Jan-Maat’s Reviews > Millennium People > Status Update

The inspector shook his head in despair, but he had reckoned without the long-engrained ruthlessness of the middle class towards its own children. As I knew full well, any social group that would exile its offspring to the deforming rigours of boarding school life would think nothing of exposing them bto the haxards of an exploding bonfire.

No middle-class revolutionary can defend the barricades eithout a shower and a large cappuccino. You might as well fight them in yesterday's underwear.

Our marriage belonged to an adventure playground where real danger and real possibility never existed.

If I were to walk out of her life she would miss me intensely, for ten minutes. Then the next lodger would arrive and join the game of snakes and ladders that led to her bedroom.

'Decent & level-headed people are hungry for violence...the ideal act of violence isn't directed at anything.'
'pure nihilism?'
'the exact opposite...it isn't a search for nothingness. It's a search for meaning. Blow up the Stock Exchange & you're rejecting global capitalism. Bomb the Ministry of Defence & you're protesting against war...but a truely pointless act of violence...grips our attention for months.

Art exhibitions at the Tate Modern:

"This was the art show as Führer spectacle, an early sign, perhaps, that the educated middle classes were turning towards fascism."

The Thames shouldered its way past Blackfriars Bridge, impatient with the ancient piers, no longer the passive stream that slid past Chelsea Marina, but a rush of ugly water that had scented the open sea and was ready to make a run for it. Below Westminster the Thames became a bruiser of a river, like the people of the estuary, unimpressed by the money terracesof the City of London.

Like so many waiters I had known, he was friendly but slightly aggressive

'tell me, how do you explain all this to your bishop?'
'I don't. A parish priest has a lot of discretion.'

The revolution had been rescheduled to a more convenient day. the middle class rebels valued their leisure, and the assult on the barricades would be squeezed between concert and theatre visits and the pleasures of fresh seafood.