JUST JAMIE: My nasty taste of the class system

The Long Suffering Marjorie and I are by no means stately but by the same token we are not the Dingles.

Put us in any situation and I like to think we could hold our own.

But there are still times when one's class becomes all too evident and leaves you sticking out like a Ozzy Osbourne fan in the middle of an A1 concert.

While all around you are wear beaming smiles and hold their scarves aloft you are concentrating on looking miserable with blood seeping from your mouth having bit a chicken's head off.

Such a situation arose recently, although -- I hasten to add -- not as extreme. No chickens were hurt in the process.

Having taken leave of my reporting duties for all of last week -- you know that week of rain sandwiched between a glorious weekend and this glorious week -- the LSM bid farewell to a not so Sunny Rochdale and headed off to Cumbria for a well-earned break.

Our choice of destination was a salubrious hotel which prides itself on its almost desolate location in the heart of Ullswater.

Getting away from the pressures of life is one thing but holing yourself up in a hotel -- no matter how nice -- is another.

With nothing around for miles it was like I was a contestant in Survivor only I didn't have to sleep on a bed of rats each night. There were no local pubs in the vicinity and a quick venture to the hotel's bar was the first indication that as far as class goes the LSM and I were certainly out of ours.

For the price of one glass of wine I could have bought a vineyard, hired some children, and produced my own.

I would probably have had enough left to pay the fine for hiring children as slave labour.

A glance at the room service menu only confirmed our worst fears.

A good old fashioned cheese and pickle sandwich demanded a king's ransom which -- to the scorn of the LSM -- I was not prepared to pay.

I am well aware of the variety in cuisine but a cheese sandwich is a cheese sandwich.

For the price they were asking I would have expected the sandwich to march into the room, make itself and then tidy the room before asking me to eat it. As you may have gathered no service was required at our room for those two days. We did however venture into the spacious restaurant to sample some of the finest fayre I have had for a while.

And it was there where we cemented our reputation as being the hotel's undesirables. The pair of us stumbled through the menu desperately attempting to pronounce the names for the meal.

A roast beef dinner came under the banner of something wildly different and the LSM was as surprised as anyone when the exotic sounding dish she had ordered "tasted just like a pizza." My guess is that it was although it certainly wasn't described as one in the leather-bound menu.

A glance at the wine-menu was nothing more than a ploy -- the house-red was always favourite even when I set off from Rochdale -- which I'm sure brought a knowing smirk from the waiter.

The clacking of cutlery was the only sound as the surrounding guests eat in relative silence. Either posh people do not talk to each other across tables or they were too intimidated like we were. Me thinks the former.

I lasted as well as I could but the silence had to be broken and after calling the waiter over I made, what was obviously deemed, a terrible faux pas. I asked for condiments.

Not just any condiment either, to go with roast beef you need mustard but when I put this to the waiter he looked at me as if I had just insulted his mother.

Without a word he turned his back and marched out of the restaurant.

Within seconds I felt the uncomfortable prickly feeling of the diners looking at me as though I had insulted their mothers (although judging by their ages I would be amazed if they were still alive.)

After what seemed like hours the clumsy clattering of the cutlery started up again and I was left to wonder where I had gone wrong.

Needless to say I never got my mustard and even more needless to add I'll be staying in a B&B the next time I take the LSM away.