How the upper middle class live

[LisaJool]

Apologies for yet another class thread but I find this fascinating. Off the back of a thread I started watching a TV series about British aristos and their stately homes. This lead to other YouTube videos and a podcast.
Some observations I made:

1. The women all have great bone structure with the infamous MN UMC swooshy hair.

1. A lot of "sleepless nights" and hand wringing about how they can maintain their homes, which they are "custodians" of. Many have had to do tours/homemade jams/souvenirs to try to bring in extra money. But, their dc go to private schools - surely the first thing you'd do is remove them from that to save money or get rid of the ponies?

1. Re decor, lots of chintz like you'd expect in lovely formal rooms but their kitchens look like something Kim and Aggie need to tackle. Clutter covering all available workspace, books, riding gear, pet bowls etc, lots of knick knacks. Someone on another thread stated that the 'clutter free' movement is a class thing, with it being a LMC to working class thing. Not sure if this is true but interesting all the same.

I don't know anyone who is truly UMC as in old money or landed gentry types. For those who are acquainted, what are they like and how do they live?

Their Christmas card ticks all the UC boxes wonderfully - but no male heir in sight.

Yohanna is a German princess!!! Beautiful family... Amazing house in the home counties with hundreds of polo ponies! Love her instagram, they are currently all in Argentina, looks like kids are out of school & she's doing some homeschooling!

I don't know why people get so defensive about class you really don’t know? Honestly? You studied it and you still don’t know? I understand that you enjoyed it and found it fascinating but you didn’t explore the emotional side of things? Unbelievable! Have you read this thread and you still don’t have a clue, can’t figure it out? That’s bloody amazing !🤨

What many don't understand is that there is a huge difference between surface culture and deep culture. This is what people are referring to when they say that class is not related to wealth.

It is possible with great wealth to buy yourself surface culture - schools, accents, art and music appreciation, holidays, fashion, style, houses, etc. You cannot buy deep culture - it comes from within and is passed from generation to generation. Deep culture is much more subtle and is about expectations, what is and isn't considered moral, acceptance of authority, approaches to family and friends, concepts of time (past and future) and responsibility. Responsibility has a huge impact on the way the UC live their lives. These deep cultural beliefs are ingrained from birth and hard to change if you have grown up in a particular family and community of peers.

Poor old Meghan she was advancing into a bear trap of enormous proportions where for a variety of reasons you touch upon meant that she would never be accepted.

@Unicorn1919 can you elaborate on some of this deeper culture, give us examples?

It's words you use, people/places you're familiar with, your hobbies, what you wear...

There are thousands of class markers and they can be very subtle. The WC have them too, as do the MC.

If you ever meet someone who went to Oxford or Cambridge they will always tell you within 5 minutes of meeting shoe-horning in "when I was at Oxbridge" .

Why? it's perfectly possible to observe and remark on it in an entirely detached way without making any moral judgement about it. The book that everyone quotes is 'Watching the English' and that goes some way along those lines, though I find it pretty sneery actually. You might think I'm pretty dim, but I don't think I'm bloody amazingly dim. I can't see why it's not possible to notice that some groups do X and others don't, or do Z without going into a whole emotional tangle about it.
Oh, and my post was actually meant to be a little flippant. Wasn't meant to offend anyone.

And many who have been never mention it. The thread isn't about 'rude people who should be cut to size if you had the balls to do it in real life'

@vera99

thing is Vera, if they said when o was at Brighton, Manchester or Leeds you wouldn’t have noticed. If you are telling an anecdote about something that happened at university and you are now in a different place, you would mention the name.

it’s you that focuses on the Oxbridge bit, not them.

You may be right was encouraged by my school to sit for the Oxbridge exams (it was an Independent but I had a free place and did my O'levels in 4 years and won the year prize ) and when I refused (I came from a lower middle class family where money was very tight thought it would be too posh) was told by my head of year that I would waste my life. So I went to red-brick instead. Probably still rankles at some level. So my class perception as a teenager was not to aspire to something above my station and inbuilt a sense of inferiority compared to my 'betters'.

Except that literally no one who had ever been to either would say that because ‘Oxbridge’ is just a convenient portmanteau used in the media/by educational institutions as a way of referring to two universities. No one who attended one or the other would use the expression. It would be something like saying ‘When I went to Russell Group’.

That was used to refer to either Oxford or Cambridge - I should have put it in "quotes" for clarity. I wouldn't have passed the entrance exams. 😁

Well yes, I think we understand what @vera99 meant.

Never too late @vera99

Any postgrad courses you fancy doing?

Actually, no. I think it comes from the same school of truisms with minimal factual basis as ‘How can you tell a vegan?’ ‘You don’t need to because they ALWAYS tell you.’

My understanding is that if you want to check if someone is UC you check if they are listed in Burke's Peerage. If they are not in there they are not UC.

I think that's the main problem with class, in relation with education. It's drilled into the British psyche that classes above are a different breed, this translates into a lot of WC children seeing certain professions and ambitions as un-accessible. I am not saying that it would be easy for them if they'd change their outlook, just that it's the first obstacle.
This arbitrary line exists in all sorts of contexts, it wasn't so long ago that girls couldn't pictures themselves in roles that were obvious choices for their own brothers.

Would you like a biscuit?

Is it vegan?

That's me told by the Oxbridge/Russell Group mob, innit. 😁

Yes, and in the school, I went to most pupils were considerably richer than me. There was an annual school trip to foreign climes, Carcassone and Pompeii were 2 such places and I never told my parents about it as I knew that couldn't afford it. I would say about 80% of the kids went on it - mostly the free place 'paupers' that didn't.

62 now and plenty to keep me occupied. No point in looking back at what ifs and maybes. Plus the internet as well as being the greatest waste of time ever invented is also the greatest wealth of knowledge ever accumulated.

A dear friend of my late mother in law is very upper class from old school money, as did her husband.
She has the title of lady and her late husband had the title of Sir.
Live in a very big messy house despite having a cleaner who she refers to as Mrs Surname.
The house is stuck in a seventies time warp decor and furnishings wise.
Yet, she is one of the nicest, most humble of people I have ever met, as was her husband.
Her husband was a big advocate and campaigner of workers rights.
One memorable line of hers which will forever stick in my mind was when she giggled and said. ' my dear, I should have been a tart, up all night and sleeping all day ' in her cut glass voice. She was around 94 when she came out with that. 😂