what’s something that absolutely ISN’T posh but you thought it was?

[WrSad]

I would say

Having 3 bathrooms

Triangular sandwiches - party food only. Ditto pringles and pistachio nuts. I had my first pistachio nut at about 17 when I went to a friend's boyfriend's house and he appeared with a bowl for snacks. I had never seen them before. He was very casual about it, but was very posh (detached house). I remember eating most of them, which was not very posh.

Yy, as pp said, houses with a name. When I got to university, everyone else seemed very posh and we swapped addresses I deliberately left off my house number (think 32b railway terrace or similar) and told them I lived in a house called 'Stanton', gave them the road name and told them it was Near the nearest town, rather than in the middle of it. I don't know if anyone wrote in the holidays - I never got the letters😁.

Gosh there's some nostalgia on this thread!

For me growing up -
Vienetta
Sara Lee double chocolate gateau
Patio doors (especially if you had the back window replaced with a patio door, and don't get me started on French doors)
Trio biscuits
Fresh orange juice
Forrin holidays
Hotels of any kind (I'm still not sure I'm doing hotels right now as an adult)
Going out for a meal at all - especially if it wasn't a birthday or mother's day
Having special best clothes for going out for these meals
Being babysat
Having a car that started first time, every time
Rollerboots
Getting brand new anything, instead of hand-me-downs or second hand
Cut glass ash trays
Tea spoons that matched the rest of the cutlery
Wine glasses that didn't come from the petrol station
Mugs with Nescafe logo on them

I remember being quite small (in the early 60s) and visiting someone, I was amazed you could run right round the house i.e. it was detached, I thought this was amazing. Some years after that we went to a party at the home of someone my dad knew from work (possibly his boss). They had central heating which was a revelation to me as the children could play all over the house instead of being confined to the sitting room with the adults.

Very posh!

To the PP who said this was important social history, I totally agree!

A real window into the lives of ordinary working classes in the 70s and 80s mainly. And how things have changed so much now.

My mum was a cleaner and I used to go with her to the posh houses she cleaned, so I had an insight into how those people lived. I know now that they weren't upper class, just comfortably off middle class.

Now I have my own cleaner, and earn my living in a profession that means I'm no longer in poverty (but not that comfortable). Still consider myself working class!

We never ate out when I was a child, and rarely had takeaways except on holiday, which consisted of fish and chips shared out between us, while staying with family who lived at the seaside.

Now, a takeaway is a regular occurrence and nothing special, usually when I cba to cook.

Our society has changed so much in just a generation.

Renting holiday houses. We were comfortable and had holidays in UK and abroad in our caravan as a kid. Once we met up with some richer friends who had rented a house. I couldn't believe it was even possible to just rent a whole holiday house, it seemed like unimaginable luxury.

Now I'm married to DH who had a ridiculously privileged upbringing, and he considers renting holiday houses to be a bit déclassé - we sometimes rent cottages and he resents paying on the basis that we should just borrow someone's villa, or be guests at a chum's conveniently local manor.

Coca cola in cans rather than a big bottle that went flat before we got round to finishing it. Cans seemed decadent. Now I think they might actually be better value because we're not big soft drink consumers.

Just remembered another as I just used mine:

Toastie machines 😂

My dad bought one for my mum for her birthday (because of course women only want cooking appliances) and we thought we were FANCY!

Ditto for hotels by the way!

@BendylikeBeckham
That is so true and something I’ve been noticing a lot lately. Expectations have changed so much. Weekends feel a bit like the 70 s now. There was nothing to do and no money to do it. Eating out didn’t happen.
We didn’t have heating apart from an electric fire and a movable ( dangerous) paraffin heater. There would be ice on the inside of the windows. None of that was uncommon.
Triangular sandwiches ( as a pp mentioned) were a treat though and always came out a birthday parties ! It’s funny that the same sandwich in a different shape feels so posh. It still feels fun to cut them that way.

Truffle/Truffle infused anything.

I remember my mum warning me when we went to visit his boss one afternoon that they were very posh because they had "wall to wall carpets in every room". I still have no idea what she meant, because they had lino in the kitchen, just like us.

Our society has changed so much in just a generation.

You are very right - I was born in the 90s (so one generation on from a lot of posters as my parents were born in the 60s, DP’s parents were born in the 70s) and can’t relate to most of what has been posted here, not because I’m posh but because things had already changed. I wonder what this list will look like for the next generation!

@pantsville

Those big decorative ceiling roses Dining tables Victoria beckham Glass shower screens Garages (as in where you’d store a car, as opposed to where you’d go for repairs)

Victoria Beckham 🤣🤣🤣. Brilliant.

Drives with gates that actually opened and closed.
Houses with closed gates that Great Danes would peer over
My house had no drive, and no gate at all for most of my childhood.

@IntermittentParps I also thought Black Forest Gateau, because I'd only ever had it when on a trip up to London, from Fortnum's! I'd never heard of Sara Lee back then.

Jeans, because they cost ££££ and no-one in my family had them. Most of our clothes were hand-me-downs, and I found out later that my mother took the jeans out and passed them on to others When I went to university, all my flatmates had half a dozen pairs each!

@Gingaaarghpussy
I think perhaps you need to read Betjeman's How To Get On in Society
It's quite short. You may reassess your mother's choices.

In sixth form (v early 90s) my friend and I bought a lime from the grocer, peeled it and attempted to eat it like a tangerine! We lived in a very small and pretty economically depressed town and limes weren’t something you saw in the grocer that often. At the time our only supermarkets were Iceland and Kwik Save.

I’ve got three limes in the fridge at the moment, how times change

Eating out in a restaurant. We never did this Nor did my parents. We went to the cafe of a department store once and even that seemed posh. I still find the idea of eating out frivolous.

This thread had made me wonder when I first tried some foods that I nearly always have in my fridge now

When did I first eat Hummus ? Does anyone remember the small supermarkets called Europa ? They had a deli counter and all sorts of posh foods.I remember one being in Wimbledon and the other in Fulham

Slight tangent, but as a comparison, I just asked the (pretty privileged) primary-aged DC what would impress them in someone's house. It's an odd list...

• Servants ("not just cleaners and nannies and gardeners, but in uniform, like in the old days")
• Gold plates
• Wine glasses for everybody, "even the children"
• Marble kitchen counter and table
• Candles (no further info & we often have candles at dinner so )
• Tables laid as for formal dinner but every night ("plates on plates with bowls on top and lots of cutlery")
• Having a dining room and a separate breakfast kitchen
• Cottage pie!
• Stew!
• Lots of takeaway from nice restaurants
• Fish presented nicely on a platter "with lots of fish piled up then other fish and stuff in patterns around"
• Cocktail sausages!
• Holidays on other side of world
• Private jet or first class
• Wearing lots of jewels - gold, silver, diamonds

Their culinary assumptions are a bit weird. Why on earth would a child think stew, cottage pie, and cocktail sausages were "posh"?

skoobysnax We had eternal beau crockery! My Auntie still has the full set!

Mateus Rose wine.

@AlbaAlba

Slight tangent, but as a comparison, I just asked the (pretty privileged) primary-aged DC what would impress them in someone's house. It's an odd list...

• Servants ("not just cleaners and nannies and gardeners, but in uniform, like in the old days")
• Gold plates
• Wine glasses for everybody, "even the children"
• Marble kitchen counter and table
• Candles (no further info & we often have candles at dinner so )
• Tables laid as for formal dinner but every night ("plates on plates with bowls on top and lots of cutlery")
• Having a dining room and a separate breakfast kitchen
• Cottage pie!
• Stew!
• Lots of takeaway from nice restaurants
• Fish presented nicely on a platter "with lots of fish piled up then other fish and stuff in patterns around"
• Cocktail sausages!
• Holidays on other side of world
• Private jet or first class
• Wearing lots of jewels - gold, silver, diamonds

Their culinary assumptions are a bit weird. Why on earth would a child think stew, cottage pie, and cocktail sausages were "posh"?

Have they watched Downton Abbey? It's quite sweet to imagine them sitting in a huge dining room, funished with a full gold dinner service, weighed down with all the inherited jewelllery, illuminated by a candlit lit chandelier, attended by a full complement of liveried servants, enjoying a posh dish of stew. Possibly followed by a slice of Vienneta.

They've not seen Downton Abbey. Now you've said that though it did occur to me that they've seen a few episodes of Jeeves & Wooster

Though I'm still at a loss to explain the stew and cocktail sausages.

Yeah, they could have at least said ratatouille or boeuf bouguignon.

Smoked salmon

Growing up:

• Shopping at Monsoon
• Imperial Leather soap
• Having napkins at the table