I am really a North American and not British, despite what my kids say about me occasionally slipping and calling the storage space at the back of the car a boot,  or calling french fries “chips” and soccer “football.” But really, on the occasions I have lived in Britain, I am just as odd there. Just as happens here, I’d slip and call a courgette a “zuchini,” or instead of saying “Feel like takeaway?” I’d say “Takeout anyone?” and there I’d be outed again.

I have a confused heritage in a number of ways but something happened today to make me think again about the things that stick with you, that are so far inside that, even if they rarely see the light, they are there, creating the psychological platform from which many, mostly subliminal, decisions get launched.

I was sitting at my local coffee shop with tea and book in hand I noticed a Victorian bicycle go by with what looked like a Victorian man riding it. The sight was a lot like this, but the guy had on patterned socks and he wore a top hat.

But this is Vancouver and one sees odd things, so I just picked up the book again.

Then there was another big-assed bike and, putting my book down, I noticed another man on a bicycle with an old fashioned woven food cart on the front. There was a stilt-walker and a soldier, both in period clothes. But as I looked more critically, things began to look a little off.  Especially the soldier. I’m no expert on uniforms but there was something about the guy that just wasn’t right. He reminded me of a cross between the home guard and East India Company.

As I watched more people came to light. I was doing fine, assuming a carnival, or circus of some sort, at least until the two women came by. One of them just set me off.

A group of the “Victorians” crossed the road to the corner near where I was sitting. One of the women was gesturing rather broadly and spoke with the worst upper class accent I have ever heard. I don’t think she intended a parody but that is what my subconscious heard.

I was instantly enraged and several flashing thoughts went through my head. The first was “whore.” The subtext running along with it was that “no decently educated woman would act so in public, talk loudly and be so arrogant and condescending. She’s a lower class tart aping her betters.” And in the same instant, coming though my head like a braided stream in full spring run-off, there was the raging hatred that comes with having a great aunt sold as a young girl to one the actual upper class families so the rest of the girl’s kin (my ancestors) had more food. The hatred of the lowers for the uppers is apparently a long lasting deal. And yet there I was, a “lower” feeling deeply offended by this parody of the “uppers.”

Now I have worked as a servant and been treated rather shabbily at that, but even then at 17 I knew I could just walk away and rejoin the 20th century. And I did. Also, I have a decent, if not stellar, education and I even have a chequing account of my own, so why I should react so fast and hard? I can only attribute it to ingrained classism. I guess I learnt more at boarding school than I realized.