I’m off to the country. Suffolk eastern England, specifically, where Veronica Joly de Lotbiniere, also known as “Onky,” is going to teach me to be upper-class. Crikey, Onky, I want to say, have you any idea about the scale of the task ahead of you? Luckily, I realize, she’s not actually in the job of converting me, per se; it’s merely a new form of experiential tourism. She runs holidays “for guests wanting to experience a British upper-class way of life.”
Veronica’s house doesn’t disappoint. A Georgian rectory with chintz and dog hair and gymkhana rosettes and thick cream invitations on the mantelpiece from people with what sound like made-up names. There’s a tiger under the piano shot by the grandfather of husband Giles and pictures of Veronica’s mother as a debutante in 1955 and, in the back garden, a woman called Fi, who has come to teach me etiquette.
To my untutored eye, all posh people are equally posh, and I suspect the reverse is also true. For all I know, Veronica expects me to fish a can of beer out of my bag and light up a cigarette. Whereas I only feel like doing that on a couple of occasions. Mostly when listening to Fi tell me how much you should tip the servants.
Meanwhile, Veronica fills me in on her background.
She met her husband Giles skiing in Verbier and “I think I’m very much typical of our background: four children, dogs, horses...”
Unlike most of her friends, though, Veronica works. She’s a business dynamo, owning 35 buy-to-let properties, but the downturn prompted her to cast her mind around for other business ideas and the result is More Than Good Manners, which offers guests not just the chance to stay in her and her chums’ houses, and mingle with the owners, but also to try their hand at what Veronica calls “upper-class pursuits,” hunting, fishing, polo, shooting.
Fi has flown a light aircraft down from north west England and parked it on an airstrip in a nearby field. Lots of people have landing strips in their back gardens in Suffolk, it turns out. And I had no idea! I feel like I’ve entered Britain, the multiverse — a parallel country that exists at the same time and place as the one where I live, but in a different dimension. There’s no time to dwell on this though, as we’re off to one of Veronica’s friends for lunch.
It’s a 40-minute drive in the sort of four-wheel-drive and Veronica chats away.
“The thing is,” she says at one point, “we’re soon going to be rid of that awful man and all the awful things he’s done. I mean this new upper-rate tax bracket for earners over £150,000 (US$250,000) a year is an absolute travesty.”
“So, do you just assume that everyone is Conservative, Veronica?” I ask.
“Well, yes. Yes, I do.”
Oh, it’s all quite interesting, this. But much as I’d like to scoff, the thing about it is that I realize my belief system is every bit as narrow as Veronica’s. I assume that no one I know votes Conservative. Then again, Veronica is not one to equivocate, having the sort of confidence that money can’t buy. Except, of course, money can buy it. To be precise, £30,000 a year — the cost of sending your child to a private school.
It all comes down to education. Time and again, we come back to schools. When we discuss upper-classdom, Veronica says it is not to do with having a big house; it’s “just something you can tell — the way they speak, whether they say ‘toilet.’”
“Pardon?”
“Yes, exactly. Or ‘pardon.’”
“No I mean why not ‘toilet’?”
“Oh, it’s always a loo. A loo or a lavatory. Never a toilet.”
But mostly it’s down to where you went to school. Sending your child to private school won’t necessarily make you posh. It’s simply the minimum requirement.
“So does that mean you think you’re better educated than I am?” I ask, “because you went to a private school and I went to a state school?”
“Well, no... ” Veronica says.
And then, just as I’m about to chuck out all sorts of facts and figures, Veronica throws me by telling the truth.
“Of course, it’s not just about education. It’s about who you meet. The networks you make at [private] school will be with you for life and of course in a lot of jobs it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” she says.
Sitting in her four-wheel-drive, I feel I have a window into a different world.
“Do you know anyone who didn’t go to a private school?” I ask Veronica
“Well of course I do,” she says. “Lots of people. I mean, for example, my cleaner didn’t.”
“Friends of yours.”
“Oh well, friends, well, hmm, I suppose not, no.”
A More Than Good Manners holiday is a bit like a sort of life swap. A taste of life in a Georgian rectory with a husband called Giles, a handful of horses and four children at private schools.
“I get so cross when people say, oh you people have no idea about real life!” Veronica says. “This is our real life. This is what we know. It might seem narrow to you, but it really is our real life.”
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