I'm a big fan of Grayson Perry. Not only do I think he is a brilliant artist, I think he has the knack of being highly intelligent & observant without being in the least bit pretentious or egotistical. That must be unique in the art world.
His current series on TV is fascinating on many levels. His observations, both in what he sees & what he says are insightful. He is able to relate to & draw out, (excuse the pun), all sorts of people, so that they reveal themselves. Listening without patronising or mocking. From that rich tapestry he makes real tapestries, summing up in a delightful way the essence of the people & worlds he has observed. The tapestries themselves are a joy.
The programmes make you look at yourself and try to analyse what makes you tick & where you fit into the hierarchical structure of class. I started life in a working class home in Quinton in Birmingham. My father was a copper smelter who worked nights feeding a furnace, a hard and dangerous job. My mother worked part time in various jobs, the Kunzle cake factory, & the Chad Valley toy factory were two I remember. Money was tight, but they, (& the bank), owned their semi detatched house.
I remember a post war childhood of hard work & very little in the way of material things. New clothes were an annual event as I grew out of what I had. Toys and books were very few. We had a radio, but no TV. I walked to school on my own. I played in the street or the back garden with the other kids. The house was bitterly cold in the winter as there was only one fire in the back living room. I never went hungry, but food was simple & basic. My mother shopped & cooked every day. Chicken was a huge treat as was tinned salmon.
Me going to Grammar school must have been a big financial burden for my parents, who by then had moved into a bigger semi on the Wolverhampton Road. So we took in two lodgers - students from Birmingham university. Looking back I think my mother was amazing to afford the Startright shoes and compulsory uniform including velour winter hat from an expensive outfitters in Birmingham. She was buying me a passport to a better life having been denied an education herself although she was undoubtedly intelligent.
Even when I went to Trent Park College to do Art & train as a teacher I was hard up. I got a grant, but my parents were supposed to contribute as well. They never seemed to have the money. So I went through the whole three years with a duffle coat & one pair of jeans. I remember the joy of Hall of Residence, followed by lodgings & finally a shared house. I learned to cook & manage my money.
I also widened my whole experience. I met people from all walks of life, some very wealthy in comparison to me. The world of art, music & drama opened up to me & I developed my own style & taste. I had studied architecture at A level & now saw famous buildings in London for myself. Because I had played the piano as a child I was immersed in classical music, but I discovered a much wider love of all sorts of music.
So I graduated & became a teacher. A fully fledged member of the professional classes. I married a man who also had a degree & professional career. Without noticing I had left the working class behind & in so doing I had probably left my parents behind too. After all their hard work and sacrifice they had produced a cuckoo.
Looking at Grayson Perry's 2nd programme about the Middle Classes I was hard pushed to find myself. I'm certainly not in the label & lifestyle, consumerist, group. I don't see myself in the Upper Middle Classes either. I'm somewhere out on a limb. Still harking back to my roots & shaped by my first 25 years without very much money at all. So I could go out now and buy all the things by which people define themselves. But those things don't mean anything at all to me. They are the "Emperors New Clothes" & sooner or later I hope people will realise that.
My daughter probably fits quite well in the Ethical / Eco / NCT group of Middle Class. She is very fortunate & has never experienced being hard up or wanted for anything. She has had a privileged life without struggle and I'm delighted in her & for her.
But, I wonder whether adversity & struggle are important determinants of our humanity & personality. I am the sum of my parts & oddly I think they have all been important - the wonderful and the downright disastrous.
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