POSH, POOR & MIDDLECLASS BRITS

 

 

0:00:28.00 – 0:00:40.00

MAGGY: After living in one of the world´s most egalitarian countries, Finland, I wanted to find out what it was like to live in Great Britain, where class has played a big part in the country´s development.

 

0:00:42.00 – 0:00:46.00

I wondered if it still mattered in the World´s oldest democracy.

 

0:00:50.00 – 0:01:00.00

My entrée is Richard Bailey.  He has a posh eccentric hobby. A retired engineer, he owns one of three working gondolas in all of Great Britain.

 

0:01:08.00 – 0:01:18.00

From engineer to gondolier might seem like a big leap, but he says he needs both skills when he and his partner Robin Blandy launch their boat on the River Thames.  

 

0:01:20.00 – 0:01:43.00

Richard Bailey: It began with an interest with Venetian rowing.You need to be a pretty good Venetian rower before you can row a gondola. My neighbour invited me for a lesson in Venice some twelve years ago. That’s where the seed began. The opportunity to row a gondola began ten years later in Birmingham – of all places – where a Sicilian invited me to row his gondola.

 

0:01:45.00 – 0:01:53.00

This is certainly a Venetian gondola. It was launched on New Year’s day 1986 and it’s named Marissa Christiano.

 

0:01:54.00 – 0:02:14.00

So if you see a gondolier on the Thames in Oxford, please hail it and I will come to the side and give you a ride. You just have to put a little money in my water-aid box, which is for people in Africa who don’t have clean water. So the boat is for giving rides, you just call me and I come and you get a ride. You just have to be cheeky enough to ask.

 

0:02:22.00 – 0:02:29.00

MAGGY: Spectators on the shore love the sight. Some can’t resist bellowing out off-key renditions of “O Sole Mio.”

 

0:02:32.00 – 0:02:54.00

Richard Bailey: The first reaction is the camera comes up to the face and there’s a click. Generally it’s amazement. Sometimes we get the English reserve of “well that’s so unusual” and then they just won’t make a reaction and look away, which is quite fun. But people usually are friendly and wave and say “nice boat” and that’s always very satisfying.

 

0:02:56.00 – 0:03:06.00

MAGGY: But passengers love it even more. They sit back while the two men, dressed in authentic gondolier outfits, row them down the river in great style.

 

0:03:09.00 – 0:03:24.00

Richard Bailey: It has led to all sorts of other things that are very exciting. It’s a rather unusual thing to do and I enjoy being unusual and meeting different people. This has led to all sorts of things. The gondola gets invited and I go with the gondola. So, that’s fun.

 

0:03:25.00 – 0:03:46.00

MAGGY: Richard and Robin belong to City Barge – a Venetian rowing club. It was founded by graduates of Oxford and Cambridge. Every year the club joins the Rolls Royce Enthusiasts Club for a picnic on the grounds of Wotton House, which was built in 1704. April and David Gladstone are the owners.  

 

0:03:47.00 – 0:05:16.00

David Gladstone: Our house is I think a very lucky house, because by all right it shouldn’t exist anymore. In the first place, many houses of this kind were destroyed through the 20th century, particulary in the 1950’s and 60’s. Wotton House was sold by the then-owner, and the new owners really didn’t know what to do with it, so they passed it on. And after time, when it was left empty mold got in and there were pools/ponds of water everywhere. It was in such a bad state it was going to be pulled down.

 

And it’s only purely by chance and at the very nick of the time that my late mother-in-law Mrs. Patrick Brummer came here, shown around by an antique-dealer, in finding some columns for her. He came with her to the front of the house, stood and looked up at it and said “Look your last, because house is going to be demolished in a fortnight.”

 

Then my late mother-in-law always said she heard herself say as if from another voice, “Oh no, it´s not.” And from that moment she just knew that she had to save that house. And save it she did. There is a law in regard to historic buildings. A council, which had recently been set up to save houses like this and they had to match that at least. Everybody spent more than that from their own pockets.

 

0:05:17.00 – 0:05:48.00

MAGGY: Today the family spends long weekends and lets the house out for conferences, concerts and other occasions such as a picnic. David, who went to posh schools Eton and Christ Church, one of the most famous colleges at Oxford University, reads the Guardian – a left wing newspaper. When I asked him how he reconciled owning such a grand property with liberal views he said, “Oh, Wotton has always been a Whig, meaning liberal, house.”

 

0:05:50.00 – 0:06:10.00

For a country which is famous for its soggy wet weather, it might seem peculiar that the British are crazy about the outdoors and picnics. But according to Juliet Dunsmure, they take them very seriously. And jump at any chance to put up a tent, have a Pimms cup or pop open a bottle of champagne.

 

0:06:11.00 – 0:06:46.00

Juliet Dunsmure: We love being outside having picnics. And there are different picnics. There are picnics for point-to-point racing, which is in March – that’s winter´s picnic in England. And then you go on into the summer, it’s Henley and Ascot. And then there is the grand picnic in Glynbourne, which is the full works, where it is table and chairs and linen table cloths and candles.

 

 

 

 

0:06:48.00 – 0:07:06.00

MAGGY: The day of the picnic starts early. It takes awhile to assemble all the pieces: the cars have to find their favorite parking spaces, the boats are launched, the tents, tables and chairs set-up and the food organized. By one o´clock everything is ready.

 

0:07:08.00 – 0:07:18.00

Pimms cup, a concoction of gin, quinine, herbs and chilled lemonade is served, the champagne is uncorked and the food is elegantly laid out.

 

0:07:19.00 – 0:07:31.00

Our lunch is by a 1927 silver Rolls Royce owned by an English couple but built for a majarani. The car next to us is its twin built for a majaraja.

 

0:07:40.00 – 0:07:52.00

It´s an unusually fine day. The scene takes on a lively but languid laziness. I overhear someone say, “Aren´t we lucky.”

 

0:08:10.00 – 0:08:34.00

MAGGY: When I first came to Oxford I ignored the guys selling the “Big Issue,” a magazine that homeless people sell on the streets whose aim is to get them off the streets. Maybe it was guilt or the Christmas season, but one day I stopped, bought a copy and started talking to the young man who sold it to me. He told me his story. His name is Adam Bloor but everybody calls him Blue.

 

0:08:35.00 – 0:10:35.00

Blue: Technically I’ve actually been hanging on and off since I was seventeen. But for the last two years I´ve sorted out, until a month ago my caravan got stolen and I got made homeless and ended up sleeping in the streets because of it. Didn’t have the money to buy another caravan, then I got stuck sleeping on the streets. No place to go. I’m actually sleeping in shop doorways, things like that. Anywhere in the street.

 

 

 

 

Just put cardboard down and get my sleeping bag and go to sleep. When you’re homeless everybody looks down on you, throws things at you, stares on you, give you abuse and stuff like, cos they think it’s funny, inni’t, because you’re homeless. Obviously I’m going to try to survive and you just adapt and get used to it. Find ways to cope within it. Because I’m homeless it’s harder for me to find a job.

 

So I just sell the Big Issue instead of it and support myself through that. If people buy Big Issue, I mean that’s how I will survive, really due to their kindness. At the moment I have to buy them for a pound each. So I buy 15 for 15 pounds and I sell them for 3 pounds and then I buy another 15 the next day for 15 pounds. While sometimes you sell them all, then like you don´t sell them all, sell seven in one day. And from every one that I sell, I get a pound for myself and a pound goes to charity.

 

The Oxford city council won’t house me and I’m not allowed in the night shelter to stay there or even for a shower or a cup of tea or anything because I have no local connection to the area, which as I said before, is wrong, because I have no local connections anywhere because all my family are travelers. I was brought up in a caravan, traveling around, home-schooled.  See, I didn’t go to any local school anywhere at all. I have no local connections anywhere at all.

 

0:10:36.00 – 0:11:00.00

MAGGY: When I talk to the people who run the shelters they make a good case for why Blue has fallen through the cracks. Oxford has some of the best facilities in Great Britain for homeless people.  The “Survival” book they give me is crammed with services. But it´s their job to get people settled, find them permanent homes and off the dole. Blue likes to live in a van and travel from place to place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

0:11:02.00 – 0:11:33.00

Blue: Well I was going to try to sell the Big Issue, trying to save a bit of money everyday, like 5-10 pounds every day, and then try to buy another caravan. When I’ll be off the streets, when I’ll have my caravan, I’ll be able to travel again. I know it’s gonna take quite a bit of money to save up. Looks like I’m going to spend another six months on the streets, with no help from the council or the homeless charities apart from the only place I’m allowed to go in, the soup kitchen.

 

0:11:36.00 – 0:12:05.00

I mostly spend my time on my own. It’s easier and I find it safer. But obviously you need some kind of human contact. Yeah, I know few people, but they live in hostels where they can’t have people living with them. And if I lived with one of my friends for over three days a week, it would affect their rent and they got their own life. And I can’t afford to stay with them forever you know what I mean. I have to make my own way in the world. I am a 26-year-old adult.

 

0:12:06.00 – 0:12:23.00

MAGGY: But his story has a relatively happy ending. One day when I see him he tells me he´s been taken off the black list at the shelter. He thinks making this documentary has helped his case. Now he´s allowed to use the showers and eat a good breakfast and dinner.  He looks good.

 

0:12:25.00 – 0:12:34.00

His face is filled out, he´s shaved and he´s upbeat. I look at him and say “Blue you´re handsome.”  He says, “I know.” 

 

0:12:38.00 – 0:13:04.00

MAGGY: The middle class proved the most difficult to pin down.  Perhaps because the range is so wide – from upper middle class, which means rich by most people´s standards, to lower – which borders on being poor. And many people I met didn´t want to be filmed. In the end I was lucky. Becky and James Salter and Philippa Farrow are all people who I felt like I´ve known for a long time.

 

 

 

0:13:05.00 – 0:13:18.00

The Salters seem like an unlikely couple. He´s an English cowboy, who would like to spend his days on a horse. A hair stylist, who also sculpts, paints, does photography, plays the guitar and writes music.

 

0:13:19.00 – 0:13:59.00

James: My ideal imagination of my life would be to be on a horse, on a ranch in the middle of nowhere. That’s my ideal of heaven. My other ideal of heaven is to be on a beach in Venice, just watching, sitting on the sand, watching the sun and feeling and seeing the sea.

 

The easiest for me to go and make money from would be my hairdressing, because I can go up to anybody anywhere, on beaches as I have done it in the past, and cut somebody’s hair just for beer money or rent money for the night. It is the most natural and easy thing for me ever to do. You could ask me any time of day or night to do hair and I can happily do it.

 

0:14:01.00 – 0:14:17.00

MAGGY: Becky Salter trained to be a Norlund nanny – the Rolls Royce of British nannies. And has worked all over the world taking care of other people´s children. Now Becky and James have one of their own – an adorable one year old called Alfie.

 

0:14:19.00 – 0:14:42.00

Becky: I think new mothers just need to relax and do what comes naturally to them. I think there’s a lot of pressure from reading all the various books and child care manuals and I think if you relax and do what comes naturally and just do for the baby and forget everything else. You know you’re not going to remember in ten years time that you had beautifully ironed clothes, but you are going to remember that you had a happy baby.

 

0:14:45.00 – 0:15:01.00

James: Alfie to me now is everything I’ve ever worked for, everything I’ve ever dreamed of and everything I’ve ever inspired to be is in him now. And to me, it’s all about Alfie. So everything I do now is back to him.

 

0:15:02.00 – 0:15:10.00

Becky: Yeah, James and I just click and we just moved house and I think this has just proved how well we work together.

 

0:15:11.00 – 0:15:20.00

James: I work for a living, always have done. I enjoy working, I have my family from Sweden, Swedish nobility and so I’m working class, with a middle-class backround.

 

0:15:21.00 – 0:15:28.00

Becky: James has fantastic ideas and a lot of artistic flair and I’m a real doer, so together we are a really good combination.

 

0:15:29.00 – 0:15:42.00

MAGGY: Becky and James remind me of people I knew in Venice Beach, California. They´ve created a relaxed West coast hippie lifestyle in an English village, proving that opposites do attract.

 

0:15:48.00 – 0:16:11.00

MAGGY: Philippa Farrow is a gutsy lady. With two grown children and time on her hands, she decided she needed a challenge. So when the oldest cinema in Oxford, built in 1911, came up for sale she and her friend Jane Derricott bought it. And that was the easy part. It was rundown and the two friends decided what it needed was a woman´s touch.

 

0:16:13.00 – 0:17:10.00

Philippa: Jane – my business partner – and I bought the Ultimate Picture Palace cinema in East Oxford last July. And we’d been talking to the previous owner for several months beforehand. I was in a state where I was really getting quite desperate. I needed a project. I would also hope that eventually we’d be able to take some money out of it because I have rather expensive children. That´s a Joke by the way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t know what I was going to do for the rest of my life. My children had gotten to the stage now, where they are 21 and 19. They´re moving on. My daughter lives in London, my son is about to go to university in Rome – I hope. And I’m going to be all by myself and I’m so desperate for them not to know or to worry, that you know, “mum’s all alone at home” and “what’s she going to be doing” and I just want them to realise that I’ve got a life. And it’s a good life.

 

 

0:17:11.00 – 0:17:34.00

MAGGY: The first thing Philippa did was to rent a truck, drive to Cornwall – about ten hours back and forth – and pick up some new seats she bought cheap on Ebay. Then the two women, with the help of Jane´s husband and a couple of guys, installed them. They decided that the cinema had to be cleaner than their own houses and got to work scrubbing. Afterwards they installed a bar.

 

0:17:35.00 – 0:17:58.00

Philippa: I enjoy it, it’s stimulating. It’s very interesting as well and it’s very varied. We clean the loos. We hoover the cinema every single day. We sell the tickets in the kiosk. I work in the bar. We switch the films. We do all, everything you can possibly think of  into running a cinema.

 

0:18:00.00 – 0:18:10.00

MAGGY: The Ultimate Picture Palace has become a community project for Oxford. People come before the film starts to meet their friends, have a cup of tea or a glass of wine.

 

0:18:11.00 – 0:18:55.00

Philippa: It’s strange. I sort of don’t really feel I own the cinema. It’s very much a community thing. But I obviously run it with Jane. I like the fact that it’s fun, that people come to enjoy themselves. I like selling tickets at the kiosk. I hope I’m always smiling. I think that I am.

 

 

 

 

 

I think most people think I’m slightly strange because I can’t seem to get the three processes right: I’m supposed to give them tickets, give them change and mark it down. And I do two out of the three but I often can’t do all three, which is a bit embarrassing. But I like serving behind the bar and chatting to people. I like people, I’ve always liked people.

 

0:18:56.00 – 0:19:14.00

MAGGY: But the work is hard and the hours are long. The two women have to be at the cinema at odd times, seven days a week. So Philippa and Jane, with one paid employee, have organized a group of volunteers to help out. They get free movie tickets and wine. And everybody´s happy.

 

0:19:19.00 – 0:19:44.00

What I learned in my year in Oxford was, yes class still mattered.  But it´s a lot more fluid than I thought. Of course it helps in certain circles if you have the right accent and know the proper way to hold your knife and fork. But to me as an outsider, it´s the huge middle class, that includes everyone from the cashier at the supermarket to a high court judge that seems to rule the Empire.