The Middle-Class love of the authentic rural person; every holiday home needs one
Friday, September 3, 2010 at 8:19AM 
On one of the beaches in Suffolk, my step-dad’s a fisherman; has been since he was fourteen years old. He’s got burly banana hands, fires off whip-sharp observations and has had harder shits than the likes of me.
He’s known locally as an oracle, and spent many a year on the North Sea chasing whichever fish stock isn’t diminishing at that point, and as a lone independent trader, getting slowly phased out by national fishing regulations designed for fishing conglomerates. One thing he’s not short of however, is plenty of banter. And boy do his (almost exclusively) middle class customers love that. He’s got the most envious client base a functioning media node could ever dream of, thanks to the second and third homeowners nearby: he’s regularly regaling owners of large corporations, newspaper bods, TV producers, inbred blue-bloods, photographers, artists, restaurateur’s and assorted braying sloanes, with tales of life on the frothing front line of the high seas.
They’re really only interested in buying fish as a talking point, and as he fillets with surgical accuracy, they listen intently, watching his craft with an intrigued detachment whilst getting him to speculate on fish stocks, species, the economy, local produce, pollution and take this info home in a nice newspaper wrapped package, in a muddy Volvo.
The search for an authentic connection to the truly working class seems essential to the middle classes psyche – especially in a second or third home environment.
"Don’t get me wrong," he said last week. "I’m grateful for the business, but I don’t have to half talk some crap for the privilege".
Reader Comments (3)
'Authentic' seems to be a motif for so many things the mc's crave...
This reminds me of a story I heard about the tour at a small whisky distilllery in Scotland. At the end, the guide would produce an unlabelled bottle and say as the group was small, he'd let them have a taste of some really special stuff that wasn't available commercially. It was of course a cheap blend from the supermarket decanted into an old bottle.
The really funny thing about that story is the way the middle classes, aware of their own gullibility, like it.
Made me chuckle this, well done. Damn rules and regulations! Pity our society doesn't value the people it claims to admire enough not to put them out of business!