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...???

Nouveau Posh?
(Did I spell that right?)

One poster upthread said genuinely posh people (i.e. upper class) never discuss class, let alone try and convince themselves or strangers online that they are posh because they: shop at Waitrose/drink or don't drink diet coke/speak a certain way/say loo instead of toilet/eat lunch instead of dinner at midday etc etc.

Anyone classifying themselves as "middle" or "working" or "upper middle" or whatever are by definition aspiring, i.e. middle-middle-middle class

I listed 'working class" there as well, as genuine working class people rarely talk about class either, it's only champagne socialists and newly aspiring middle classes trying to make their roots seem interesting that identify thus.

Posh is relative. It was only when I came on Mumsnet that I realised that, for many, growing up in a smart 4 bed detached house, with central heating, fitted carpets and having a foreign family holiday every summer was considered very privileged and 'posh'.

But to me growing up with all of the above was just the average and very normal. Our extended family and all our friends led very similar lifestyles.

When I got to university I became best friends with a girl who had gone to a famous public school, and grew up in a huge country house complete with stables and a housekeeper! Now to me, she was posh and privileged. But in her eyes she was just normal and average because her extended family and all her school friends lived a very similar lifestyle.

After university my social circle was comprised of teachers, doctors, lawyers, dentists etc. And everyone lived very similar lifestyles, renting smart flats or nice houses and having money to spend on good clothes and decent restaurants. At only 24 I thought nothing of wearing Chanel make up or of going to Paris for the weekend, all my friends did the same.

Then we all went and got married. Lots of £30k + weddings and honeymoons in exotic places. When babies came along everyone had Mama and Papas buggies, and baby clothes from M&S and Skip Hop changing bags. Again this was just the average for all of us.

A few years later we all had family holidays in Provence or Tuscany. All our children did tennis, riding or ballet etc and are all now at either secondary independents, private or grammar schools. Our children think nothing of eating regularly in good restaurants or of some of their friends having had ponies or au pairs. Again this has always been their lives and they know no different.

Recently I started a part time job working with a team. None of them have been to university, they all left the local comp at 16. A few have been to Spain on holiday and Florida is considered exotic and very posh. They are blissfully ignorant of current affairs or culture or of anything outside their immediate lives.

To them I know I am very 'posh' and there's plenty of good natured ribbing which goes on. I know in the greater scheme I am not posh at all, but I am certainly wholely different to my new colleagues and have lived a lifestyle which doesn't really have any point of reference for them to relate to. And vice versa.

Joules. Fair enough (if surprising - not till you found MN?!!) post except for this:
They are blissfully ignorant of current affairs or culture or of anything outside their immediate lives.
Isn't it just that they know different "culture and current affairs" to you? And where does the bliss come in?

Joules you've reminded me of a documentary I saw about Zara Phillips in which one of her friends stated that she didn't really have an advantage in the eventing world because the horses she had were "just ordinary homebred things, some of them weren't very good". Yes, homebred by the queen and her daughter. Also neatly ignoring the fact that having horses at all, let alone having parents who both competed internationally, might just be a bit of an advantage when it comes to equestrianism.

People associate having horses with being posh, because unless you are tying then up on a bit of waste ground, they are expensive to keep.

I do agree that people can acquire a patina of poshnicity.

DH grew up with a very working class Mum (she grew up sleeping 3 to a bed and a tin bath in front of the fire once a week). His Dad was slightly more genteel but was rarely around when DH was a child, as he worked away.

So despite being very clever, DH arrived at university from a decidedly working class background. He'd never been to the theatre or eaten in a decent restaurant.

But within a year he was playing 'rugger' for the university and good mates with the son's of consultant surgeons and 'Tory MPs and going ski ing at their family chalet in Val D'Isere. It must have been a steep learning curve for him

His best friends are now a barrister, a consultant surgeon and an international financier (who had titled grandparents). He unconciously uses all the right middle class lingo (supper, what?, sitting room etc) and likes his good wines and loves the theatre.

To the untrained eye he is indistinguishable from the real middle class thing, though he's not remotely bothered by his working class roots.

Corbyns they are 'blissfull' because they don't care one jot that they know nothing about politics or current affairs, or of how the world actually works. They don't know and they don't want to know. They are perfectly content to remain oblivious.

Cleaty if you live in a rural area, you can keep horses fairly cheaply. Of course if you're utterly broke you still can't have them but they don't have to break the bank and plenty of people on less than the national average wage do keep them. (My mum worked out that my parents' cats cost more to keep than her horse because by that point she was fortunate to have a couple of acres of land and could look after the horse herself. Whereas the bastard cats would only eat Sheba and fresh fish).

Also, you can ride without spending any money at all. It does entail spending large parts of the day mucking out, but you can do it. I'm not sure of the stats for ownership but riding is proportionately represented across all classes.

how the world actually works
Again, I don't want to be pernickety, but what I think you mean is "one aspect/perspective of 'how the world works', from my own viewpoint". I really don't think there's an "actually" about it.

Corbyn I don't think it is pernickety. It's quite important (IMO!) to allow that how the world works for one person, is not how it works for another.

There's a lot of non posh people round here with horses because our city has two "commons" where if you're a resident of the city you can keep a horse there for I think £200 a year. I'm guessing most cities don't have that though?

Those blissfully content people who left school at 16 and think Florida is exotic. Aaah, so sweet.

I'm posh because I have a retired racehorse in my field which is a drain on my resources.

Joules, quite apart from the repellent, self-congratulatory insularity of your entire post (which suggests a certain confusion between 'rich' and 'posh'), are you actually linking the 'blissful ignorance' of your new colleagues to their social class?

One wonders what terrible event has made you accept a job that features colleagues 'who all left the local comp at 16' and think Florida is exotic. Perhaps you could spend your lunch break enlightening them.

Does one wonder Liomsa?

In that case, I am temporarily working with them as part of some on going training. And I have no confusion between posh and rich, they are often not the same thing at all.

Life is hard no matter what rung you occupy on the social ladder. Why don't we all live and let live?

corbyn in this instance 'how the world actually works' is nothing to do with perspective or viewpoint. They genuinely don't know how the political system works, or the Law, or even local government or the education system. They don't know and they aren't bothered that they don't know.

Which is fine by me, each to their own etc.

That's not how the world works. That's how parts of UK society work from your perspective. For them, how the world works might be more to do with day to day concerns.

Oh stop digging, joules!

I sincerely hope my DC don't grow up with such an extraordinary lack of awareness of the world around them, which Joules demonstrates, ironically while bemoaning this lack of awareness in others.

My parents certainly taught me to be grateful for everything we had, and aware that others weren't so fortunate. I would be ashamed of a post like that, to be completely honest, and if my DC ever wrote anything similar I would consider I had fucked up their parenting quite spectacularly.

Lodger fancies you.
HTH

Well, we've established that I'm firmly middle class (with elements of posh), and I don't know the ins and outs of the Law or politics or current affairs either.

I do catch the headlines and read the papers Daily Mail, so am not quite so oblivious as you make your colleagues out to be, but whenever I try to get "serious" and read 'The Economist', my brain switches off and I end up back on here!

I think most people - of any class - probably know "a lot about a little" and don't concern ourselves too much about things outside of our immediate experience.

Hahahaha Sparkle.

Yeah, probably...

Joules I am at some of your comments, especially the one about your DH having a working class accent despite being very clever.

There is no correlation between 'clever' and 'posh' so the word 'despite' is inappropriate, in more ways than one.

As for calling your colleagues 'blissfully ignorant' of politics or culture...words fail me. I just don't know where to begin, I really don't. It's derogatory, for one thing. Inaccurate, too. You do realise that every group within society has a culture, don't you? One is not better than the other. You don't know anything about the culture of your colleagues. I don't know when I've such complacent, aspiring, Dail Mail-ish tripe.