"I like to be disgusted..."

That was what the late, and very northern comedian and variety star, Billy Russell, offered by way of an explanation as to why he watched Leslie Crowther’s shows. I am willing to bet it’s why a lot of people watch ‘The Real Housewives of Cheshire’.

I don't doubt they'd all hate me for saying it, but for all their wealth and the purchases they make with it, I find myself feeling a bit sorry for the women on this show. Not one of them would look out of place puking up on the kerb outside a Chester disco, but because they’ve acquired the sort of dosh most people can only dream about, cameras now follow them shopping, holidaying, and making scenes in expensive restaurants.

They probably think it’s great to be rich and (relatively) famous. They probably wanted nothing more when they were little girls, dressing up in mummy’s heels and singing into their hairbrushes, and the attention they now have in the glossy mags and gutter rags probably feels like the real deal, but the only ‘reality’ is that every Monday night of every season, people up and down the land switch on their televisions to eavesdrop on their every belch, f-bomb, and catfight.

Dawn, Rachel, Leanne, Lauren, Seema, Stacey, Nermina, Ester, Tanya, and the much missed Ampika and Magali present a perfect opportunity to despise a pantheon of stereotypes: women, working-class-with-brass, ex-strippers, lap-dancers, WAGs, northerners, and foreigners. It’s all there. 

 

Jubblies and bubbly - the irrepressible Ampika Pickston

The most frequent comment on the social media pages for this show is “just proves money can’t buy you class.” Every time some disapproving member of the public tweets this out, the programme makers probably high-five each other in the production office.

On the series 6 ‘reunion’ show, they were asked to put their hands up if they had had a ‘boob job’. All but one honestly and naïvely complied. You could hear the derision up and down the land at their superficiality, their tackiness, their 'Page 3' values, but these are women who have used the tools they had to hand to climb out of the bucket, and somewhere within all of them, I bet there’s a tiny, wistful wish they hadn’t had to.

Unlike the kids on 'Made in Chelsea', these women did not enter the world with much in the way of advantages, so whilst I personally wouldn’t want the sort of things they buy with their money, I can’t begrudge it to them. Especially when it’s obvious they’re pretty generous with it, giving to charity and treating their mates.

If the show didn’t goad them into ‘entertaining’ situations, it’s also pretty obvious that these are the sort of women who make the most loyal and generous friends – as long as you don’t flirt with their blokes or slag off their kids. Back when they had less money, I can easily see Tanya, or Dawn, or Lauren, or Leanne making a poorly friend a stew and taking it over to their house with a cheery: “bring the bowl back when you’re feeling better” - even if it was the only one they had.

Now of course, they pay someone to cook it and send their driver over with it, but some things never change, and the base material is still there. Daffy, funny little Tanya particularly.

But of course, that doesn’t make good television.

‘The Real Housewives of Cheshire’ is demonisation of the working class with diamonds, and frankly, it stinks.

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2017

The working poor - Britain 2017

“Wow...” my friend sighed admiringly as I approached the table with our tray. “How do you do it? How on earth can you drink massive soya mochas and stay so slim?”

Briefly, I wondered how I could answer without embarrassing her - and myself. I had actually been dreaming about this great big warm chocolatey drink ever since we had made this arrangement. The truth was, this ‘massive soya mocha’ was to be both my breakfast and my lunch in one. What I was going to do about dinner was a bridge I would cross when I came to it. It was in all likelihood going to be a mug of packet soup with a couple of dry Ryvita, or a 65p pouch of microwave rice – maybe with a splash of soy sauce for a bit of excitement.

“Well...” I finally laughed. “I guess because I don’t do it every day...”

This was in fact, only the second time I had done it in as many years. The last time had been with this same friend - in this same Salisbury coffee shop - two years before. That’s why I had been looking forward to it so much.

I didn’t really feel I could say so though. Today was about catching up on what we had been up to since last we had met. Furthermore, I had been brought up to believe that not only is it the height of vulgarity to moan about money, but that ‘a poor friend is a bore friend’.

Most people in my circle are perfectly sweet, but they simply cannot relate. Most of my friends seem to find it hard to believe that I could possibly be in any ‘real’ difficulty. After all, I work, I run a car (I have to – no public transport to take me to work), and I am middle class. As everyone knows, middle class people always have reserves tucked away somewhere – don’t they?

Strangely enough though, not this one. In fact, I can’t remember a time in my life when money wasn’t an issue. As a kid, I remember noticing stuff going missing from my home most months as my mother sold things to make the rent. Nothing was ever said.

As an adult, economies I now employ to make my own rent include not running the fridge-freezer my landlord has thoughtfully provided, and making sure I don’t buy any food that might require cooling. The heating will not be going on this winter either, no matter how cold it gets. I am already too far in hock to the Electricity board for that. The one luxury I will allow myself per day will be an hour’s worth of hot water for a bath to warm myself up before bed.

So how does ‘someone like me’ manage to make a shit cake like this? The ingredients are actually very simple. Take two parents dying off before you can get established leaving you nothing but their debts to sort out, mix in a couple of well-timed redundancies, add two or three heaped spoonfuls of lengthy unemployment, and serve.

Another ingredient is to fall into the trap of thinking that moving to an area where the cost of living is apparently ‘lower’ (well, lower than London) will allow your finances to recover. When, following another lay-off, I moved from Oxford down to Hampshire, I stupidly believed that given my formidable office skills, I would be able to temp-to-perm quickly, and get sorted.

However, as I soon discovered, if rents seem comparatively ‘reasonable’ somewhere, it means that jobs in the locale probably pay way below the national average – with the competition for them way above. Where I live, if you see a job advertised offering more than £17,000 a year, you’ll be fighting at least 100 other people for it, and in the main, they’ll be younger - and cheaper. I recently lost out to a college leaver prepared to work for half the advertised salary. My agency were so shattered on my behalf, they did a bit of digging. They told me she lived at home with her parents. They also told me the company adjusted the job spec to accommodate the fact she actually had no office experience at all. To their credit, my agency didn’t rest until they found me something.

Two months ago, they finally managed to parachute me into a job that had suddenly become available. It’s a lovely company, and I consider myself very lucky, but like a lot of local businesses, they can only afford me part-time. Provided I don’t fall ill and lose a day, I net just over £950 a month, but my outgoings amount to over £300 more than that. 

 

A selection of the monthly demands on my battered bank account include Scottish and Southern Electricity who suck £70 a month out of me because I dared put on the heating in my dark, damp, one-bedroom flat last winter, and spent most of my days running my computer looking for work (they tried to make it £115). My landlord scores £600, the council want another £70 a month to light the estate and take away the rubbish I put out every three weeks (I don’t generate enough to put out a sack every 7 days), and my telephone bill is over £60 a month, less than £5 of which is calls - the rest is line-rental and the privilege of being connected to the internet.

Then there are the credit cards containing ancient debts that date back to my early 20s. Both of which are now out of their 0% interest periods and getting fat each month on fees so that even though I have never bought so much as a bar of soap with either of them, the minimum payment actually manages to climb a few more quid each month. Santander is the worst. Minimum payment started off at £40. It is now £57 and rises every month – even though I haven’t so much as touched it since I transferred a balance to it. It rests in pieces in a drawer.

Oh, I shall ‘go compare’ as soon as I possibly can. I am hoping to 'go permanent' in my job, but for as long as I am an hourly paid agency worker, no financial organisation is going to take me seriously as a credit risk.

So that's how I stay so slim. I am virtually starving. Even though I am in work, in England, in 2017. What’s more, I am not alone in this. I can’t even join a list for social housing because according to my local authority, I do not constitute a priority. People like me never do.

Brexit, Schmexit. As Monty says in ‘Withnail and I’: “Shat on by Tories, shovelled up by Labour...” Single, childless, working people have always been ineligible for meaningful support, and I don’t see that changing - no matter who is in Number 10.

So next time you see a thin person eating or drinking what looks like a lot, try not to be envious. That may be all they’re having for the next three days.

© Emmeline Wyndham – 2017.

Grow up, Miley. You're not a victim

Miley Cyrus apparently "felt sexualised" when she was twerking with her tongue hanging out, grinding her arse into Robin Thicke's crotch at the MTV awards. 

Imagine my shock. 

Yeah, you know, you make choices in this life. When I had my 15 mins of fame, I was encouraged to continue with my acting, but I was suspicious of some of the roles offered to me - one of which was a child prostitute and would have involved nudity and simulated drug use. I didn't want to go down that road, so I said "no". It's not a difficult word, and I said it all by myself, at the age of just 14. 

So no, I am not going to take the "all women are blameless, helpless victims of the patriarchy" stance that modern feminism demands, and I am not going to give MC a pass for presenting an image that was and remains thoroughly unhelpful to every woman working hard to be taken seriously in a pornified world while she made $millions - just because she's a woman. 

It's precisely because she's a woman that she should have known better. 

I'm glad she's settled down a bit, and I'm glad she's going back to her country roots. She was good at that stuff, but she collected a great deal of money, fame and notoriety acting the slut and throwing her young fans under the bus, and as a former child 'star' myself who grew up in 'the business' too, I don't buy for a minute that she didn't know exactly what she was doing. 

So put your hands up, Miley. Own what you did, and move on.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/40618010/miley-cyrus-felt-sexualised-while-twerking-during-2013-mtv-vma-performance

Guest article: 'Country Loving' - it's not rocket science

Oh God, this is awkward. Possibly...

I’ve just become aware of a feature in a magazine called ‘Country Living’ in which a woman is documenting her search for love among the hay bales and slurry of Somerset – or Wiltshire. Can’t be sure. Names may have been changed to protect the identities of persons living – and counties.

Like me, she’s lost a spouse, so of course, I am sympathetic, but the poor creature just doesn’t seem to be able to read the messages she’s getting from this chap she’s pursuing, and it’s been reminding me of a situation I’ve found myself jousting with recently.

It was my daughter who first alerted me to this column. She’d started reading it while she waited at our local GP surgery.

“Bloke in this seems a lot like you, Dad” she had said. So much so, in fact, that she’d asked the Receptionist if she could take the mag home to show me.

As I reluctantly read through the August episode of riotous romantic antics, I began to wonder if the bloke in fact WAS me.

Just like him, I am a widower. Just like him, I am half Spanish, and just like him, I do speak to my animals in my father’s language. They seem to respond well to it. Animal communication is all about meaning after all, rather than words. 
 

Ok, this isn't me, but I definitely look like him...

Also, just like him, and at the insistence of my daughter, I have dipped my toes into the internet dating pool, but didn’t really like the sensation of eager little fish nibbling at my flesh. Just like him, one in particular has ended up becoming something of an irritation.

As I read on, I became extremely uncomfortable remembering how we had finally met up – in a bookshop. How I had been immediately horrified to find that the woman with whom I had been corresponding had turned out to be a neighbour of mine, how I had continued with the ‘date’ so as not to be rude, and how I had even followed-up with an invitation to a show – because I had felt to leave it there would not have been sporting. After all our to-ing and fro-ing on messenger, just to dump her due to a lack of chemistry seemed churlish, and I figured that as she was a neighbour, I might at least make a friend.

She didn’t answer. Not for a while, anyway. I remember I was rather relieved, but when she eventually told me that a plague of mice or termites, or locusts (whatever it was) in her post box had eaten my note, I think I felt about the same as my Housemaster must have done when I explained my shoddy Physics prep by blaming my dog, claiming he’d ingested my notes when I was at home for Easter one year: unconvinced.

The only thing I was convinced about was that I didn’t want to get it on with this lady. She was nice enough in a sort of desperate post-menopausal hobby farmer’s wife way, but the rather affected dippy ‘scatterbrain’ persona she adopted to mask the smell of desperation came across rather like the pervasive pong of one of those air-fresheners colleagues use in the office lav.

I went online to read more of these ‘stories’. Dating back some months, I started recognising ‘scenes’ in which I had found myself with my neighbour. The most recent documented a situation at a local wedding where this ‘Imogen’ had got plastered, and done a Theresa May: running girlishly through some poor sod’s crops in the moonlight, ending up in a waterlogged ditch. In mounting horror, I remembered how my neighbour had done something similar. I had watched in some irritation as she and a group of younger people had gone crashing through a field of young maize. She couldn't keep up with them and inevitably came a cropper in a ditch. Fighting the urge to leave her there and simply call the farmer so he could utilise his digger and give her the telling off she deserved, I had pulled her out. I helped her back to her gate, then ran off as quickly as I could before she could try to drunk kiss me. In the story, 'Matthew' had helped ‘Imogen’ back to the host's house, and she had taken this as him caring about her.

In fact, reading back through the series, it seemed that every attempt this chap ‘Matthew Antiza’ had made to get ‘Imogen’ off his back, even the most basic courtesies he had shown towards her, had been interpreted as him wrestling with his true (romantic) feelings towards her.

I found myself wondering if every time I had brushed off my neighbour, she had been reading this as me burning with a passion for her I simply did not recognise as such...Yet. I also found myself wondering if she wrote a secret column for a ‘country’ lifestyle magazine…

Of course, I can’t prove anything, but just to be helpful, I have a few words of advice for any other ‘bewildered countrywomen’ who are labouring under similar delusions: ladies, men don’t do subtlety very well. If we are interested, you won’t be able to mistake it. We will call you, text you, ask you out. If we want you, we want to see you. You don’t have to make excuses to ‘bump’ into us at the Garden Centre or the vet’s office. We’ll be bumping into you first.

And ‘Imogen’, leave him alone. He’s not interested.

Sincerely,

Antonio Banderas (not my real name)

Fighting for life

With Theresa May failing to gain the mandate at the last General Election, her manifesto pledge to hold a free Commons vote on repeal of the Hunting Act of 2004 will have to be shelved. At least for now. With over 80% of the British public opposed to hunting with dogs, many will be breathing a sigh of relief. For a small band of people dedicated to protecting British wildlife, the work continues. I met one such...

Faith* is tiny. Even at just 5’3” I tower over her. She’s calm, soft-spoken, diplomatic - everything you could possibly hope a NHS nurse with her years of training and experience would be.

Faith is a qualified RGN specialising in midwifery, but more often than not, you’ll find her in the front lines of her local hospital’s Accident and Emergency department on a Saturday night. In her neat blue scrubs, with her stethoscope draped around her neck, she’s just the sort of capable unflappable health professional you want to see when you’ve broken a bone or opened an artery – even if you did it out hunting… because Faith is also a dedicated hunt saboteur.

Indeed, her professionalism is such that not so much as a flicker will show on her beautiful face, even when she is presented with a Master of Foxhounds who’s taken a tumble out pursuing wildlife to the death. 

 

Unlike many of those who follow and support hunts, and who have punched her, kicked her, and sliced at her with sharpened implements, Faith, and other saboteurs like her, have a strict code of non-violence. They will defend themselves if they have to, but their ultimate goal is to prevent unlawful killing of British wildlife, and their method is simple interference.

Hunt monitors and saboteurs like Faith work simply to undermine hunts, and expose hunt cruelty. They lay alternative scent trails to draw hounds away from fox dens, they’ll expertly play hunting horns to give hounds conflicting instructions, they’ll padlock gates to cause delays, and they’ll also place their own bodies between hunters and their quarry. The risks are obvious. The ‘need’ for hunting less so.

Hunters claim foxes are ‘out of control’, yet undercover work has revealed the practise of ‘bagging’ - foxes being captured alive, incarcerated, then released on the day of a hunt to ensure live quarry for the hounds. When the inevitable happens, and a disorientated ‘bagged’ fox stumbles into a ‘drag’ hunt (the only legal form of hunting, using an artificial scent trail for the hounds), hunters throw up their hands for sickened onlookers, and say “oh dear, well, hounds will be hounds”…

For anyone in any doubt, this practise is still illegal. The Hunting Act of 2004 forbade the pursuit of wildlife with more than two hounds, yet everyone who has seen a post-legislation hunt in action knows this law is flouted at every turn. However, as Faith has found, catching and convicting law breakers is not an easy task, as they would appear to be very well protected.

In one incident, when she was clearing a den by hand (it had been stopped up to prevent the fox within from escaping until the hunt was ready to chase it), a hunt supporter stood on her hand to crush it. Obviously, Faith rather needs her hands to tend to patients, sew stitches in broken flesh, that sort of thing. The person standing on her hand also managed to kick her in the head, before some of her colleagues arrived to pull him off her.

When Faith attempted to press charges however, even with multiple witnesses, the local Police said they “couldn’t identify” the man.

Smiles and handshakes - Atherstone & Pytchley Hunt, January 2017. Pic: courtesy of Devon County Hunt Saboteurs

Unlike the stereotype of the hunt saboteur as inner city yob, out of touch with the needs of the countryside, Faith was born and raised in the rural north, and began her life of tending and caring for all living things as a little girl accompanying her grandfather out on what he called his ‘little walks’. On these walks, she would watch and learn as he dismantled traps and snares, explaining to her that not only were they cruel, they were inefficient, capturing everything else as well as rabbits. They would find all manner of wildlife caught in these traps, and would rehabilitate any that were still alive as best they could. 

 

Red fox caught in a snare

I wondered if this was what decided her to become a nurse when she was older? She thinks for a moment, then says: “Nurses aren’t made, they’re born. You either are or you aren’t. I’ve always cared for things, all creatures. I am bewildered by the attitude that says ‘it’s just an animal.’ All animals matter, just as all people do.” Funnily enough, I tell her, I am always saying this to those who scold me for “caring more for animals than people”, telling them “animals are people – they just don’t look like you.” Faith laughs, and agrees. “Yes, exactly.”

When one goes into this in any depth, and makes the connection that nearly every serial killer on Death Row in the United States started with acts of cruelty inflicted on animals, one can see why such as Faith get frustrated.

Hearing of the sort of violence that those who protect hunting are willing to inflict on anyone who wants to stop them, even a little woman like Faith, it is chilling indeed. One has to wonder what, besides some sort of primal bloodlust, is actually behind the mindset.

In part it seems, it’s money. Hunts bring income to a lot of local businesses. Hunt supporting Pubs benefit. As do those ‘rewarded’ for permitting hunting on their land, as well as hunt staff, employed year-round to manage the pack (the hounds). For many, hunting is a way of life, and one they are prepared to kill, or at least harm, to protect.

What Faith described sounded not unlike some sort of rural Mafia. Scare tactics include mutilated fox corpses thrown at people’s front doors, cars damaged, and people threatened. One never knows who is in the thrall, if not the pay, of those with interests in hunting, so it is no wonder that Faith and her colleagues wear balaclavas and other coverings to protect their identities in the field. It’s not because they’re ashamed of what they do as hunts would have it, it is because they know only too well what some hunt supporters are capable of. If they know anything about you, you can expect harassment. Identifiable only as female given her stature and speaking voice, Faith is used to being called a “bitch” and a “slag” while out with her group. As well as the constant threat of physical violence, sexism, misogyny, and racism are par for the course.

The sort of people that hunt followers are insulting in this fashion come from all walks of life. Out ‘sabbing’, Faith has found herself in the company of doctors, solicitors, office workers, even farmers. “It’s a myth that sabs are all townies” she says. Most sabs she works with are rural dwellers who’ve lived in the countryside all their lives.

It’s also a myth that all hunters are “toffs”. A lot of the people Faith sees out hunting are “city boys made good.” One, who has been seen to be particularly active and vicious in his efforts to keep sabs from following the hunt, has been identified as a former inner city drug-dealer. Having spent time in prison, he is now an avid hunter with three horses.

“It’s a new social class” Faith observes. “They want the status that they think hunting confers. They’ve got the money, now they want ‘in’ to the social set.”

So what has that to do with wildlife and countryside management then? I ask. “Absolutely nothing.” She confirms. 

 

The end of a 'good' day... (Pic: LACS)

Hunters also claim they care more about animals than those who oppose it. They say they are managing the countryside, that hunting is good for the environment, and that if hunts were forced to shut down operations for good, a great many hound packs would have to be destroyed because foxhounds and beagles cannot be rehabilitated as family pets.

“That’s just not true” says Faith. “Whenever we have encountered hounds, they’re just like any other dogs. They love affection, and respond well to petting and attention. That’s just hunt propaganda designed to tug at the heartstrings of animal lovers, and make them worry that if they stop hunting, animals will ultimately suffer. Very cynical.”

What of the claim that foxes kill indiscriminately, for fun? Decimated hen houses, dead lambs and so forth?

“Only humans kill for fun.” Faith counters, shortly. “It’s worth taking a clinical look at the mentality behind hunting, the theatre of it, the rituals, like ‘blooding’ (where new hunters have the blood from the fox’s severed tail smeared on their faces). There is a sadistic psychopathy at work that in any other situation we, as humans, would normally find unacceptable. The aim of a hunt is to chase and kill a living creature in as brutal a fashion as possible, and have fun at the same time.”

I wondered if, now the threat of repeal was temporarily suspended seeing as Theresa May had failed to gain an overall majority, whether Faith could see an end to the hunting question?

“I like to hope so, but I think it will always be around. Too many people have too much of an investment in it.” She sighs. “Besides, just as I was brought up to respect animals, these people bring their kids up to hunt and be indifferent. Children learn what they live. I’ve seen kids as young as six or seven going out with the hunt, looking all excited. It’s heartbreaking.”

© Emmeline Wyndham – 2017

* Not her real name.

Education, Edumacation, Ejucayshun...

David Bradley as Billy Caspar - 'Kes' (A Kestrel for a Knave) - 1970

Well, I’m not going to be all ‘missish’ about the supposed sanctity of the Polling Booth. We all know there is actually no such thing as a truly anonymous vote, so I am proud to say outright that I shall be voting for the Labour Party next week. Not just the Labour Party, but specifically the Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn.

I like him. He’s seen a bit of life. He’s paid his dues. He’s the sort of dogged, charming old socialist I used to see around when I was growing up. Sometimes you wanted to punch them one when they came out with some daft theory, but most of the time, you forgave them, because just like Jeremy, whatever bollocks they came out with, you could at least be certain it was sincere, heartfelt, genuinely caring bollocks.

Like a lot of people, I’m tired of scrubbed-pink-faced 39-year-old public schoolboys in Savile Row suits with PPE degrees from Oxbridge and 15 years in the City telling us what we need. What we need are jobs that net us enough to pay our rent and mortgages and kiss off our debts. It’s no good telling us that every new housing scheme means more employment so we should all get behind the developers and rejoice at every bit of land we see being bulldozed for new ‘homes’.

1. We wouldn’t be in such a parlous mess with housing if Maggie Thatcher hadn’t flogged off so much of our council stock without replacing it,
2. building work is by definition, finite, and
3. we’re not all hod-carriers and plasterers.

Another thing we need is decent education for our kids that will give them a fighting chance in the bear-pit of the employment market. Furthermore, we need it to be good enough to compete with those whose parents can afford to send them to private schools.

Here’s where ‘Jezza’ and I part company. He hates Grammar schools and wants to do away with them. Perhaps it’s because he went to one himself, but I see them as the only real chance many smart working class children actually have to get to a place where they can seriously challenge the old order. It worked for Jeremy. I frankly doubt that if he’d gone to my school, he would be where he is now.

I saw 1970s comprehensive education first hand. It was all about lowering the bar so everyone could clear it. It was about making stuff so easy that everyone could get at least a C. The smart kids who weren’t fortunate enough to live within the catchment area of a Grammar school got bored, bunked off, became punks, and got arrested for trying to set fire to the school. Our most famous ‘old boy’, Graham ‘Suggs’ McPherson of ‘Madness’, had joined the school when it still implemented streaming. He was in the top stream all the way through. He was tipped for Cambridge, but he decided to go on tour as a roadie for ‘The Clash’ instead. You can lead a horse to water, and all that... Thing is, at least he had that choice. He was smart enough, and those smarts were recognised, and nurtured – free.

I believe all education should be free. I also believe there would be no need for private education if state education was just as good. I am all for scrapping university loans in favour of grants again – as long as getting into university goes back to being as tough as it was when I was a kid.

Let’s get this straight. It was never ‘free’. It was always on the taxpayer’s buck, but because school exams were tougher, there weren’t so many school leavers qualifying for it. That’s why we could afford to offer it on the same basis as state secondary education. Now it seems nearly every kid qualifies. Back in the days of ‘free’ university education, you needed a minimum of six good O levels and three A levels to apply. CSEs didn’t count - even if it was claimed that a Grade 1 at CSE was equivalent to a C at O Level.

Now every year, we’re supposed to believe that more and more and more kids are clocking up record results at A level. We watch as nervous babes open their results on live breakfast television, and whoop with them when they see that their results mean they’re guaranteed a place at uni - yet mystifyingly, fewer and fewer of them seem to be able to spell, or give you the name of the capital of Peru without Googling it.

It’s little wonder when you hear of homework not being corrected, even at supposedly ‘good’ state schools, for fear of “stifling creativity”. That makes me uncomfortable. Somewhere along the line, someone has sold these kids out, and the finger is pointing at my generation - and the generation before mine. Seems to me that the crucial difference between qualifying for uni back in the ‘good old, free old days’ as opposed to the present day, was the difference between the O level and the GCSE we have now.

Get any teacher who’s old enough drunk enough, and they’ll admit the GCSE is a piece of piss compared to the O Level, and that we’re selling our kids short, but they’ll not so much as whisper it sober for fear of losing their jobs. The elephant in the room is that the GCSE is the CSE with a fresh lick of rebranding. Don’t be fooled.

Back in 1979, I remember sitting in my Headmaster's office being reprimanded for bunking off. He was trying to suspend me, and I was talking him out of it as I sipped my tea, bought from the out-of-bounds caff across the road.

He was exasperated. Finally, he exploded: "But you're different to the other children in this school. You're articulate, you're able to express yourself…"

I was furious, and exploded right back at him: "It's your fucking JOB to make EVERY CHILD IN THIS SCHOOL 'articulate and able to express' themselves!" I raged.

That’s it and all about it as far as I am concerned. By all means, give kids as much or as little as they can handle - without shame, without penalty - but I maintain it isn’t socialism to treat poor kids like crabs in a bucket, and deny them the chance to climb out.

Yes, I’ll be voting Labour, but I’ll keep on arguing this one…

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2017

MODERN LIVING = OLD-FASHIONED SELFISHNESS?

I am not sure when I first started noticing the noise my upstairs neighbour makes simply existing in his flat over my head, but I know that I literally live for when he goes out, and could willingly scream and break every window in the house whenever he returns.

From crashing through his door after a night at the pub, to slapping about, pacing up and down in his flip-flops burbling on the 'phone, every noise he makes seems to transmit through the ceiling and into my brain like a jack hammer.

He does seem to have some very bizarre routines. I mean, what do you do when you come home from work? I make myself a cup of tea, sit down, put my feet up, and switch on the news. Every time he arrives home, he seems to experience an urgent need to rearrange his furniture. Items are dragged, objects are dropped on the floor, and when he's finally satisfied with arrangements, a soft drumming begins somewhere near the wainscotting, rather like a rabbit's warning, thumping on the floor in urgent, repeated bursts. 

A little more to the right, mate...

I have often wondered if I am just being oversensitive. After all, he's perfectly affable, and we always enjoy a friendly conversation whenever we happen upon each other in the street. Indeed, following a wheedling and Englishly apologetic note from me, he's even managed to start walking on his stairs as opposed to thundering up and down, using them as gym equipment and making my pictures rattle against the walls, but still the random, almighty thumps continue. So startling can these actually be, that if they were to be played as disembodied audio on one of those 'name this sound' contests on daytime television, my money would be on "Greg Rutherford practising long-jump".

Yet still I question myself. Like Macbeth, pacing the battlements at Glamis, I soliloquise: "How is 't with me when every noise appals me…?"

But I know it's not just me. In fact, the man that my Facebook friends now know only as 'The Cockwomble' is seemingly some sort of a legend in our quiet little close. Early on in my tenancy, a neighbour collared me and asked me how I was "coping" living underneath this guy, and told me she was sorry for me. This same neighbour told me how one night, when she had arrived home from a rare evening out (she is a mother of two small children), and had been sitting in her car telephoning a friend to let them know she was home safe, she had looked up to see him, curtains wide, running… RUNNING across his floor (my ceiling), back and forth, and touching each wall as if in training for something.

Probably his next shag… because every time love calls, and call it does, frequently (I counted no less than three new 'girlfriends' in the space of as many months last year), I get to hear him on the job as well. For hours on end. No quickies for him. Inevitably desensitised by 5 or so pints down the pub before he staggers back here with his latest, on and on it will go - with relentless monotony.

I am obliged to hear as his partners start off enthusiastically enough; panting, squealing, and oink-oink-oinking overhead, then eventually falling silent as he continues to hammer away at the same tedious pace for an hour at a time (I've often found myself wondering if they've died). Then he'll thump to the bathroom to hose himself down, before going back into the bedroom to give them another hour's worth. Ear-plugs help...

This, I keep telling myself (with less and less conviction), is simply 'living with other people', and I find myself wondering if creeping age is the reason that I can simply somehow, no longer tolerate it. Pills don't help...

And yet, I was born and raised in London. For the first 33 years of my life there, I lived in a mansion flat on a busy road. The main arterial to the north as it happens. The difference, I suspect, has something to do with construction. The flat in which I grew up had been built in 1880, had solid walls, and had withstood the Blitz. Just a few cracks in the ceilings bore testament to this, but there was no question they needed 'fixing'. Nothing was going to come down. One gets the impression with the sort of late 1990s build in which I now live, that all it would take would be one good gale and the roof would be off. No wonder I can even hear 'CW' honking into a hankie blowing his nose every morning.

Knowing how thin the walls and ceilings are here, I creep about, mindful at all times of not clattering my dishes in the sink, or vacuuming at odd hours. You'd think Chummy upstairs would do the same and perhaps think twice about thumping around as much as he does.

But he doesn't think about it. Seems nobody does any more. When did we all get so utterly self-centred? I remember a time when it was the height of rudeness even to talk too loudly in public lest someone else be forced to overhear your conversation. Now people walk around shouting into mobile 'phones, blasting music out of their cars, and yelling in the street at all hours, and nobody dares say a thing - because people are literally terrified of each other. We're afraid of violent repercussions for requesting peace. 

Nope, not quite... just need to drag it across the floor one more time to be sure...

I remember when going to the cinema was a treat for all the family, and the worst irritation you could expect would be someone making a racket with their bag of Opal Fruits and rabbiting loudly about the plot to their companions. Such inadvertent oafs could easily be prevailed upon with a tap on the shoulder from your dad with an authorative finger to his lips.

Now, in our entitled world, we've got people blathering into their 'phones right the way through the movie, and threatening anyone who says a word about it with physical violence. If it's a gang of them out for a good time, they’ll be waiting for you outside. They're entitled to enjoy themselves, see…

I seem to remember watching a programme about Spike Milligan, that lovely fragile man who made so many of us laugh when we were kids with his funny voices and his many 'characters', in which he revealed that other people's thoughtless noise jangled his nerves so much that he actually checked himself into an asylum just to get a little respite.

I have a feeling it won't be long before I book my place too…

© Emmeline Wyndham - 2017