to work and if you've got a small garden, she does (this was in explanation to their five-year-old son).
Aaargh. When they finally deign to visit our new medium-sized house of which we are extremely proud, they will think they are better than us because their house is twice the size and they drive a Jag and have three garages.
Thank lard I made it through the inner-city London comprehensive State education system and learnt that I don't have to believe them, or give a shit what they think. I'm just sad my niece and nephew are being brought up in this way.
I have all sorts of meaningful thoughts about people who take themselves too seriously and why I hate them, but really it all comes down too: I am laughing and laughing at the idea of an extra large (organic) Hadron Collider.
I think I love both of you.
The same class/snob system is, sadly, alive and well in St. John's, Newfoundland, Canada. I live in a neighbourhood where the fucktard neighbours do not speak to you first lest they then find you are higher on the snob scale and able to snub them with impunity, which is entirely possible, as we are next to one of the posh neighbourhood where the "special" people live.
It all makes me feel crazyapeshitbonkers (thank you for that succinct description, Mrs. Jones). I, too, am an equal opportunity hater and hate everyone, with or without money.
I suspect that they're a bit like that over in Fulford. In Acomb I have conversations about how Clarks
Shoes are posh and expensive and how you can get everything for a pound in Waremart on Front Street and that Belly Busters do better kebabs than Fat Boys. I have made the mistake of saying to one of the other mums that Sam's scooter can only be bought off the internet and she has broadcast this round the playground - "oooh, off the internet you say? fancy" (I suspect a couple of the mums are already making plans to mug me for it at some point).
But its better than being in Fulford where everything is organic, no doubt.
I feel like that in Greenwich.
You have just described things - What things? Why, everything! - perfectly. I can't stand getting that, "Ughh, you don't do it THIS way? You... you... HEATHEN." look from people. No, I do not plan to spend $1500 on a coffee table, thanks, or drive a brand new BMW (My 2003 Toyota Corolla is fine, thanks) or, or, or, or... Hnnnngh. I hate LA. But, thank you, for giving a much more eloquent voice to my anti-world mutterings.
I once witnessed a mother in a Crouch End cafe trying to teach her tiny tot to say 'Babyccino'.
You're not aspiring to be better than them, you're aspiring to be nicer than them.
And, evidently, succeeding :)
P.S. I will admit we appear to have a 'shabby chic' kitchen table, but mostly because the children keep driving into it with assorted remote control cars, ride-on ladybirds and hand-held global thermonuclear devices.
Argh, you just made me find my Wordpress password so I could comment! :)
Thank you for this post. It made me laugh AND get angry because I feel exactly like this. Whenever in a place like between the Commons, I start to get offended and self-righteous. I can't quite put it into words either, it just manages to grate on my deep beliefs about what's important in life and people.
When I was about 11, we moved to a rougher part of town and even though we used to joke about the single mothers yelling swear words at their kids in the welfare queue, it was a place that felt more real to me than many of the other places I've since lived.
We are so achingly excited to see you. J is very much looking forward to his mung bean salad with tofu shavings.
I don't know, maybe you just have to get to KNOW all those kinds of people you mentioned.
I have friends who live in that area of London. They told me about the 'Nappy Valley' thing the first time I visited, but I was still unprepared for the overwhelming population of huge sunglasses and climate-inappropriate footwear being sported by legions of pram-pushing hosebags. You could almost see cartoon stink lines of pretentiousness wafting off of them. Now when I visit, I hop off the train at Clapham Common and wend my way toward Northcote only after a stiff drink.
Also, I believe the proper way to use the word 'cockscomb' is "cock's comb". Or rather, it should be.
They are better than you by their standards, and you are better than they by your standards. Hopefully you are comforted by the knowledge that your standards are infinitely superior.
Every city seems to have the equivalent of Nappy Valley. Austin, TX is no exception - the aisles of the Whole Foods World Headquarters is nearly impassable due to the thick cloud of boho privilege.
I've only just come across you but that was just really f***** funny. You do 'grumpy' well.
I'll come back to you if we ever move back to Blighty. I must admit, after just under 3 years living in Angel (which I'm sure you'd agree is not at all a pretentious suburb and does NOT mingle a taste for organic whatnots with 6 figure incomes), I find it a leap of the imagination to even picture a child surviving in the London I knew.
Then again, there was plenty of room for prams in Walkabout... (ok now way off topic so I'll bookmark and come back when I've got something vaguely relevant to add. But nice post!).
Fucktard is my new favourite word! Thank you! However...this may not go over well at school tomorrow.
You continue to crack me up, Antonia. I love that you are *all that* but choose to live your life not *acting* like you are *all that*. Does that make sense? I think you are wonderful. There, that says it. :D
Usually the soul of female courtesy, I turn into an Italian man when driving. Just can't help it.
We have a vaguely related snobbery alive and well here (Peasantville, Ruralshire) regarding urban types who think eggs grow on trees and tractors are just a myth. I suppose it's a sort of condescending, sorrowing pity!
I was once on a bus going through Highgate and overheard the following conversation:
Young child: What's that, mummy?
Posh mother: That's a boutique
I've only recently moved south of the river (Morden. The rough part. What do you mean, it's ALL rough?) and I keep meaning to venture out into uncharted lands such as Balham and Clapham and Putney but haven't got around to it yet. Northcote Road sounds like a right laugh, so thanks for the tip. I used to feel rather like that whenever I went to Hampstead. I was waiting for someone to sniff out my working-class-comprehensive-school-Essex-girl breeding and forcibly eject me from Carluccios.
This post, both in its style and content is the reason why you and Ian are TEH BEST EVER. I miss you.
And that walrus-pirate thing is friggin' AMAZING. How? Why? I never thought such a thing possible.
Here in Seville, the barking bourgeousie are rendered a magnitude less irritating by the fact that I can't understand what they're braying about - and because the men are wearing orange cords and green sports jackets.
Dx
I love you Antonia! Someone posted this link on twitter http://www.details.com/sex-relationships/marriage-and-kids/200711/are-you-raising-a-douchebag
sounds like the folks on Northcote Road are raising douchebags....
Yep, that's it. That's the nail's head right there. We had to move to Crystal Palace to get away from it. Too much smugness to breathe some days.
Although the street does have a branch of White Stuff, which is nice. but to go there takes military precision and weeks of stamina training. Shudder.
not sure the point of this post was just sloane-bashing...
I totally believe you hate virtually EVERYONE annoying ;) only just happened to find yourself in the epicentre of extremely-easy-to-hate-tribal-sloane-territory. they are well-off, allegedly educated, should know much better and one feels less guilty about hating them, don't you find? I do.
anyway, I have a great deal of disdain for a great proportion of the population (particularly those needing to belong to a tribe/group.) the same way I suspect a great proportion of the population has a great deal of disdain for me. and I wouldn't have it any other way, innit? ;)
that buccaneer walrus rocks.
go take over clap-ooooooohm with your extra-large organic hadron collider (no pun intended. I'm lying.)
I think THE RAGE has something to do with their misplaced notion of entitlement.
I remember a similar story from deepest South West London: one of my young piano pupils was going camping for the first time and her mother was trying to prepare her for the experience.
Mother: When you go camping you usually eat cold food.
Child: Like vichyssoise?
In a neighbouring household, the preschool child would chant the alphabet: 'A is for Artichoke'!
I love the part about going yachting in Waitrose!
I love it - we spent part of the weekend in Dulwich and I spent the entire time thanking my stars that we didn't move there and instead escaped to the project in the countryside. No competitive buggy comparisons, no braying families - bliss
Thankyou for the tour. Nappy Valley will never be on my 'bucket list'.
Alchemist would appreciate your choice of spirit toy...I must go hunting.
Sounds a bit like the village in Wiltshire which we just left - I really liked living there, but I remember hearing a mother in the park shrieking 'Rory! Cosmo! Merlin! Spit-spot, supper time!' across to three small boys, and suddenly wanting to firebomb the place. I didn't know anybody actually SAID 'spit-spot' in real life.
The toddler playgroup was wildly disconcerting too - imagine twenty-five blond or ginger tots, with my son (with Esme's hair colour) as the darkest child in the room. It looked like the Midwich Cuckoos in there (but fret not, all the baby dolls were black because DIVERSITY is IMPORTANT).
Yes, yes and yes!
*snorts* Obscene gesture line had me giggling.
I needed a laugh - my work decided after two years of paying my phone bill that they want their money back and if they don't get it by next Friday, they'll start charging interest.
I hate these people because they're a pack of pricks!
Ha! I live in Nappy Valley, because I get stupidly cheap rent in exchange for babysitting my landlord's kid a few nights a month. This seemed like a good deal at the time, but now I have experienced several ruptured internal organs from collisions with children called "Ollie" and "Tabitha" on scooters, wearing boaters. My friend and I do enjoy winding up shop keepers on Northcote Road. Apparently Wholefoods don't stock homeopathic remedies for scabies.
Though, if you're ever there again, check out the Northcote Library for ultra-PC kids' books, such as "Children Don't Divorce" and "Why Does Mummy Drink?"
"Taking the word 'organic' in vain." So funny! I live in a city that is Smug Central for the east coast of the US. The Saturday morning farmer's market is a weekly Celebration of Smugness. Between the hateful yuppie families and their $10,000 strollers ("but it converts to a summer house") the childless adults ostentatiously nursing their hangovers with expensive coffee, and the older ladies with posh wicker market baskets, I've had to give up on fresh vegetables because I can't stand to mingle with such people.
My brother and I (who are white) amuse each other with tales of White People sitings.
I live in rural Suffolk.
My village is a proper, working village that has been home to proper, post-war East End overspill. We're proud that our village has a proper sense of community, and it has life.
We are the scuzzy neighbours to several 'chocolate box' villages where a lot of these Nappy Valley dregs have their second homes.
They *hate* us. Very few of them would even dream of buying a second home in my village (which is ace), but we still can't escape. They're EVERYWHERE in the summer. They patronise the farmers, their children run riot (because children should be allowed to express themselves repeatedly by kicking you in the shins), they push past you in the local farm shop (which is a proper shop with properly priced foods), proclaiming loudly that everything is 'simply wonderful darling', ignoring all the properly priced foods and heading for the expensive stuff, because in their addled brains it must somehow be more organic if it's more expensive.
Don't even get me started on what they've done to some of the local pubs...
Well Antonia, as a character in Pink Flamingos says "There's only two kinds of people in this world, my kind of people and assholes"
After reading your blog for a bit I conclude that you are the former!
I regret to inform you that parts of Southern California, where I live, are also thick with pretentious, self-satisfied white people and their offspring. I realized a while ago that my car probably makes them assume I'm one of them (it's an SUV that used to belong to my in-laws) and the idea made my gorge rise!
This is the first time I have read you and that was very very funny. I think I heart you.
I have to say that ... y'all are my people. I routinely melt the plastic off the dashboard with my running commentary on other drivers. And I have the same level of incredulity at the amazing self-centered behavior of just about everyone else.
That reminds me of 15 yrs ago in a posh part of London when I bought 3 lovely green limes only to be told 'they're organic lemons'. Organic anything at that point, if you were from Yorkshire, meant manure.
oh my god. I laughed out loud reading this post. I just found you via another blog - and I'm so glad I did.
While in London I met exactly two English-persons long enough to have a conversation with them. One was exactly that kind of twit you described, another restored my faith in English humanity. But at 50/50 I didn't know which was more prevalent. Thank GOD there's at least another one of you good English type people who can laugh at yourself and not get so stuck on how superior they are.
(truth be told, this doesn't sound much different than Newport, Rhode Island.)
((hugs from America))
How is it that a simple bit of plastic can be so funny without actually being fake dog shit?
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