“Get cultured Whitwham!”
So barked “Chunk” Jones, my French teacher at the RGS High Wycombe. “Get cultured! Don’t be a wide boy, Whitwham!”
“Wide” seemed to connote vulgar, cheap, low, working class, secondary modern.
Wrong.
“Culture! Culture! You’ll never get anywhere without culture!”
Crumbs.
What was he on about? What culture? Whose culture? “Racine! Corneille! Bach! Beethoven! Tchaikovsky!”
I was 15. I’d just discovered Rock ‘n’ Roll – Elvis, Little Richard and Chuck Berry. Chuck had different cultural preferences to Chunk. “Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news!” Go Chuck!
The glorious, pagan racket quite trashed Racine and seemed to be the end of civilisation, as Chunk knew it. But could it also be culture?
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