Society

It’s that time of year again. No sooner have you recovered from Christmas than the posh start talking about their skiing jaunts planned for the February half-term. But let’s use the term posh advisedly, because – make no mistake – skiing is now anything but. Where once flinging yourself down the Cresta Run may have been a solid-gold toff signifier or ‘the Sloanest sport’, according to class anthropologist Peter York, now it simply means that you’re rich. No snow cannon pumping out snow on the low slopes can fool anyone. The fact that ski resorts are now melting before our eyes seems to be where this social morality tale ends. Skiing and British class have long been caught in a complicated embrace.

Every few years, an obituary for the Sloane Ranger appears. In 2015, the Telegraph proclaimed their death. In 2022, Peter York himself, co-author of The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, wrote a devastating piece in the Oldie on the ‘End of the Sloane Age’. In it, he cast existential doubt on the species altogether: ‘By 2021, there seemed to be every possible shade of Sloane around in London. But were they really Sloanes at all? It looked as if the only way for a Sloane to succeed was to UnSloane themselves.’  You might think that if York himself had called time, then the death knell must have well and truly sounded. But no.

I first got a door slammed in my face in 1987. Looking back, I can’t help but feel that moment, at the age of eight, was my first bit of training as a journalist. I wasn’t seeking a scoop back then, of course. For eight-year-olds a scoop is something you get two of with your cornet from the ice cream van. Rather I was after a Chomp bar or a bag of Bensons crisps, and all the while hoping beyond hope that I (and my accompanying gaggle of friends) wouldn’t be palmed off with a satsuma. Such was the freewheeling Friedman-esque world of trick or treating – a custom that has dwindled into what, these days, is considered by many parents to be either rude, dangerous, immoral, paganistic or a combination of all four. The ritual clings on in diminished form.

The SS Californian deserves more than mere footnote status when it comes to its role in the story of the RMS Titanic. For that was the name of the ship that sent repeated messages to the crew of the doomed cruise liner, all of them warning of ice ahead. But the Titanic’s wireless operators weren’t interested – to the point where one employee dismissed the Californian’s communications with a reply that read: ‘Shut up, I’m busy.’ Of course, the Titanic wireless crew weren’t really busy at all. They were simply spending their time sending private telegrams on behalf of the first-class passengers on board. A few hours later, well, we all know what happened. But we haven’t yet gone public enough with the overuse of what was, back in 1912, an absolutely deadly adjective.

The venerable magazine GQ, or Gentlemen’s Quarterly, has issued some 125 diktats about what it takes to be a gentleman in this world of Zoom calls and equality. GQ is, however, no longer quarterly, and some might say it hasn’t been read by gentlemen for some time. Ought we, then, to listen to it? Many of its ‘expert’ pronouncements are baffling: what is ‘popping a Zyn’? Most of the suggestions are about bringing fancy olive oil or luxury candles to parties. (Note to readers, though you won’t need it: don’t.) It also suggests that gentlemen should beclothe themselves in ‘loungewear’, a word which ought to make anyone shudder. Well, I’m sorry, but unless it’s a silk dressing gown from Jermyn Street, I think not.

In my corner of Bristol, alongside drug dealers, shoplifters and street drinkers, we now have our very own pyromaniac. They started small – an abandoned office chair, a clothing bank and an old telephone box – before moving on to bigger things. Half a dozen cars have been torched over the past few months, including two on my road, and, most recently, a derelict pub. The other Saturday, hearing a commotion outside, my wife jumped out of bed and flung open the curtains. The scene that greeted us was apocalyptic. In daylight, on a narrow suburban street, the arsonist had set fire to three motorbikes parked in a row, which in turn had set alight a car and a hedge. It was pandemonium.