Let’s Talk Posh
So, basically, I’m posh. With caveats.
I’m the daughter of two pretty literary parents. They worked hard, they made more money than their parents had before, lived in a nice house. We didn’t go hungry, we weren’t worried about the electricity bill. By any reasonable definition of humanity, that makes us rich, and to pretend otherwise is to demean what it means to be poor.
I went to a posh girl’s school for my secondary education. Admittedly, a few years in, my Dad lost his job and I had to go on an assisted place, but for a while, sure, we could afford it. At school I learned about the motion of the planets, the structures of geometry, the geology of u-shaped valleys and the history of the Industrial Revolution. I also learned that my kind of posh, was no where near the posh of most of my peers. It wasn’t just that I took the Piccadilly Line every day for an hour and a half there, an hour and a half back, where other girls could walk to Chiswick or get picked up by a driver; that wasn’t it. Sure, on exhausted days I resented that particular luxury, but as a friend once pointed out – if you had a choice between Piccadilly Line or driver, which would you choose? There’s no point resenting a thing you would desire for yourself, that’s just envy without a cause.
No – it was a more specific poshness than that. It was a poshness that didn’t even know where Hackney, my home borough, was. It was a privilege that had never seen poverty, even in other people, and a world-view that started counting the cost of goods when they hit the thousands of pounds, rather than the £5 per week that was the apex of my pocket money, and which I hoarded obsessively for an unknown rainy day. It was a wealth that called itself ‘comfortable’ and didn’t see itself for what it was, that regarded Harrods as a local grocer; most offensively of all, it was a poshness that felt no shame about using the word ‘common’.
How I despise that word. ‘That’s so common,’ said my peers, and I raged with every fibre of my being and fought – occasionally unsuccessfully, not to lash out. ‘Common’ used as a word to demean, to condemn, to reduce and dismiss the everyday lot of society, as if we, the lucky few getting this fantastic education, were not a privileged elite, the minority who lived in a world detached from reality, buoyed up by the hard work of our parents. ‘Common’ as if the rest of the universe were a frightening, base thing, which we must be protected from, for it was somehow beneath us.
(Let me add at this point: we were young. Many of my peers were also noble, intelligent and kind, but herd mentality makes a big impression.)
When I turned 18, I went off to university, and with the money from the books I’d written until that time, I paid my way through. I left home, paid my own tuition fees, rent and food, and the only contribution of my parents to my upkeep was the occasional free lunch when they came to visit, and a pot of peanut butter from my Dad when he worried I wasn’t eating enough. I was proud of being able to get myself through university, and proud that a few years later, I was able to do the same thing again, funding my way through RADA. It was the books, however, rather than my family, that gave me this opportunity.
At LSE I was unremarkable in many ways. The university was so diverse, so international, that ‘class’, that iffy sociological construct, wasn’t as interesting as all the other social identifiers knocking around. At RADA, however, on the technical course, it was immediately apparent again that I was posh. Not, however, posh in its potentially myopic sense; nor rolling in wealth since I was still paying my own way and my income has never been significant. I count pennies and keep a tight weekly tally of my outgoings like any sensible, not-brilliantly-paid writer.
Rather, my poshness manifested in some of its cultural consequences. The wealth of my family had bought me education, and moreover it had bought me the luxury of time and means to immerse myself in books and find value in both these things. I had somehow evolved from all of this, not rich, but massively academic. However, when stuck up a ladder five meters above a stage trying to fix a broken moving light on a swaying fly bar, a knowledge of Foucault is entirely unhelpful.
At first, I think people thought I was trying to show off, or sound different, superior. I wasn’t. My syntax was the product of three years of history, nine years of writing books. Over time, as I made friends, they learned that I am genuinely excited by the politics of the 1600s, and the science of the space shuttle, and for my part I was reminded that equating academic knowledge with intelligence is probably one of the stupidest things of all. The technicians I met at RADA were some of the smartest, funniest, friendliest, hardest-working people I’ve ever known, with talents from scenic artistry through to welding that I would never match. We were diverse in every possible way, and from that diversity came a great strength as both technical teams, and friends.
Since leaving RADA, I’ve worked in technical theatre with dozens and dozens of different people. The vast majority accept and respect me; a few are mistrustful because I am female, some because my accent and my interests are still heavily coloured by my past and the values it instilled in me. “I bet you don’t know what it’s like,” a sound boy said to me recently, “because you’re posh and everything was given to you on a plate.”
He meant it as a joke, in part, but also as a genuine, foolish reflection of his thoughts.
“Sure, you’re a writer,” others have murmured, “because your parents were rich enough that you could afford to be a writer.”
And sure. Yes. In a way: yes. The money of my parents didn’t buy material things, per se. My parents had both been skint enough in the past to refuse to spend cash on ridiculous extravagances, but rather saved their cash that they might be comfortable in old age and that I, their only daughter, could have the education and opportunities to live independently in years to come. These sound like simple things – they are not. They are extraordinary privileges in this society, and more than anything else, my parent’s actions in this regard gave me a freedom to choose, a love of learning, and an opportunity to find my own path, which is nothing short of incredible.
So yes: sure. I’m posh, and my background has given me great opportunities and shaped who I am.
But also: no.
I have never lived in true poverty, but I have eyes, and ears, and empathy that wants to care and understand. I have counted, and still do count, pennies, and taken pride in looking after myself and defending myself independently since I was 18 years old. I have fought to stay clear of debt, and worked for fourteen years as a novelist, working to achieve a professionalism and a craft that is entirely my own. As a freelancer, I discipline myself, and as a lighting designer I will work the 70-hour weeks it takes to get the job done, and come away bruised and battered from a theatre, work my way up right from the bottom and hope one day to reach the top, because that’s what I want, and a thing I must achieve for myself. The government will not help me, if I fall on hard times, because it doesn’t protect the self-employed. My family would help me if I asked, but the priority now is protecting my Mum and Gran in her old age, and making sure she is safe and comfortable, as once she worked to keep me safe. This too is a privilege denied many in old age. Meanwhile, I fend for myself; that is my strongest self-definition.
My past, and my family, have helped shape my identity, but now in answer to the sound boy who muttered ‘you wouldn’t understand’ I’d answer this: that while my past shaped me, the decisions I make now are mine, and come from who I am. And over the years I have become someone who is more than the economics of my parents, and the academia of my school. I am posh; I also earn less than the national minimum wage on a lot of of my work. I am literary, immersed in a world of books and language; I also will help you build a scaff tower, spend twelve hours pulling floor up with a hammer, and re-wire circuitry while balancing precariously up a ladder at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night. So when I say I am posh, please understand… it is both true, and a word that will end up drowning in the fifty other descriptors that must immediately follow.
