So after two years of my tenure at what I'd call City Misery (I mean, seriously... can this city get any more miserable?), my transition is officially O.V.E.R (that's pronounced Oh-Vee-Ee-Ar). I'm not done with London yet because I have majority of my friends here, but I am quite permanently done with GKT. And a good thing, that is. I hated that school by the end of Lent term. I'm sorry, but that level of inadequate organisation is just appalling, and quite frankly, disturbing.

Mr JB is recovering quite nicely, for those who kindly inquired after his welfare. He rang up today... and when I informed him I was in Essex, he promptly responded "OH! You're in CHAVLAND!" as if I had informed him that I was in Disneyland Paris. I reminded him that's rather a derogatory term and quite frankly, not everyone there is a chav. But he did not listen. And it didn't help that I was in a bank and there was a sodden-looking bloke going "Oaight, ma'?" He called Chelmsford and Essex "Chavland" the entire time. Pardon me if I don't pronounce things the RP way, did not wear a top hat as part of my uniform and was not raised in the university city of Oxford. But I've NEVER said anything like "I' a bi' rainin', innit?" nor have I dressed myself in Burberry. Considering that two fellows I know from literature that were Oxonian were Algernon Montcrieff (which, quite frankly, is self-explanatory and rather unimpressive) and Nicholas Urfe (even more unimpressive) and Tom Brown (whose conducts at Rugby were rather questionable at times), whenever he says "Well, that can't be helped, I'm an Oxonian... truly, to the bone" I can't help but cringe. Does being at Christchurch necessitate one to be a pedophilic mathematician? Methinks not. But I am assuming that he thinks I'm a chav as well. I truly laughed when SB said "I say cha-v, not shar-v, because shar-v sounds quite posh. I think they'd like it". I never thought of it like that. (I've just looked it up and it is supposed to be pronounced cha-v. I never knew.) And although the Times had said:

"I soon learnt that sometimes, hilariously, it is not just individuals who feel chav envy but whole institutions — the Daily Mail, for instance, whose whole raison d’être would appear to be that SOMEONE, SOMEWHERE IS HAVING FUN AND IT MUST BE STOPPED NOW! — naturally fears, loathes and envies chavs with a passion. The Mail gripes about their sex drive, their money and their laziness (go figure) but is particularly obsessed with what it sees as the sky-high chav birthrate, mostly to unwed teenage mothers..."

I think JB's disdain of them does have a merit, however. I've seen the lot of them and they can be quite unpleasant. Rude, anti-social and quite frankly, about as pleasant as a day-old vomit in the back street of Brick Lane. So when this fellow says:

The white indigenous English working-class is now the one group you can insult without feeling the breath of the Commission for Racial Equality on your neck, which makes it pretty damn cowardly apart from being what I call “social racism”

I must ask what on earth this person is on. Yes, chavs refer to the white working class, but if they weren't so full of themselves and obnoxious, they would BE called chavs, would they? It's because they have all the requisite characteristics that they are called chavs, and those include the attitude, not just the colour of the skin.

So. Chavs are chavs are chavs and that's the end of it. And I am quite pleased that I do not have to see them for a while...

ME: So I spent a good quarter of an hour hunting down my copy of Mary Poppins.
IM: Why on earth would you want to read that piece of shit?
ME: HEY.
IM: No, listen. That thing is filled with bigotry, biases, racism, and god knows what else.
JB: Methinks she wanted to read it for the cakes.
IM: PLEASE don’t tell me you wanted to read it for the cakes.
ME: Well, I did! I remembered the raspberry-jam-cakes and I was dying to know what they were, thank you very much.
JB: And plum cakes with pink frosting and coconut cakes.
IM: How on earth do you remember it in such detail?!
JB: When I read it, those sounded delicious. Until, of course, my dear mother deflated my childhood dreams by kindly informing me that the raspberry jam cakes that Mary enjoys so much are actually Victorian sandwiches with raspberry jam. After that all magic faded into oblivion.
ME: Oh! And the gingerbread. Don’t forget the gingerbread.
IM: … now you’re making me hungry. And please do realise that my mother, who has baked all those things throughout my life, are HOURS AWAY.