Modern manners

My mum had a friend at university who had been called ‘Pudding’ at school. They’d sometimes be walking down the street, and someone who had known the now-svelte adult as a chubby 13-year-old would say ‘Hello, Pudding’. As I get ready to start at university myself in October, it’s in the knowledge that my schoolgirl self will be even harder to escape. Reinventing yourself at the end of sixth form was once a time-honoured rite of passage, hindered only by a few easily avoided old acquaintances.

Apparently I’ve proposed to my civil partner. He claims that on BBC Radio 2, on the Jeremy Vine show (he thinks it was the JV show) I expressed myself in terms which presumed his prior acceptance. I can’t remember a thing about it — on live radio one does tend to throw these thoughts out heedlessly — but my partner swears I said, ‘Oh yes, well I suppose we’ll have to get an upgrade.’ He found this a graceless way of popping the question, and has forbidden me from using the term ‘upgrade’ again. Ah well. But in that case, if not ‘upgrade’, what shall we call it?

I’ve no particular beef with the French, gruesomely tortured beef as it would no doubt be, but I’m a little tired of being told we ought to follow their example with our children. Elizabeth Truss, the normally quite sensible education minister, is the latest culprit. She believes that Britain’s nurseries are chaotic, noisy places. Children would be better prepared for school, she feels, if British nurseries were more like French nurseries, in which toddlers wear couture, click their heels whenever an adult enters the room, and never laugh. I daresay she’s right, just as I’m sure people are often right when they marvel at the flawless behaviour of little French people.