Genteel slobbery

I see the Telegraph has come out with another of those 'lists' that Waitrose shoppers love to complete to affirm their middle-class status and reassure themselves they're 'posh': '16 belongings you will own if you're middle-class'.

Here's one I came up with as an alternative:

35 signs you have class but no money (well, your family may have had money, but some generations ago)…

1. Your Barbour is over 30 years old
2. So is your favourite winter coat
3. You don't have a dishwasher
4. The crocks in your cupboard are a jumble of 1970s Habitat earthenware, stacked with your grandmother's Wedgwood and Minton dinner plates
5. You have champagne flutes but they're covered in a thin film of dust
6. Ditto the set of crystal sherry glasses
7. Your cookware is over ten years old (your favourite saucepan is probably the one you used at school camp)
8. You drink your morning tea from a bone-china cup and your coffee out of a KitKat mug that came free with an Easter Egg 10 years ago
9. You don't have an AGA or a Rayburn, you have an old trooper of a gas cooker
10. Christmas trifle is made in a large Victorian crystal punch bowl drowning in sherry
11. You had a Chesterfield sofa at home, but it was ripped to shreds by generations of cats
12. You know how to write and address letters to peers and other dignitaries without having to consult Debretts Correct Form – but you can't remember how you know…
13. You know how to curtsey / bow if required, without toppling over, even when drunk
14. You know how to correctly introduce people of different ranks to each other, but again, you can't remember how you know…
15. You use correct spelling and grammar - even when texting
16. You say 'aitch' and not 'haitch' (Irish people are excused)
17. You drive an aged Ford
18. You use the back of A5 bits of paper watermarked 'Smythson' with your childhood address printed on the front as scrap / for shopping lists
19. Ref 18 - the address is die-stamped, not thermo-printed (to look as if it's die-stamped)
20. You buy your underwear from the local market stall and greet the stall-holder by name
21. Ditto your nightwear
22. Most of your woollens have at least one hole or trailing thread
23. You don't give a toss when people are surprised that you buy your jeans from Tu at Sainsbury's
24. You scraped an 'O' level in French
25. You understand basic Latin, and use it occasionally to emphasise a point – then have to explain what you just said…
26. You fix stuff around the house yourself using the Reader's Digest book of How to do Stuff Around the House, and if you can't fix the problem, you simply avoid the damaged area (particularly applies to rotted floors and stairs)
27. Your wiring is 'idiosyncratic' but you know how to jiggle the bakerlite switch it to make it work
28. You know how to climb over a 5-bar gate
29. You know how to shoot, but you don't shoot
30. You know how to ride, but you don't own a horse
31. You don't put on the heating, you just wear more clothes
32. You have a hot water bottle
33. You have a very old bottle of gin rubbing shoulders with an ancient bottle of cherry brandy in your drinks cupboard
34. You don't have a drinks cupboard, you use a shelf in the pantry
35. You don’t give a flying one what anyone says about you

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2016

Modern 'Motoring' (if you can call it that...)

A manual transmission Ford Fusion - 2007. Also known as 'Caroline'...

Hi. I am a driver. I drive a car. A manual car. I use a hand and foot-operated clutch to change gears to suit the speed at which the vehicle is moving.

I do that. Me. While I watch the road, keeping alert to other road users and everything else going on around me. I also use one of my hands to operate and adjust the angle of the headlamps according to light conditions (and the weight of whatever I may have in the boot), and another to regulate the cabin temperature. I learned how to do all this in my early twenties with the AA Driving School. A year after I qualified for my full driving license, I realised just how little I had actually needed to know to pass my test, and just how much there is to learn about being on the road, especially if you live in a rural area like the New Forest. Now sliding into my mid-fifties, I consider I am still learning.

That said, I clearly needn't have bothered. Cars now switch on their bluey LED string 'driving' lights the minute you flop your bum down behind the steering wheel, sun roofs open and close, doors flap, and in-flight voices smoothly instruct you as to what checks the vehicle is making whilst you get comfy on their soft, heated, Moroccan calfskin seats.

You may as well just step onto a transporter pad. Beam me up, Scotty.

People are getting very, very lazy, as car adverts for vehicles costing more and more get sillier and sillier. I noticed the rot had set in some 12 years ago when I got into a rich mate's babe-magnet low-slung sports thing, and it handed me my seat-belt. A robotic arm crept out and headed towards my chest area as I watched, flattened to the seat, cross-eyed and in mounting panic, before my tweed-clad, laughing chum explained what it was doing and what it wanted. His motor was state of the art at the time.

"Geordie, you utter creep!" I yelled. "Get your car to grope your dates for you now?"

We both laughed, but turns out that was just the beginning. There literally is almost no such thing as 'driving' anymore. Not if you're the owner of one of the 'new generation' of motor vehicles. You just get in, switch it on (or with some of the more advanced models, it seems you just have to fart in its general direction for it to spring into action), and off you go.

The day is rapidly approaching when all you need do is settle your sit-upon in the front seat (that's either front seat depending on your mood), shout out a post-code or OS coordinates, then just sit back listening to music or watching television while the car transports you to your destination.

Every year, with every new generation of motorised vehicle rolling off the assembly line (and of course, built by robots), the gadgets get more 'sophisticated' as the 'comfort' and 'convenience'' of the customer provide designers with ever more 'challenges'. If I thought it was pathetic when cars started beeping at you to aid your reverse-parking, they now even brake for you using 'sensors'.

As if actual kinetics were not enough, we now have standard 'enhanced visibility' in the form of automatically activated over bright headlamps. With no legislation yet to bring them to heel, these sharply angled, angry-looking halogen headlamps, activated by the ignition of the engine, blaze in your face on sunny days, and blind you at night as they beam hundreds of yards ahead even supposedly on 'dipped'. Apparently, it's become important for drivers to be able to see several hundred miles ahead of them down the road. Other road users coming in the opposite direction need to invest in orange, anti-glare Ski-glasses to avoid going off the road, and yet car manufacturers actually dare to boast about the 'reach' of these anti-personnel standard Glare Mout Dazzlers they mount on the mean 'faces' of their vehicle designs.

…and that's another thing I've noticed: cars have got more aggressive looking. I remember when Vauxhall decided to give their Corsa a round bum to 'appeal' to women (because everyone knows human females get scared and panicky if household and other items don't somehow ape their arses in design), but this 'soft' approach has given way to a trend that sees domestic motor vehicles now all looking like Anton Furst's Batmobile 'eating up the tarmac' like Satan on wheels, and 'challenging' all in their path …to Waitrose or B&Q on a Saturday afternoon.

"Grrrr...." The Lexus LX - 2016

Gone are the round, friendly, chrome mounted headlamps of my youth with their happy looking  grills. Now, vicious predators roar up your arse on country lanes. You look up into your rear view mirror to see Abaddon the Despoiler with its headlamps deliberately designed to look like eyes with what I am reliably informed is actually termed 'aggressive styling' burrowing up your bumper trying to force you to break the speed limit to get away from them, or pull over to let them pass on their urgent way.

"Purrr...." An Austin Healey 3000 - 1962

No wonder there are so many more accidents than I remember from my early driving days. Not only are these new disagreeable looking cars incredibly distracting if they pull up behind you, their drivers just don't need to pay as much attention to the road - or to anyone else using it - as once they had to. Or at least they don't think they do.

Every time I leave my house, I wonder if I will come back in one piece, or if some overpaid numpty in a Chelsea Tractor which probably takes their kids to school by itself, does the laundry, and picks up the dry-cleaning by remote control, will plough into me - while its owner is checking off their shopping list in the passenger seat…

Because that's all 'state of the art' modern cars will seemingly permit their owners to be: passengers. They're not drivers. Not by my definition anyway.

Whenever I see someone coming towards me in a bashed old Ford or a mud-spattered Land Rover, I feel like high-fiving them.

Well done, Ma'am.

HMQ in her beloved 1987 Land Rover

© Emmeline Wyndham – November 2016