30s TTC. It was the BESHt of times,it was the worst of times, it was the age of rummaging in gussets, drinking gin.....

[ginhag]

C'mon in BESHes to the beach bar...sprawl on comfy sofas while you wiggle your toes in the sand and watch a glorious sunset....and drink brightly coloured cocktails with sparklers in. Cos we're classy,innit.

I've got Adam and joe in as barmen, and we have a rather nice Cave of Gloom in the corner for those 'whyyyyyy meeeeeeee???' moments. We have a reggae sound system playing mob barley's greatest hits. It's a sunshine paradise!

Newcomers welcome,as long as they drag along a bucket of black humour and a vast amount of gin. And please note,some of us have been here so long we have forgotten the real world almost entirely.

Now,who's getting the next round in?

Fanks everyone for making me feel better. I ate too much spaghetti and I feel pukey but slightly less misery-struck by the whole famille biz. LambTagineWithApricotsAndHoney that's a brilliant line, and so well-observed it leads me to wonder if you yourself also have a churchy background? Score you're just spot on there as per usual, & I love the image of your Ma being so polite! Actually though the In-Laws are really v. working class and I think that's also a bit of a hindrance 'cos it leads to a certain kind of anxious inability to express themselves or assert themselves, and a real profound social awkwardness. Like zero conversation, seriously - all the stuff maybe more middle class people are quite expert in, like dinner parties and suppers and chatting over the pinot grigio etc., they just have never done. (All the above sounds pitifully patronising but I'm allowed to say that sort of thing 'cuz I myself am from a 50% v.working class background - and I mean we're talking the slums of 50s London here [not me, my Dad: I'm not that well-preserved!]). I know it sounds dead contentious but when you've spent a lot of your life poised between two classes it's actually dead fascinating. I get furious when people think 'working class' is an insult. Fuck my accent/education: I'm working class, basically. I'm poor, and I've never been skiing . One of my pals is from a gorgeously middle class background (West London, arty parents, you know the biz) but had an extraordinary romance with a roofer from Dagenham. She's now doing a PhD in issues inc. depictions of the working class male, so we have pissed discussions about this all the time.

God I'm boring myself now. Also possibly being a bit offensive. I'll stop .

Oops, I iz busted.

Anyone watching BGT? Beforehand I liked the dog act but now I'm rooting for Accountant Singing Guy (can't be bothered to learn Real Life Names)

No droid as yet. Hmm. I am of course drinking all the wine in the house anyway. Because in the unlikely event I am diffed, I'll likely be too pig sick to drink it any time soon. So it is an act of efficiency, of good household management. It is home economics at it's best. It is a selfless act, laydees.

(Can't explain why I'm eating all the Twirls though)

My parents are from a working class background, Pencil, (also London. Am I you?) but we're probably more middle class these days. I think. Not sure how that happened. And I have definitely observed the social anxiety that comes with that in them at times (my sister's upcoming wedding a fine example) - I think they don't have previous generational role models to draw on in learning that social stuff. Neither did I. But I shared a house with a girl who was brilliant socially and I essentially just hung around and watched, then copied her!

So I get what you're saying.

Gosh yes wedding are the worstest for that sort of thing. Added to that the whole church biz then honestly, you're just fucked. The only social events my aged Ps and my ILs are really comfy with involve a prolonged reading from Leviticus followed by a rousing rendition of "Will you be washed in the blood of the Lamb" . And 'course I inherited all that. Not working class, not middle class, oh, and oblivious to all cultural references pre-1998 since in my youth I was mostly reading the 1611 Bible and Foxe's "Book of Martyrs", complete with woodcut engravings of Archbishop Cranmer being burnt at the stake.

The more I think about it, the more it amazes me that I can recharge my Oyster card without having a full-scale existentialist breakdown in the corner shop...

Ps, Me, Me, Me. Did I mention? Oh, and Me.

PPS. Me.

PPPS.

BGT makes me feel a bit funny. I think I have an allergy....

By 'droid' do you mean 'Japanese flag week' as a delightful (male) ex housemate from Uni of mine used to call it? So pleased you don't refer to it as Auntie bloody Flo...come to think of it, I think I may have twee-allergy too....why 'droid' plz to be knowing?

Heh. Well, I'm the opposite, if anything. My Dad gets incredibly awkward in church situations, something to do with some priest hitting him when he were a nipper (about 75 years ago, in Africa). The only hymn they will approve of is Will Your Anchor Hold, on account of my Grandad being a sailor a million years ago. And I am the only godbotherer in my side of the family, so they all think I'm a bit weird for that (apart from when it comes in handy, weddings, christenings, funerals, etc).

I don't really know what sort of social occasions my parents WOULD be comfortable with, tbh. They don't really go out, they hardly have any friends... sigh. I've tried gently prodding them to broaden their horizons a bit but to no avail, it just seems to make them more nervy and it seems the only person it bothers is me. I think I worry for my Mum, I am her only child (siblings are steps) and Dad (stepdad) is 15 years older than her, so I worry that if he goes first, she will literally have nothing in her life other than me and minime. Which, don't get me wrong, I love her, we're close. But I can't be her world.

The old lady on BGT just now was shit.

Japanese Flag Week - love it!

Well, I'm not flying the flag yet.

Head, I too have the strange experience of being trapped between two classes: Mum's family = middle-class, though never particularly well-off (and I mean in real terms, not a posh idea of 'not well-off' ie can't afford a cleaner and a gardener) and my Dad's family = working class. Although everything extra-muddled by paternal grandfather originally from a middle-class background (was made to work down pit during WWII, as was too disabled to fight but not to work) and Mum's family from European backgrounds and experience some crappy shit because Great-Great-Granddaddy was black (we thought; actually Moroccan Tuareg) and Mum, Uncle and Gramps have/had what used to be delightfully known as 'a touch of the tar brush'. And both sides of my family were really arty, clever, well-educated and creative. So feeling of 'outsiderdom' big in my family. Upside is v fluid personalities, lots of interests, v culturally open, etc. TYF's family solidly middle class: R4 on permanently, Aga, a fucking LAKE, relatives with preposterous christian names, suffocating emotional repression, etc. I eat my TEA and use a SERVIETTE then go to the LOUNGE, where I sit on the SETTEE, whereas they TAKE DINNER and use NAPKINS then retire to the SITTING ROOM and sit of the SOFA (although they're not very cultured and my family is v intellectual). I spend 95% of my time having people tell me I'm 'posh' and v middle-class then we go there and they openly look down their noses at me (ancient, childless commoner preying on their sweet, innocent young son) - even though they can't follow what I'm saying in discussions as it's too 'booky' and they seem to know very little about culture, history, politics, any of that. You can't win!

Well, I can - at Triv, when I'm down there. Last year, discovered his elder brother doesn't know who Anne of Cleaves, Kurt Vonnegut or Clement Atlee were!

Sorry to everyone else for my dullness

Gosh that is a toughie, TagTeam. And how lovely you are to give it thought. If you persist I guess you might be able to very gradually encourage her to do new things, so that when the times comes (isn't it awful, having to think of that stuff for your parents ) she is prepared....but yes, that sounds v. familiar in some ways.

I can't watch BGT. I put it on the other day and there was some creepy kid singing "MOAN RIVERRRRRRRRR, WARDER THEN A MARLE...." and I wanted to punch her with a frying pan. So I turned off the tellyvisuals.

I so want to be blown away by Spellbound. But I'm not. I don't understand why.

tell us a bit about yourself, if you pliz. I am in a making friends mood . How long you been trying this babymaking shizzle, how old are you, are you in the ThatLondon region or are you further flung?

Scorps. I'm fairly sure a lake is more than middle class. I have read books about these fings.

Score am giggling at the LAKE. Thass more than middle class no?! Is so true though . I once tried to explain to an American the myriad minute cultural signifiers by which you can divine British class status (snapshots of family in small frame on piano or mantelpiece: Middle Class. Professionally shot large-scale gilt-framed family portraits ranged on the wall: Working Class. That sort of thing). They didn't believe me. Can't imagine why...

Yes I too wish to know more about AckeeAndSaltfish

Oh my God, I go away for two hours and my poor Bangers has a virtual breakdown and I wasn't here . What a hideous, awful, maddening pile of shite the while thing is. And to echo Scropulous, it actually makes me feel grateful and relieved for my own in-laws, who I'm forever whinging about. Will stop. Come to my skinny yet warm embrace and let's get pissed. Am on the cheap red wine tonight. As opposed to the cheap white (Extreme got me all anxious about white wine for some paranoid reason)

Now then Tagine, young lady, what's all this name -changing about. Was it done specifically to confuse me and make me think there was an old timer I was too new and clueless to know? Well was it?

As for classes, I am classless and rootless. Grandparents on one side were grocers and on the other side Grandfather was a poultry farmer and Grandmother was a teacher. So a bit of a mixture. And my dad was the first to get a proppa degree on his side of the family, and my mum trained as a secretary (anyone reading this who knows me will now get me if you know what I mean?) So what class am I? I'm floating, rootless and classless. I belong nowhere. Someone tell me what I am!

PS Paternal side belonged to the old-skool working classes that were v political, really into learning, reading, educating yourself and trying to really better your life and your family. That 'tude seems to have died out a lot now, sadly. Dad was opera-loving, classics-reading, art-gallery-visiting, lefty-campaigning working class bloke when young (now same but m-class) and it wasn't as incongruous back then as it would be now.

ARRIIIEEEESSS! .

You belong HERE luvva

Pisces my old luvver! How are you, are you out of the pit? I do hope so. I so wanted us to be simultaneousdiffalicious this month. Maybe next month will be ours. I'm sorry for confoozing you, I thought it was fairly obvious... just cos I know a couple of MNers IRL and I didn't want them finding me in BESH paradise if they searched my old name.

oohh..erm squirms in spotlight and wipes dribble of wine off chin

I'm 35, so the babymaking better get a freaking move on.

Have been off BC for about 6 months. Had a m/c 2 years ago which really shook me up, so things were on hold for a while. So I'm pretty new to the whole shebang really.....

not in Fancy London Town, I am down in that thurrrr southwestern Eng-er-land.

I work in a school.

Anything else I can do for you ladies winks suggestively

Sorry, weird delay in posting there. Wtf? Yes, the lake. FIL is workaholic, ergo they are rich. A workaholic who sneers at my not-posh-enough-ness then the next minute is boasting how he left school with no O-Levels. The fact that his mother was a headmistress and his dad a teacher does not mean that he has ishoos, hell no.

Good God, do not mention Large Family Portraits. A little bit of sick leapt up into my mouth.

Agreed that kind of working class seems to have died out, Scorps. The ones who believed in education being a way out of poverty (as it was then rather than a route into debt ), who had lovely handwriting and had huge amounts of self respect. My great grandfather was a poor farmer's son and fought in the Boer War. But during his time in S Africa, he wrote the most amazing letters home, full of detailed descriptions and illustrations, which are now in the Imperial War Museum. And he was just a normal working class bloke. Irrelevant but interesting. Well I think it is!

By the way, the handwriting comment was just my flippancy coming to the fore. I don't really use that as a measure of pride and self respect.

Actually I do...

Salty I too am 35 and in the south west.

Shit, am cluster-posting.

Ooo lots of bumpkins SW Englanders here SaltedPopcorn!

V. about your MC. These things suck hard. You're in the right place for visceral levels of despair shot through with filthy jokes

Score your ILs do sound a little hellish. Funny the different shades of hell there are...

Wowzers Aries that's some kind of cool! And you're right: what happened to that culture? How can we resurrect it? .

Hey, there's a wee dress made of parachute silk my Granny made in the IWM too!

holds glass up to clink with AiryFairy* for being from the land of cider.