felice Re the social standing of cooks. When my mother was young in the 1930s, she was the cook in a nursing home, skilled at providing good food to all the patients and staff there. The nurses were uneducated young women up from the country, whose ideas of nursing, hygeine and morals were far from perfect. One day she met a girl-friend of a friend. When she mentioned the nursing home the acquaintance was very interested and said she nursed there too and had never seen her there. "No", said Mum, "I am not a nurse, I am the cook". "Oh, just a domestic!" she replied scornfully and lost all interest in more friendly chat. A snob often has fewer abilities and lower standards than the one they despise