Jackie Danicki

Like so many members of London’s haute bourgeoisie, Sheba is deeply attached to a mythology of herself as street-smart. She always howls when I refer to her as upper class. (She’s middle, she insists; at the very most, upper-middle.) She loves to come shopping with me in the Queenstown street market or the Shop-A-Lot next to the Chalk Farm council estates. It flatters her image of herself as a denizen of the urban jungle to stand cheek by jowl in checkout queues with teenage mothers buying quick-cook macaroni in the shape of Teletubbies for their children. But you can be quite sure that if any of those prematurely craggy-faced girls were ever to address her directly, she would be frightened out of her wits. Though she cannot say it, or even acknowledge it to herself, she thinks of the working class as a mysterious and homogeneous entity: a tempery, florid-faced people addled by food additives and alcohol.

Oh, how that reminds me of our politicians and far too many of the people I know (not friends). It’s from Notes on a Scandal by Zoe Heller, which I read during the first couple of days of our time in Paris. It’s an engaging, funny read. The film version will star Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, which…Well, I know you can’t go wrong with those two, but Dench is definitely wrong for the narrator’s role. Blanchett, I believe, can pull off anything. Anyway, if you want to read it, there is usually at least one copy in any English charity shop you can find.

Filed under: Books, Film, Life