In a flowerpot, on the whatnot

"The lower middle class people in there, behind their lace curtains, with their children and their scraps of furniture and their aspidistras – they lived by the money code, sure enough, and yet they contrived to keep their decency. The money code as they interpreted it was not merely cynical and hoggish. They had kept their standards, their inviolable points of honour. They 'kept themselves respectable' – kept the aspidistra flying. Besides, they were alive. They were bound up in the bundle of life. They begot children, which is what the saints and the soul-savers never by any chance do.
The aspidistra is the tree of life, he thought suddenly."
George Orwell
Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1936)

The Aspidistra plant was a ubiquitous prescence in English homes from the Victorian era through to WWII, it's popularity mostly due to it being impossible to kill no matter how much you neglected it and able to practically grow in the dark which made it perfect for drab and pokey English sitting rooms. In Orwell's novel it symbolizes dull bourgeois taste and the "parlour palm" was so pervasive it became an emblem of aspiring middle class respectability, bringing a touch of colour to otherwise humdrum lives. Cementing it's position as a national icon, the plant was also the subject of the very popular 1920s song "The Biggest Aspidistra In The World" by Lancashire lass Gracie Fields. Gracie was born over a chip shop in Rochdale which sounds like the sort of thing Monty Python would make up for some comically working class character (but it's true) and went on to become the most famous and highest-paid entertainer in England, if they'd had pop charts back then I would have called this a monster hit. This is a very funny song about the jolly japes that result from the plant being crossed with an oak tree - so it's also a warning of the dangers of genetic engineering. Though the references to Hitler and Goering must mean this isn't the original version, but you can't beat a song that takes the piss out of Adolf too.

Download: The Biggest Aspidistra In The World - Gracie Fields (mp3)
Buy "Northern Sweetheart" (album)
Photo from "We Are The People" (book)