I am a cliché

[ablutiions]

Standing on the service station forecourt doing a few yogic stretches on our drive to holiday, I realised that I'm a cliché:

Middle aged Londoner, heading for a West Country holiday in my small eco friendly(ish) car, wearing a Boden cardi, and 'trendy' mum trainers with a flowery real cotton face mask dangled from my wrist. having eaten sourdough toast for breakfast. Oh, and carrying a chilly water bottle, natch.

And usually I'd be in France, but you know, Covid and all that.

Anyone else a walking cliché?

God I hate avocados!

To the Irish posters saying that this is excruciating and wouldn't happen in Ireland, I give you the Dublin 4/Greystones/Howth vibe - kids at private schools or Gaelscoil, wet suits for wild swimming 6 months of the year, Cartier love bracelets for Christmas, racing at Leopardstown on St Stephen's Day, rugby and definitely not soccar (GAA increasingly cool), Avoca deliveries etc etc.

Different but the exact same basically.

[quote Maireas]@peaceanddove - a Gaggia coffee machine is a bit down-market, isn't it?
Buy a Juz Z10 and get your housekeeper to bring it along. A smoother taste, I can guarantee.[/quote]
I quite agree and we certainly won't be going back there again and you needed a flipping engineering degree to get it to work

The only possible solution is to source our own artisan barrista (possibly from the same place you sourced the artisanal weavers, yes?) and take them on holiday with us next time.

As for our frou frou Cornish shepherd's hut, I might have omitted to mention that it's septic tank thing was backed up, so it smelt very strongly of shit disguised by eye-wateringly pungent chemicals. Which was nice.

And it pissed it down. Every day. Every. Day. So much so we left early

I remember laughing my head off at my Ds when he rang me up to complain he’d ‘turned into a right wanker’
He’s mid 30s and caught sight of himself in a huge shop window, whist stuck in traffic…. 3 piece suit on, flashy watch, spiked up hair, poncey sunglasses, driving an almost new black BMW (😱)…. He was horrified that he’d turned into ‘that’ as he put it!😃😃
I’m blonde, short and ‘booby’ …. All natural, so thanks Mother Nature for making me a cliche🤷‍♀️

And, despite your private and university education, you still don’t know how to use an apostrophe @peaceanddove.

@peaceanddove - well, at least you only wear silk mix, so it doesn't matter if that got spoiled with the damp

@sar302 - is it the nanny's day off?

Can we just end the lie that people have it all? If you can’t be honest with yourself then who? Have enough self reflection to acknowledge this. I know many women through work, friends, family etc and a number stand out to me as really having it all but even those I can see areas where they don’t but they still have amazing lives as well as flaws/low points/areas lacking and all. The OP made me smile but it soon became a game of competitiveness smugness. I’m assuming the worst offender doesn’t work due to her wealthy husband and it just seems in such poor taste to flaunt it when there are people on here who are just as deserving for that lifestyle yet have to work so hard but still remain grateful for what they have.

@Blossomtoes

And, despite your private and university education, you still don’t know how to use an apostrophe *@peaceanddove*.

I know, I know, what a waste of parental money. I also discovered recently that I had no idea what a fronted adverbial was either until my 11 year old niece kindly explained it to me.

I am a professional northerner. I probably would have muttered something about ‘what the bloody hell does she look like’ as I passed.
Saying that I’m not some knuckle-dragging philistine. I enjoy high culture and have an exciting, sought after career and loads of nice things. I just don’t take any of it seriously.

Gosh let's see. Well I was living the lovely middle class cliche: married to a fellow professional, big 4 bed detached house, 6 figure joint income, several holidays overseas a year, shopping in Waitrose, artisan this and that, gave child has a name that won't scare the teachers etc, etc.

Then I became that other cliche of the dissatisfied, something's-missing-here 40 something woman. Which quickly became the realisation that I didn't actually love my husband anymore. So then the decision arose of do I become that cliche of the quietly unhappy middle aged woman, going through the motions and sucking it up for the children and lovely middle class lifestyle?

Well I didn't really fancy that cliche at all! So now I'm the cliche of the middle aged divorcee, who's not as wealthy as she once was, lives in a lovely but-not a-4-bed-detached house, doesn't shop at Waitrose, but is riotously happy to be free and independent and living life with her child on her own terms. Oh and about to go on holiday for a week with her smart, gorgeous (and younger) partner. Yes, very happy to have finally found my cliche!

Am with you Rick James and stovetopespresso.
Currently guzzling, I mean sipping white wine, but it’s so bloody awful I’ve chucked some frozen fruit from lidl in it. It’s kind of cre me de cassis! Is that a cliche, or am I so cheap I’m a genius?!
How do you do it? Actually do you really want to?
I saw something called the do lectures which is cliche in a tin for advertising media types.- go rough it in wales, while people tell you things like, ‘ be creative! Don’t listen to anyone else, do your own thing -and I will tell you how to do your own thing( eh?) only £3k for a weekend - IF you are cool enough to be invited. Bring your own tent, that’s how crazy and radical we are.’ I mean, what?
Worlds gone mad!

@1AngelicFruitCake

Can we just end the lie that people have it all? If you can’t be honest with yourself then who? Have enough self reflection to acknowledge this. I know many women through work, friends, family etc and a number stand out to me as really having it all but even those I can see areas where they don’t but they still have amazing lives as well as flaws/low points/areas lacking and all. The OP made me smile but it soon became a game of competitiveness smugness. I’m assuming the worst offender doesn’t work due to her wealthy husband and it just seems in such poor taste to flaunt it when there are people on here who are just as deserving for that lifestyle yet have to work so hard but still remain grateful for what they have.

No one has it all. No one. If I am the worst offender you describe then I do work, I have always worked though admittedly I am now officially retiring next week at the age of 50 for which I'm incredibly grateful. You see, I live with a breast cancer diagnosis and every day every hour I think about it coming back. Especially as I cannot tolerate Tamoxifen because the side effects make me so ill. So, I'm going for quality of life over quantity.

If I could give up the frou frou Shepherd's hut and all the other clichéd twattery in return for not having had breast cancer, then I would. In a heartbeat. Because it's not only me who thinks about it coming back every day, I know my DH and my DDs do too and I hate that.

Ooh snippy! This thread isn't about shopping in primark and doing yoga from youtube, that's pretty clear. And I explained what being Irish has to do with 'anything'.

My point is, there's no need to be all affronted at what people can afford/access when many of those things are probably pretty accessible to all. (how do we all know that all these people we see in 'Boden' Bretons haven't got them from Primark unless we ask to see the label?)

And being Irish: MoreCraicPlease has pretty much said what I would have. Class and snobbery absolutely exists in Ireland (and elsewhere), no just England or the UK.

OTOH I am from a working-class family and grew up with frozen convenience foods, ten-pence mixes and ITV on all day. I would not have gone to uni if I weren't old enough to have had grants. While an A level and degree student I was among other things a cleaner, a barmaid and a call centre worker.
Bookmark

God I do love a good mumsnet rags to riches story. So inspiring

I would actively pay good money to not wear Boden .

I have a couple of Primark Breton tops. If you make sure to buy the ones with the Lycra in, they wash better than the bloody boden ones I had, which now look like rags by comparison.

Peaceanddove
Im truly sorry to read that. You have your reasons to post what you did. Unfortunately many will read your first post and read no further. Not your responsibility but not what I feel the thread was intended to be, a gentle mocking not a full blown reeling detail after detail of everything you have. There are somethings about my lifestyle that I have that would be enviable to others (not as many as you admittedly) but putting them on mumsnet wouldn’t be my choice.

Boden bretons (infact Boden anything) makes me look like a box on legs. They're like a visual contraceptive on me.

God I do love a good mumsnet rags to riches story. So inspiring
That's quite snitty. Quite a few posters have mentioned growing up not so privileged. It's just a bit of laughing at oneself. I look at myself all the time and think, 'God, if my eight-year-old self could see me now.' It's just funny to look back sometimes and reflect on how life has changed.
And I might add, it HASN'T changed much in some ways. I still shop at Morrisons and cheap local convenience shops, like pre-sliced white bread and go to Greggs.

Bretons are shite, Boden or otherwise.
It’s a sign that you’re ready for quilting and book clubs.

@HelloMissus

Bretons are shite, Boden or otherwise. It’s a sign that you’re ready for quilting and book clubs.

Oh shit. Looks like I’m going to have to send my 17 stripy tops to Oxfam. Which is a shame because I always wear one when I skydive.

PMSL at all the Irish claiming the moral high ground. Ireland is the most passremarking place I know with far more herd like behaviour. Class and social snobbery is rife!

@IntermittentParps

God I do love a good mumsnet rags to riches story. So inspiring That's quite snitty. Quite a few posters have mentioned growing up not so privileged. It's just a bit of laughing at oneself. I look at myself all the time and think, 'God, if my eight-year-old self could see me now.' It's just funny to look back sometimes and reflect on how life has changed. And I might add, it HASN'T changed much in some ways. I still shop at Morrisons and cheap local convenience shops, like pre-sliced white bread and go to Greggs.

So true. I thought it was a bit of poking fun at privileged middle class lifestyle and didn’t think it was bragging. I’ve been dreadfully poor and now., probably the least well off of my friends but I don’t care-they’re lovely people and don’t care about my background but they all acknowledge how much of a cliche they are. It’s not bragging, it’s having a laugh at themselves. However, I still feel a bit guilty at my good fortune when I think of where I came from and sometimes wonder if I will all come crashing down. I love good food-but am still surprised how a love of good food is such a class thing in the UK. In other European countries, poor, working class people enjoy good produce and would consider it strange to be thought snobby.

@budsaway

I think perhaps you should change it to being English rather than a Brit-I'm Scottish and really don't recognise many of these cliches as being common here, even though I do recognise them as being very home counties .