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?

@somuddled it's a deal

@AnnaMagnani

Are you sure you are going to the West Country?

Because I was in North Norfolk a couple of weeks ago, nice restaurant and they might as well have had a bouncer on the door 'If you aren't wearing blue linen you aren't coming in!'

Sadly DH and I both fitted the criteria and joined all the bots inside.

Yeah that was my experience last week too. But you could tell everyone had specially bought their tan leather flip flops, stripy tote bags and stripy linen things just to live the nautique dream. As I had 😂

Visions of middle-middle class mums across the country, stockpiling the stripy Joules just for their holiday, and for the chance to lovingly kit out Iris/Persephone/Toby/Seb/Florence in their special boating outfits and Saltwater sandals just for that one perfect week before they have to return to the usual drudgery of scrimping to pay for the piano lessons and shouting at the kids about screen time 😂😂😂

And spending the rest of the year snapping up the nearly-new towelling beach dresses on the preloved Boden Facebook groups 🤦‍♀️😂😂

@wishthiswasreallife

I'm very lower class ( young single mum,benefits ) the like. But I have to say I really have loved reading this!

Have a great day everyone, whatever your all doing.

No you are not lower anything. Fucksake

Aha @jumpalicious I'm not having children! So I might manage to swerve Joules and go directly into 'refuses to stop dressing like she did when she was 20 even though she's 50 now'.. Well, that's the plan anyway haha!

I’m an overweight hairy chinned bespectacled brunette

Like every other woman I see in my local Tesco’s

@Anordinarymum yes, what you said.

For anyone that hasn't been on their holidays yet - Lidl has kids shortie wetsuits at the moment. I'm off to get one this afternoon.

TheVolturi
Agree 👏👏

No you are not lower anything. Fucksake

Agree!!! Don't buy into the ridiculous class system.. Be yourself and feel grateful you are not foolishly buying into the ridiculous system portrayed on this thread that benefits only retail and those taking your money.

@PropertyFlipper

Lovely opportunity for some of you to big yourselves up, la-queen style here. Ridiculous nonsense.

I think you’ll find they are one and the same person.

LaQueen! I haven’t heard that name for so long! Is she still on here?

I almost wept when I realised I was a walking cliche for where I live. I try to snap out of it but seem to drift back so I'm thinking of no longer giving a shit.

Saturday mornings I can be found wearing a very old but comfy pair of straight leg jeans, a polo shirt, ancient deck shoes and in colder months, a sweater, a green or navy jacket of some sort, green wellies or a pair of moccasins with whatever coloured socks come to hand.

I've tried to buy stylish outfits for weekends but always drift back to the above.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

LaQueen! I haven’t heard that name for so long! Is she still on here?

Yep - see above!

@MarleneDietrichsSmile - my thoughts exactly. Amusing op and some responses, but followed by some awful out-and-out boasting. A list of things that make for a life 99% of the population cannot attain followed by “what a horrendous twat I am!”

Like some pps, I don’t feel like a cliche but suspect this is not because I’m one of a kind, more due to not being exciting enough to fit into a recognisable cliche. Although, thinking about it I do fit into the cliche of someone doing an ok, sensible but not amazing job making measured progress through life who is thoroughly bored of it all and yet too cautious to give it up to do something different. I think I need to trade up to a more stimulating cliche.

@allycat4

These threads are excruciating.

False self-deprecation.

Agree

Revolting

peaceanddove

Hell yeah, I'm clichéd up to the hilt and love it.

Privately and university educated. Happily married to a successful company director. Both teenage daughters attended a top performing village primary, followed by a top performing girls' grammar school. Eldest DD off to art school this September to study Fine Art & Photography.

We live in a big Georgian house, in the middle of a naice village. Interiors are all about Farrow & Ball and John Lewis, with Laura Ashley curtains (I paid extra to have the curtains hand finished by someone called Blodwen at their Welsh factory, which is the height of privileged twattery). We have a cleaner and a gardener, obvs.

Groceries come from Waitrose or M&S or Cook, but we eat out a lot at the weekend. I have just started yoga in the village and obviously look a complete cliche in my Boden yoga gear + matching yoga mat (yes, really).

We should have been on holiday in the Italian Lakes last month, but because of Covid we booked a frou frou Shepherd's Hut in Cornwall instead - of course it had an outdoor firepit and a Gaggia coffee machine. Obviously, I packed my Seasalt bretons, my Lotta from Stockholm clogs and my Toast white linen shirts (because, yes, I have an actual Cornwall holiday wardrobe as opposed to my Italian holiday wardrobe which is a tad more glamorous).

Right now, I'm wearing silk mix, paisley PJs which I 'sourced' (not just bought) from Etsy while drinking coffee and chatting with DD2 about her possibly doing a year out in Paris to polish her French as she wants to study French + Economics at university. Luckily, my cousin's DH is French and they keep a bijou apartment in Paris where she can stay. Which is nice.

[implodes in a torrent of her own clichéd cuntiness]

My god I’m cringing for you, that posts embarrassing. How boastful

@TheWholeJingbang

I’m an overweight hairy chinned bespectacled brunette

Like every other woman I see in my local Tesco’s

Good god woman I was sitting in Tesco coffee shop stroking my beard and loosening my belt when I rea this. Separated at birth! (This is a very entertaining thread..)

Although, thinking about it I do fit into the cliche of someone doing an ok, sensible but not amazing job making measured progress through life who is thoroughly bored of it all and yet too cautious to give it up to do something different.

This is my definition of being a parent :(.

Have to say the thread was derailed badly and shamefully and has made me question a few things this morning.

Nothing like boasting to the gallery is there ?

OP I got you, but not the rest of the shower of shite

I see MN has reverted to the good old, bad old days.

@allycat4

These threads are excruciating.

False self-deprecation.

Couldn't agree more, what a load of stealth boasting going on.

@irresistibleoverwhelm

Just been on holiday in Norfolk, staying opposite a playground where every day identical sets of parents plus children congregated in their Joules and Seasalt stripy nautique outfits, plus children in Boden … all pottering out to local organic cafe for avocado toast and blueberry pancakes with organic milkshakes for brunch with our stripy cotton totes, and then seeing all the same families from the cafe at the same beaches in the afternoon, all looking slightly harried and carrying the same beach items about, and carrier bags containing the same pies from the local organic bakery, fig chutneys and cans of artisanal IPA. We are such cliches 😭🤦‍♀️

We played “collect the mumsnet kids’ names” all week too. Some of my favourites from the playground: Ludo, Constance, Marianne, Iris, Nova, Barnaby, Olivier, Penelope, Maudie and Octavia. 😂

I live in North Norfolk and love spotting the identikit holiday makers, I can spend many a happy hour listening to them. Next Summer I think I'll start producing bingo-cards as a cottage industry!

A couple of weeks ago, I had a disagreement with another poster on a thread about how relevant the labels working class/middle class were. If that poster happens to be reading, I'm admitting defeat.