I was taught, if there was food on plate, then within short, there was food in a mouth, and by the magic of biology food in a stomach , a morning constitution and a pattern on a plate that saw sunlight after a lick or two. And now luxury......
An earned salary that can not only talk of food as if there is a difference between an ice cream and sorbet, that for instead of a tea, we now have a wine that needs not a connoiseur to tell your Riojas from Diablos. A ritual of approval has been learnt, sniffing the air, but still the heart prefers a Stout which is unlikley to be served and certainly unlikely to be requested.
An annual Bonus is expected to finance toys that are seldom used to their multi functioning limits. Men's toys, gadgets to forewarn me of meetings, to vibrate at meetings taht I am needed outside a meetiny, to play a game of bricks when bored of executive decision-making.
Technology once envied and dismissed from the wrong side of the shop window is now adorning a belt or necklace or pocket especuially made for the purpose. A middle aged executive as likely a techno-nerd as a living God of Commerce could create. A Techno-Exec who would be lost without his gadgets.
Technology that can survive any Airport metal detector in one's master role in the art of international jet-set travel. A master role faintly hiding frustration with lesser mortals that only fail to remove a belt until a special request is made, passengers having to dump grandmas's scissors because one has not realised it is a dangerous weapon and not a family heirloom, and therefore delay one's passage to the VIP salon by seconds.
And one places a donation to the starving children of Africa to mollify one's guilt in a foreign currency shrapnel in a ledaing airliner charity push and no doubt the starving children of Africa are happy. The pattern in the plate is hidden, perhaps.
Whilst I now hardly ever see the pattern in the plate.
A worm has turned, but turned for the better....?
Showing posts with label Working class. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Working class. Show all posts
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Tuesday, 29 September 2009
The real ex-pat
Socialistic principles aside. Ex-patness brought on a case of Domestication.
Others were doing it, it wasn't..sniff...as if I ...sniff... I was hurting anyone.
It was a big house, the kids were young, the wife was under a knife to remove a vital organ or something close to a vital organ, we had no mother-in-law. We had little friends we could trust with our darlings or wanted to be trusted by our darlings.
We had ex-pat cash , we had a 'domestic'.
And in one fell swoop I was master of servents. I was joining the ranks of the nearly rich and famous who had food made by a non-family member and was not covered in plastic some five micrwaved minutes earlier. Shirts crisply ironed and ready on demand. A family picture not hiding under a residue of dust and MY God! have I aged. I had been turned. My father probably turned as well....in his grave. Voting Tory was a small step away.
And the good news... my language skills improved after several embarrassing incidents involving socks and knickers which apparently sound similar in her tongue or at least the way I asked for socks.
And the good news we had a friend
And the Good News we helped her to better things...a career outside making very nice salad for me and the family.
I miss the salad mind.
Others were doing it, it wasn't..sniff...as if I ...sniff... I was hurting anyone.
It was a big house, the kids were young, the wife was under a knife to remove a vital organ or something close to a vital organ, we had no mother-in-law. We had little friends we could trust with our darlings or wanted to be trusted by our darlings.
We had ex-pat cash , we had a 'domestic'.
And in one fell swoop I was master of servents. I was joining the ranks of the nearly rich and famous who had food made by a non-family member and was not covered in plastic some five micrwaved minutes earlier. Shirts crisply ironed and ready on demand. A family picture not hiding under a residue of dust and MY God! have I aged. I had been turned. My father probably turned as well....in his grave. Voting Tory was a small step away.
And the good news... my language skills improved after several embarrassing incidents involving socks and knickers which apparently sound similar in her tongue or at least the way I asked for socks.
And the good news we had a friend
And the Good News we helped her to better things...a career outside making very nice salad for me and the family.
I miss the salad mind.
Saturday, 1 August 2009
T'office
Without wishing to wear my heart on a sleeve, besides the shirt might need washing, I might die. Or pretend to have a stutter and call my office “t’office” because I was once working class. But it was not so many years ago that travelling by aeroplane was what others did, at best I travelled by a bus and was thankful for it. But eventually with a degree under my arm, a chip on my shoulder, one day in young executive land the Company paid for me to explore some industrial facility and, bless them, to return me on the same day and double bless them again I travelled by air. My family in their valley home expressed surprise I had achieved this feat of travel without a sledge, huskies and a first aid pack; yet I was telephoning home without a nose bleed, after travelling further than they had ever holidayed. I was living in a different world to my kin, I had become irrefutably a different generation.
Working class boy makes good or it may seem so, but here is the crux, the cross to bear, the albatross of history, the burden of social placing. To embellish, to paint a picture,.......a story.
The multi-course Business evening meals that I found more challenging than psychrometric multiple choice, more demanding than multi tasking. As a young graduate, I was losing battles to be served last during a team building seminar evening dinner. Why? ....Because.... I could follow the example of some-middle-class-body in the art of choosing which fork to use, or which sperm-of-satan spoon-fork I should pick-up, let alone use it to pivck-up some fruit hiding under a fashioanble looking leaf. Where was I to place a napkin, and bless my cotton socks I resisted raising it to my nose, just. What cellar was for salt and how come it was on the table and not the basement. I was a working class boy whose academic achievements may be rooted in straight B+’s, but I was a working class boy making bad. As noses were turned up, as my nose managed only sniffles, where was that napkin.
I was new in this strata of society, I was second place, destined to be brought on board when the job was behind, when brains counted for more than etiquette. Like a mad dog under cover of darkness released to bark at the moon and the poachers.
A true story as I confess to a tad of exaggeration:
I was asked once to pass the 'cruet stand', I was dumbfounded, had we moved onto the after dinner Trvial Pursuits entertainment and I hadn't finished my soup, come to think of it no-one else had. I was rescued by a kindly fellow who hid my fallibility by quickly pointing to the offending table tools of a evening meal. Phew for WC-boy.
As an analogy of sorts:
Ladies call for the breaking of the glass ceiling barring them from the top jobs and there is a truth in it - a transparent bias; but where as beyond this glass ceiling there are some females admitted-by-token. Here the glass ceiling is seen in its transparent notoriety, in its Board room male only 'toilet-ness'. It is visible enough, it is talked about on the satellite news channels to spend whole minutes between adverts and football to launch, the ladies can launch a critical campaign for justice. But here I am in my working class bubble, here I am where academia, work ethic compensates little against the glass ceiling . This transparent ceiling is not transparent to the social eye. No entry here not even by token.
Am I still uncool spelt uncouth in my no-WC-man's land. I hope I exaggerate for effect.
Working class boy makes good or it may seem so, but here is the crux, the cross to bear, the albatross of history, the burden of social placing. To embellish, to paint a picture,.......a story.
The multi-course Business evening meals that I found more challenging than psychrometric multiple choice, more demanding than multi tasking. As a young graduate, I was losing battles to be served last during a team building seminar evening dinner. Why? ....Because.... I could follow the example of some-middle-class-body in the art of choosing which fork to use, or which sperm-of-satan spoon-fork I should pick-up, let alone use it to pivck-up some fruit hiding under a fashioanble looking leaf. Where was I to place a napkin, and bless my cotton socks I resisted raising it to my nose, just. What cellar was for salt and how come it was on the table and not the basement. I was a working class boy whose academic achievements may be rooted in straight B+’s, but I was a working class boy making bad. As noses were turned up, as my nose managed only sniffles, where was that napkin.
I was new in this strata of society, I was second place, destined to be brought on board when the job was behind, when brains counted for more than etiquette. Like a mad dog under cover of darkness released to bark at the moon and the poachers.
A true story as I confess to a tad of exaggeration:
I was asked once to pass the 'cruet stand', I was dumbfounded, had we moved onto the after dinner Trvial Pursuits entertainment and I hadn't finished my soup, come to think of it no-one else had. I was rescued by a kindly fellow who hid my fallibility by quickly pointing to the offending table tools of a evening meal. Phew for WC-boy.
As an analogy of sorts:
Ladies call for the breaking of the glass ceiling barring them from the top jobs and there is a truth in it - a transparent bias; but where as beyond this glass ceiling there are some females admitted-by-token. Here the glass ceiling is seen in its transparent notoriety, in its Board room male only 'toilet-ness'. It is visible enough, it is talked about on the satellite news channels to spend whole minutes between adverts and football to launch, the ladies can launch a critical campaign for justice. But here I am in my working class bubble, here I am where academia, work ethic compensates little against the glass ceiling . This transparent ceiling is not transparent to the social eye. No entry here not even by token.
Am I still uncool spelt uncouth in my no-WC-man's land. I hope I exaggerate for effect.
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