When a friend of mine had a mastectomy a few weeks ago, she made friends with the woman in the next bed. "So," she said, because she's very polite, and thinks you should make small talk, even when you've just been diagnosed with breast cancer, and lost your breast, and are in what doctors like to call discomfort, "what, when you're not in hospital having operations, do you do?" The woman, she told me, looked confused. "Oh, you mean work," she said, in the end. "Oh no, I don't work. We," she added, gesturing towards the partner who had been plumping up her pillows, "don't work. We have," she said, as if trying to explain something to someone who wasn't very bright, "three children!".
My friend was surprised, but she shouldn't have been. There are five million people in this country who live on benefits, and two million children growing up in homes where no one works. Some of those five million people would love to have a job, but can't get one, some of them don't really fancy it, but have never really tried it, and some of them have never really given the matter a moment's thought. If your parents didn't work, and your friends don't work, and your current boyfriend, who may or may not be the father of one, or some, of your children, doesn't work, you probably wouldn't. People tend to do what other people around them do, which is why upper-class people play polo and middle-class people go to farmers' markets.
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