SITTING in a cafe, watching a young mother hand out sausage rolls to her brood, (including a toddler, practically eating her own body weight in pastry), I felt myself turning into my tut-tutting grandmother.

It was 10am, so presumably this was breakfast. As the youngsters spilled outside, munching their grub, I was reminded of my late gran's disapproval for eating in the street. It was "common", she said - along with smoking in the street and having pierced ears.

She was from a generation of working-class women who scrubbed their front step every week. She was a stickler for standards and I used to cringe at her suburban snobbery, but I still occasionally hear her voice, despairing at modern life.

A few hours after sitting in that cafe, I was checking into a swanky hotel in central London. My partner and I had splashed out on a nice room and fancy dinner, and it felt like a real treat.

I didn't stay in a hotel until I was in my twenties, and I still get excited whenever I'm in one. Fluffy towels, complimentary coffee, someone-else to make your bed - what's not to like?

But it didn't take long for me to feel a bit out of place in our posh hotel. Before I could say "It's okay, we can manage," a porter had disappeared with our luggage towards the lift - then we had the awkward moment of fumbling around for a suitable tip, for a service we didn't want in the first place.

Floating in the lovely hotel pool, with its dimmed lighting and underwater mood music, I felt instantly self-conscious when a family of beautiful people with cut-glass accents reclined on loungers nearby.

In the bar that evening, we ordered drinks and 20 minutes later they still hadn't arrived. The waitress who'd taken our order breezed past several times, ignoring us, and we felt invisible. I looked around at other guests, well-dressed, well-spoken and effortlessly self-assured, and not for the first time, I felt out of place.

Next morning at breakfast, our oik status was sealed when my partner asked for some sauce for his full English, and a bottle of ketchup was placed on our table. We looked at each other and smiled, and suddenly our northern accents seemed that bit more northern. On a nearby table, tucking into croissants, was the annoyingly middle-class family from the pool. I couldn't help but resent people who could afford to take children to a hotel like this. I thought of the sausage roll youngsters in the cafe, and how it was highly unlikely they would ever get to stay in such a place.

The class divide is a strange beast. At school I remember coming across the famous "Toffs and Toughs" photograph, taken in the 1930s, of two Harrow schoolboys, wearing top hats, tail coats and waistcoats, standing beside three lads in baggy trousers and open-necked shirts. There has been much debate about the picture, taken outside Lord's where an Eton vs Harrow cricket match offered local boys chance to earn cash carrying bags and opening cab doors, but it's a striking symbol of England's class system.

The working-class "toughs" look like my dad at that age. His mother was working in a carpet mill aged 12. If I'd been from her generation, I'd have done the same. Instead, I was the first person in my family to go to university, and occasionally I stay in hotels my parents couldn't afford at my age.

I bristle at children eating pasties in the street because, like my gran, I think it's common, but I'll probably always feel intimidated in posh places. Having lived for nearly half a century, I still don't know what class I belong to.

* DESPITE having zero interest in cycle racing, I'm looking forward to this weekend's Tour de Yorkshire making its way through our district.

On Sunday the race will leave City Park for the third and final stage of the event, passing through places such as Saltaire, Baildon, Ilkley, Keighley and Haworth.

Already it has galvanised a sense of community spirit, with cycling clubs, schoolchildren and arts groups involved in projects celebrating the race. Arts collective Wur Bradford has this week been creating Tour de Yorkshire inspired art, inviting people to make their own poster, featuring a wheel mark collage.

It's great to see the 2014 Grand Depart legacy alive in such enthusiasm and civic pride.

* How lovely that an old 'phone box has been turned into a fun library for children.

The little library, at a Hirst Wood play area, is well stocked with books donated by a local Children's Society shop. Sally Stoker, headteacher of Saltaire Primary School, which has worked with Hirst Wood Regeneration Group on the library, likened it to a Tardis, transferring children to another world through reading.

And along the way they're developing the vital life skill of literacy. Well done to all involved.

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