On Connections and Class.

I was walking through Ashbourne today when I spotted a cockapoo puppy clearly desperate to make my acquaintance. ‘May I say hello to your dog?’ I asked its human who was supping his pint outside one of the town pubs. The human agreed and so make friends we did. (He was one of those dogs which like to nip your fingers playfully with their sharp little teeth, but it doesn’t hurt very much so you accept your role as pin cushion with good grace and accept that it’s all part of the privilege.) ‘Thank you for the dog fix.’ I said to the human eventually, and moved on.

Later, I was standing outside Sainsbury’s when a man approached from the car park with a young but fully grown white Labrador on a leash. The dog was intent upon trying to connect with every human they passed, but her own human was equally intent on restraining her. And then he stopped for a while and a group of four passing humans gave the dog their undivided attention. She was ecstatic, squirming and wriggling and rolling as though all the good things in life had come at once. And I found it interesting that I derived almost as much pleasure from seeing a dog get its human fix as I do the other way round. It’s all about connections between humans and animals, you see, something that means a lot to me.

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And talking of connections, I have to mention again that the Lady B’s dear mama is the classiest person I’ve ever known (she drove past me again today, slowing and smiling as usual.) She once asked me what I was having for dinner one evening, and I answered that it was to be a simple dish of my own invention consisting of a bed of rice with mushrooms and sugar snap peas fried in sesame oil. ‘Sounds rather nice,’ she said. ‘Fills a hole,’ I replied. ‘Fills a hole… fills a hole… That’s an expression with which I’m unfamiliar.’ ‘It’s common enough where I come from,’ I offered. ‘Indeed,’ she said. ‘The working class do have some quaint but rather interesting expressions, don’t they?’

Did that conversation really happen? Of course it didn’t; that’s the point. Truly classy people – at least in the UK – never strut their class; they don’t wear it on their sleeves. They’re possessed of an innate understanding that we’re all created equal under the stars and the greenwood trees. Only fakes need to show it off.