Perhaps you’ve caught your kid trying to organise a dinner party with their friends at playgroup, maybe she likes listening to Dido a little bit too much or he’s modified his trike with a selection of Volvo logos – there’s every chance that you child might be middle class. Here are five signs that your offspring may be more interested in talking about Wendy house prices than discussing In The Night Garden:
1. They have a favourite type of houmous.
I first tasted houmous when I was 18 years old. I had left home before I knew the delights of mushed-up chickpeas and then, for many years, I didn’t realise that there were different varieties available. My 14 month-old daughter Elsa has now sampled so many types that she has been able to rank them in order of preference. Lemon and coriander tops her list if you’re interested.
***STOP PRESS***
In an even more middle class turn of events, we’ve decided to start making our own houmous so she doesn’t eat so much salt. Here’s the evidence and my one-expression review of what it tastes like:
[wpvideo dhV4gyUs]
2. This picture:
Here is Elsa, at approximately three months old, reading The Guardian. And pointing out the mistakes.
3. They dance to the theme tune of the Archers.
The jaunty music which accompanies Radio 4’s agricultural soap opera seems to meet with Elsa’s approval even if she’s less bothered about whose flock has wandered into whose fields or whatever the latest thrilling storyline might be. Still, the theme is good for a bit of uber-cute baby head-banging and out-of-time clapping (a trait she inherits from her dad).
4. Their toy choices are telling.
Elsa was given a play kitchen for Christmas with a massive box of toy food to go with it. She eschewed the plastic hotdog (not vastly different from a real hotdog), ignored the mock-Pringles (seriously!) and threw away the faux-fries, opting instead to play with these items:
Yes, she’s most interested in cheese and grapes – if only they made imitation Duchy Originals water biscuits to go with them.
5. The truth will come out in the most public of places.
Probably the most middle class event I have ever witnessed came when shopping in the Co-op in Hebden Bridge, a distinctly artisan and thoroughly bourgeois (in the best possible way) market town nestled in the Pennines in West Yorkshire. A family walked through the door, led by an eight year-old who exclaimed at the top of his voice, “Mummy, mummy! I’ll fetch the pain au chocolat” with a perfect French accent when uttering the name of the flaky pastry treat.
Glorious.
Worried that your child is so middle class that they think they can’t live without Monty, the John Lewis penguin? show them the Christmas ad recut as a horror film to put them off for life!
Leave a Reply