Middle class and ruthless

My mother would be PROUD.

I made it to THE MIDDLE CLASS.

What I failed to achieve by marriage, education, aligning my cultural norms with the preferred socio-economic group, I made it thanks to Barry Sheerman, the former chair of the Education select committee who says My home educating kind? We are not only middle class, we are RUTHLESS.

I'm cracking open the cava!

To celebrate the public reading of 'You can't drive education like a sports car' I get Shark, Squirrel and Tiger in the car and drive them over to Cambridge.

I'm driving a clapped out Citroen van, which demonstrates just how aligned I am to the 'right to private and family life', and how fast we aren't travelling while I concoct my next ruthless, middle class scheme to dangerously visit upon the heads of the vulnerable home educated children, Shark, Squirrel and Tiger.

That scheme, incidentally, is to march them round the Polar Museum, eat student-style at Gardenia, then go sit in King's College Chapel listening to Bach's St Matthew Passion.

Surely qualifies for middle class and ruthless, right?

My dangerous scheming works splendidly! Except for a few minor working-class problems, like failing to realise Bach's St Matthew Passion actually does last three hours on hard seats, and cheap five-pounds unsighted tickets means you can't see a damn thing about the choir except the back of a tenor's head. It also means having to grudgingly get a taxi to redeem the stranded van because I cannot read a park-and-ride timetable, and walking about Cambridge with a vegetarian hamburger from Gardenia stuffed in my handbag because Squirrel refused to eat the blasted thing so I threatened to serve it up for breakfast, then pride wouldn't let me part with it. APART FROM THAT. I am so totally delighted to be middle class and ruthless.

Frobisher's Rock. I became unreasonably excited about this geology and history combined. 

I started photographing any geology collection I could find from that point, although this is not really the main draw of the Polar Museum for the happy visitor. It is the letters, of course, from Scott's doomed attempt on the Antarctic. They are deeply moving. I may have had to suppress a quiet working-class sniffle.

Then three hours! On hard seats! With never a word of complaint from the little Grits! An attempt on the Antarctic clearly put an evening's sore bottom into perspective.

Here, have a snatch of the Passion, and let us all thank Barry Sheerman for our elevation.