A nice bit of British classism

As you all know by now I have what some may consider an unhealthy obsession with the relative merits of local supermarkets. I do particularly like the posh one up the road from me and when I go there I feel all middle class and grown up as I choose between the chargrilled artichokes and the olive and manchego platter. However, on a recent visit I was left feeling quite shocked and confused after spotting a customer buying a copy of ‘The Sun’ newspaper. Now I don’t like to be judgmental but I’m going to be anyway. To explain to anyone from a different country who may be reading this, ‘The Sun’ contains pictures of scantily clad ladies, no news and could easily be accessed by someone with a reading age of 7. In a nutshell, it is not what you expect ‘Waitrose’ clientèle to be buying.

When I relayed this dismaying news to a friend, he asked if I was sure they weren’t buying  ‘The Sun’ in a kind of post-modern ironic way, a bit like people who send their children to fee-paying schools buy ‘The Guardian’. (Kerrching! I have now managed to alienate the remaining 50% of my friends, the ones who were smugly chuckling about ‘The Sun’) I assured him that this was not the case as I had overheard them talking and they didn’t even know how to pronounce ‘cous-cous’ properly. I grabbed my elderflower and raspberry terrine and practically ran out of there.
This story takes me back to the early days of my marriage. A semi-
famous soap star had died in an accident and the only paper covering in was ‘The Mirror’. I asked my husband Geof to buy a copy on his way home so I could read about it. He said he would, but that he would have to divorce me afterwards!

(Disclaimer – I love all my friends and family. I don’t care what newspaper you read, where you shop, where your kids go to school. You are all lovely, warm, caring people and that is what matters!)