Am I a Snob?

By Jane Hyphen

Mon, 24 Apr 2023

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Am I a snob, of sorts?

I was driving home from work on Sunday (if only people were still paid double time, I might even get close to the average wage), and I passed by a house which had recently changed owners.

The previous owner had been a lovely mature lady who volunteered at the local charity shop and also the Salvation Army. I remember when my children were very small being a regular visit to the charity shop where I would purchase toys. My children were only ever looked after by me and would get bored quickly so I employed an endless toy exchange system which was affordable and ethical by purchasing second hand.

Every time I went into the shop this lady would ask the name of my youngest daughter, Helena and every time she would respond by shouting, ‘Oh the name that launched a thousand ships!’ I found this sort of embarrassing but quite charming too because it meant that she was comfortable enough in her job to express herself. An important thing in any workplace, essential to mental health. A colleague and I always make chicken noises while we lock up the premises, it releases all the stress of our day before we head home and our other colleagues are used to it….now.

The lady lived just up the road from me and her house was well kept but it was evident that not much had changed in thirty years or more. The front and garage doors and wooden window frames were painted a dated shade of pale blue and she had kept most of the front part of the property as a garden rather than driveway. Her front garden was messy but beautiful with loads of self-seeded Californian poppies, aubretia, campanula, aquilegia, basically promiscuous, cottage garden type plants. In short her property was like her, soft but bold, old fashioned but active, educated but eccentric, well actually I’m not sure if the house was educated but it had a spiritual presence and a television.

My children grew up but I occasionally still saw her on a Sunday morning, looking like a solid member of the community in her Salvos uniform and sturdy shoes. Then some more years passed. I wasn't around so much because I was working, I didn’t see her but the Californian poppies in her front garden kept on germinating. Then, last year I saw that the house had a ‘For Sale’ sign on it and I felt sad thinking about her kind face. I blinked and the entire front garden had been dug up. The front door and windows were then replaced by PVC, including a PVC porch, the driveway was extended to house multiple vehicles but worst of all….

The remaining part of the front garden, just a strip, had been planted up with Photinia Red Robin and Prunus laurocerasus, aka Cherry Laurel, neither of which are native to the UK. The former has no real value to wildlife, the latter is very toxic to most living creatures, it contains cyanide. Their value lies in the fact that they are easy to grow, relatively cheap, with glossy, evergreen leaves (which take years to decompose) and reasonably tidy looking. To most gardeners, they are dull, rather repellant and should be restricted to Tesco car parks to break up the expanse of concrete and provide a cover for rat bait boxes.

So I drove past in my not very eco-friendly Saab and said to myself, ‘Urrgh! The new people have put PVC everywhere and planted their garden with disgusting Red Robin and Laurel. I bet they have pictures with ‘Live, Laugh, Love' up on their kitchen wall and have full gym membership and go to the Copper Club for breakfast on Saturday and are saving up for a Porsche Cayenne.’

By the time I reached my own house though, I was feeling a bit guilty about being so judgemental, categorising dwellers of suburbia and assuming an ignorance on their part for their planting choices. I’m not really sure what my form of snobbery is based on.

Did the untidy nature of the old lady’s garden and her painted wooden window frames make me feel safe? Am I suspicious of newcomers with money to spend on home ‘improvements’? Am I resentful of corporate people who earn six times more than me? If there was an option for the old lady to live forever, the blue painted wooden window frames to last forever and the Californian poppies to keep germinating year after year in a never ending cycle, would I take it?