To think I am not posh???

[LadyShirazz]

Our lodger has just informed me that I am "the poshest person he has ever met". Not in a nasty way at all, but at the same time in an entirely genuine one too.

Fair do's - I have the most plummy cut-glass accent imaginable which I hate. God only knows where I've acquired it from, as the rest of the family don't speak anything like this - I can only put it down to having moved around a lot as a child, and therefore never having picked up a particular accent. It's not even one of those "smooth as silk" Joanna Lumley accents either - think more the Queen with constipation (but also shit-faced, so lots of 'shits' and 'fucks' thrown in to the mix too...).

I do speak well and write well. I did go to Cambridge. I do work for a "big name" in The City that is a traditional haunt of the public school types many of them wankers - am new - that's another topic.

But, really, I come from true salt-of-the-earth stock. My mum is a Yorkshire farm lass, and my dad grew up in the slums (true sense of the word there) of the Black Country, and was the first person in his family to go to university (where he met my mum).

His choice of degree (engineering) has afforded the family until it went to shit a fairly "middle class" lifestyle, but certainly not a "posh" one. I went to Cambridge from a bog-standard comp on the basis of my grades (and a lot of hard work) - not my background. I only wish I had a trust fund, but am just working hard, alongside my OH, and caring for my elderly MIL - more or less like all the rest of us. We're okay financially, but by no means rich.

Anyway, surely - if we were that posh - we wouldn't be renting out our main bedroom of our two-bed flat to a lodger in the first place...???

I am definitely not taking this as an insult and am not offended - nor am I intending to cast aspersions on any one from any background at all.

AIBU though to not like assumptions being made on me or my background on the basis of my accent, when a) it's something I can't help and b) actually the very opposite is true...???

Supper is only ever a piece of toast or biscuit with the last cuppa of the night.

Some of the words used in this thread would make me cringe if I ever used them! I don't know if 'tea', 'supper', or 'dinner' is anything to go by as they were used by everyone in the olden days, weren't they?

It's all relative.
I have 2 very different best friends, one was my partner in crime at secondary school. Wound up pregnant at 18 and I'd entirely content with her basic life, renting with her now 3 kids. She has no aspirations with regards to career and is happy to stay in her fulfilling minimum wage role.

2nd friend I met at uni (also the first in my family to ever go) she is equally lovely to friend one but entirely different. She owns a countryside mansion (when I say mansion - not an exaggeration).

I own a tiny bungalow in the countryside. To friend 1 the fact I own a home at all makes me posh.

I have bone china and slate plates (friend 1 thinks posh - friend 2 has far nicer quality tableware)

I have a pantry stocked with mason jars full of my dry food goods. Friend 1 thinks it's amazing I spent money on jars. Friend 2 understands it's a must in the country if you don't want mice nibbling your packets.

I am definitely not posh. But to friend 1, the fact I have a degree, am married and own a property earns me the title.

Friend 2 is deffo posh, but does not see herself that way. Nor me.

Oh and it goes - breakfast, dinner, tea, supper :-P

From what you've said, to be absolutely honest, you have what sounds like a fairly normal working/middle-class family, and you've picked up the accent which you refer to. I'm not sure what it all amounts to, but yes, someone obviously thought you were 'posher' than they are, and I get the impression you were rather taken with it.

I don't place myself anywhere the sliding scale of 'poshness' as I truly don't give two hoots whereabouts on it I land.

OP, as someone who grew up in a university educated family and who works in the city, you inhabit a space that many people do not and you obviously have all the advantages and connections that your position confers. Obv, you aren't in Mitford territory, but neither are you a working-class hero. You're middle class. Boring and naff, but true. To working class people, you're posh. To the aristos, you're arriviste. But surely even you, for all your protestations about salt of the earth bullshit, can understand that you have a relatively privileged place in society? Not that there's anything wrong with that. It is what it is. But there is definitely something wrong with trying to pretend that you're something you're not and not seeing that there are many many people who have a lot less than you do.

You are not posh, OP. You'd like to be.

I do not understand the supper/dinner terminology.
I thought that supper was informal, ie don't expect anything more than a pile of cutlery thrown at you before you share a basic family meal.
Dinner- show off food as a talking point.

mumma I don't think friend 2 in the country house is likely to be posh yet. I think it takes 2 or 3 generations even if the first generation manages to get money and glass jars though, not that any of it matters. it's just a bit of fun for the English.

Another good test: who do you feel most irritated by/dismissive of: 'benefit scroungers'/'chavs' or 'social climbers'/'new money'? If you're posh, it should be the latter. Because truly posh people feel some affinity with (and in fact are - via lots of public money) benefit scroungers.

Disclaimer: the above may well be bollocks.

(except the bit about public money, which is definitely true)

Fishbones one meal naming protocol goes like this:

breakfast, dinner, tea, supper.

Here the supper is a tiny morsel before bed. not a real meal.
I was totally thrown to hear a full evening meal referred to as supper. I'm used to it know after years of Nigella on the TV.

Know? I mean now!

This book is a great insight into the English Class system
www.amazon.co.uk/Watching-English-Hidden-Rules-Behaviour/dp/0340818867

I work in the City, was the first person in my family to go to university, have several degrees / progefessional qualifications etc.

Like many of my colleagues I am not posh (hah! you knew I would say that) but I am solidly middle class (houmous and sundried tomato wraps for supper last night ). I might appear posh to some people but few upper class people would see me as one of them.

I am from the Midlands. I have been called "posh" on several occasions, just because I don't drop my vowels.

Posh is in the eye of the beholder.

I can give out a particular set of information about me, all true, that makes me sound terribly upper-middle class. I can give out a different set of information, all true, which makes me sound fairly standard working/ lower-middle class. Which category (if any) people put me in depends on what's important to them and what they tend to emphasise.

I knew one person who was convinced I was incredibly posh because I rode horses. He'd somehow got it into his head that I'd been to private school, lived in a detached house in the country, had ponies growing up and been to Pony Club throughout my childhood. I found him annoying and offensive because he made the assumption based on one small piece of information and I disliked the idea of being advantaged in that way because I felt I'd had more of a struggle. I went to a comprehensive, grew up in a mid-terrace house in the suburbs and went to the local riding school to work for rides. All of which is a long way from having it tough but also to me at the time felt a long way from the life he assumed I'd had.

No idea where I'm going with this except perhaps that for many British people class is a fundamental part of their identity so it's pissing annoying when people get it wrong even if to the outside world, the differences between perception and reality are fairly slight.

Interesting thought there Gabilan about the two different but equally true sets of information. I could definitely do that too and have been having a quick think about what I could put in each set. Even my school could be described as either "the local comp" (it became comprehensive whilst I was there) or "grammar school". If you do any family history you soon find that if you go back a few generations there are so many threads and different ancestors that you can easily be descended from both a long line of peasants and/or from William the conqueror. I've had so many different jobs that I could easily sound either fairly posh or common on that front too. I'd say more but of course it might very well out me completely

Galiban, I'm laughing because you've reminded me of a time someone at a party misread me completely. He overheard me saying that I had ridden bareback as a child, and leapt to the conclusion somehow that I was a moneyed Pony Club and Gymkhanas child. Whereas I grew up near a travellers' halting site, and went to school with some of them - and they had half-broken horses with no tack but a halter and were up and down off them from toddlerhood. To this day, I don't think I've ever sat on a properly-trained, fully-tacked-up horse.

Liomsa!
You've just reminded me too! I can ride but learnt on my friend's horse. She lived on a working farm, sheep and cows without fancy breed names. We'd ride the horse bareback through the fields, happy days. And definitely not pony club material!

Oh and they had an Aga too which was always full of newborns lambs or kittens.

Juggling I was going to list the different things and thought "oops, no, that's an awful lot of specific information about me"!

Liomsa and Kitty it's funny how people assume horses=posh. Whilst posh people might be disproportionately represented amongst horse owners, horse riders come from very varied backgrounds. And a lot of the reasons for my non-poshness in other directions stem from the fact that these days all my money goes on my horse

So it's official! I'm middle class after all!

How many types of vinegar do you have in your kitchen? This is key

How on earth is she meant to know this?