I was thinking...
M’Lady S is really posh, you know. She said to me:
‘I have to get back for supper.’
If she came from my side of the tracks, she would have said:
‘I’ve got go ’ome fer me tea.’
Never once in all the years I’ve known her has she ever remarked
upon the glowering sky of an approaching storm with the familiar observation: ‘Ee,
lad, it’s a bit black over Willy’s ’en pens.’
This is why I adopt a deferential posture when I speak to
her, avoid making excessive eye contact, seek every opportunity to find something to apologise for, only talk about my seventeen children (at the last count) and the
parlous state of Mrs Jeffrey’s health if she mentions them first, and struggle
in a raging torrent of mental anguish because I no longer have a substantial
forelock to tug.
It’s all about knowing my place.
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Today has been remarkable in a lot of ways, beginning this morning
with a rare and welcome e-mail from a rare and special American. And then it
drooped, and then it rose again, and then that back molar I recently had
repaired broke again. Days like that can be hard to keep up with. I even got
called ‘delectable,’ and when you get called delectable, you know there’s an
impish energy in the air and every reason to be wary of the Fates.
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