January 20 | 2021 Blazer + jeans Dress-up night Big earrings How to do lockdown 3 in style Wear something Add a pop of you have to iron colour 2 1GT Wednesday January 20 2021 | the times times2 Forget Blue Monday. It’s I knew I was February that’s the thug. An LSE study has concluded that a lot of people fib about being working class. Except this year, maybe But the assumptions others make about Carol Midgley social status are also wildly inaccurate wasn’t. “But you went to university, ow that we’re past ‘I do not miss right? I didn’t,” she said. “Just moving Blue Monday, which working in a up a few tax brackets doesn’t make you everyone knows was Those middle class. It’s an attitude, it’s the a PR brainfart garment factory’ way you do your house up, how you invented to flog ‘flawed’ handle money. I’m just like a pools holidays to shivering Sathnam Sanghera winner, a poor person who got lucky.” Ncommuters waiting murderers She doubtless had a point, but I at bus stops in the like oat milk in my coffee. I’ve think the ultimate difference between January sleet, can we turn to the The BBC has read and actively enjoyed Hilary me and people like Burchill — perhaps real culprit, the true thug of the apologised for a Mantel’s Wolf Hall trilogy and because immigrants and the children calendar year? I speak, obviously, of headline reading Ihave strong opinions about its of immigrants are not embarrassed February. All of it. Every interminable “Talented but flawed TV adaptation. I watch French by success — is that I do not minute. Each and every day is “blue” producer Phil Spector spy dramas on Amazon Prime. I’m sentimentalise being working class. in February if you ask me. Oh dies aged 81” because thinking of repainting my bedroom I do not miss Park Village, the inner- yes. Tiresome Tuesdays, Woeful it omitted the teensy in a new shade of Farrow & Ball. city Wolverhampton slum where I Wednesdays, Sod This for a Game matter of him I have a cleaner, and every week I grew up — the atmosphere bristled of Soldiers Sundays. murdering Lana spend the half-hour before her arrival with racial tension, violence was What is the point of it, tell me? Clarkson. Honestly! frantically tidying my home so she routine, and the housing was damp It’s an insipid yet excruciating blob You shoot one actress doesn’t think I’m a pig. and dilapidated; one of my earliest waiting like a flasher behind a tree at and folk never let you In other words I am utterly middle school memories is of cockroaches the end of January to say, “Thought forget it. class. But I’ve been aware for some crawling out of my shoes after I had you were over the worst, suckers? I’m getting déjà vu time now that there’s a difference taken them off for a PE lesson. Well cop a load of this,” before sending from last year when the between me and many of my equally I do not miss the lights going out us a brutal cold snap. It is a nothing BBC apologised for its middle-class friends whom, before because we ran out of coins for the of a month: still dark, still winter, still trailer to a gushing the pandemic, I would meet in cafés meter. I do not miss seeing my credit card bills to pay and not even restrictions start to be eased. So many Oscar Pistorius where sausage rolls cost up to £5 to grandfather, suffering from arthritis in a bank holiday crumb to nibble. good things are being said about documentary that discuss side-return extensions, with his seventies, still doing hard manual When I think of February coming February that I am almost beginning never mentioned a fluffy cockapoo nestled underneath labour in local foundries alongside my like a punch in the face after January to love it. Roughly 14 million will his victim, Reeva the table. Unlike me, they are uncles. I do not miss sleeping in a I feel like the person sitting in the (fingers crossed) have been vaccinated Steenkamp, by name. embarrassed about it. duvet on the floor of my parents’ audience of the Glasgow Empire when by mid-February, comprising most of The vibe was less “man Indeed, it is no surprise that — bedroom because the house was so Mike and Bernie Winters came on the elderly and vulnerable. Schools kills girlfriend” and after conducting 175 interviews with crowded. I do not miss the poverty of stage who exclaimed: “Oh Christ, may gradually open again after more “poor Oscar’s actors, TV professionals, architects ambition, in which the best I could there’s two of them!” half-term so that exhausted parents ruined sports career”. and accountants — sociologists at the imagine for myself was a job at a local And then there’s Valentine’s Day, working full-time from home while In this spirit maybe London School of Economics found building society, and which led to my the crappiest, most cynical date on the attempting to home school may not we should airbrush that 36 of them from middle-class best friend from infant school — at calendar, which is a flimsy excuse to even feel like hurling themselves off other killers’ CVs. backgrounds identified as working least as clever as me — never getting flog wilted carnations and Viagra. I’d the nearest high building or setting Peter Sutcliffe could be class and that the “misidentification” more than a minimum-wage retail job. honestly rather mark National Dog fire to their own heads. Hooray! “Troubled Yorkshire was “notably higher” among those I do not miss being ridiculed for Biscuit Day (February 23, should you No, naysayers — button it please. lorry driver with a fine in acting and television, accounting reading. I do not miss being rejected wish to make a note). Yes you, the people hitching up their collection of hammers”. for 24 of the 36. for a job at McDonald’s and eventually Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying trousers, blowing out their cheeks and Harold Shipman, The media is liberal and getting one at Burger King, where an January has much to recommend it saying gleefully: “February? Nah. No “Trusted family GP self-loathing, and — with countless embittered manager once made me either. No, no. For starters there is chance, mate. Schools won’t open until with an unorthodox efforts afoot to improve social clean a toilet five times in half an hour. Januhairy, when people grow their after Easter. Earliest. Probably May, bedside manner”. diversity — those within it naturally I do not miss desperately wanting to body hair and smugly stagger around actually. If then.” Shut up. Even if you Jack the Ripper, want to identify with the fashionably learn a musical instrument or new with 15th-century-style merkins, think this, keep it to yourselves and “Whitechapel legend subjugated. It is human nature to languages, but instead spending all saying: “This may be frightening the don’t prick our hope bubble. Hope is and anti-prostitution want your hard work acknowledged, my weekends and holidays working cat, but I feel so free!” At least it has a all we have. You might be getting off activist”. whatever your background; I bet even in a garment factory where the owner freshness about it, though, the promise on these lockdown strictures, Matt Meanwhile, the Jacob Rees-Mogg feels as though he paid kids 50p an hour to work up to of new beginnings, flab-shedding or Hancock and Chris Whitty your narcissist serial killer has struggled against the odds. In 90 hours a week. eschewing alcohol possibly leading to spanky dominatrices, but some of us Dennis Nilsen (you a few notable cases these people I spent years working in that fewer barnacled livers. It is also the are ready, if it’s safe, to be let out of know, Des — the actually did grow up working class and factory, and not only did the owner furthest point from New Year’s Eve. the handcuffs now. guy with the drains — even though they now have kids at never give me a pay rise, but he once I honestly don’t know how vapid So let this be the year when problem) has just had private school — being “working class” deducted money from my wages when February has got away with it all these February is not the cruellest, greyest his writings published is part of their professional identity. I requested a toy from his stock room years letting January take all the flak. month but reinvents itself as a sunlit in a book in which we Julie Burchill is a classic example. (for the shop he ran elsewhere). I met But at last, finally, it has a chance to upland. Let it be the year when the learn he got quite upset I remember interviewing her 15 years him a few years ago and not only did redeem itself. Because there is a speck best thing you could say about it was at seeing a seagull die. ago for the Financial Times and he fail to apologise for the illegal slave of hope that February will be the not that it only lasted 28 days but that Aww. It’s exactly what listening to her complain about how labour to which he had subjected me, glorious month when lockdown it was when the spanking stopped.