Growing up in the inner city.

Abstract

unique chance to benefit from the help of the middleclass volunteer. The availability of middle-class ’refugees’ is a clear feature of much rural life and, often, their cumulative experience can be considerable. Frequently, the administrative, educational and pastoral expertise clustering in villages is very great. Unfortunately, middle-class activity in villages tends to be very sex-segregated there is no man’s equivalent of the Women’s Institute and often the men grow the flowers for their wives to arrange. While this is effective at organising flower shows, hunts and fetes and can assist groups such as the elderly with hospital visits, this considerable potential rarely seems to be applied to help the young. It would also be a way of integrating middle-class arrivals more adequately into village life and diminish something of the understandable hostility they engender because of their affluence, aggravation of house prices and obsession with visual amenities. If