How the other half lives, what and when you learned

[tomorrowalready]

Reflecting from another thread made me realise it was not until my 20s I found out some people expected to have a private bathroom. I went to university then and shared with another mature student who had been married, divorced and said she found having to share a bathroom with unrelated people unpleasant. I had always taken it for granted as had live in jobs and rented bedsits before. She was a lovely person and also the first person I knew who had a glass of wine every evening and she introduced me to many new things - cooking with garlic, sherry, owning and using a car for shopping for example.

So what did you take for granted that surprised other people you met?

@Gwenhwyfar

"So she was demonstrating that learning is a lifelong process and that you are not forever tied by what happened in your teenage years."

She was demonstrating that she'd been put into a certain career path much too young and lost the opportunity to go to university at 18.

Again- we can all interpret things in a way that backs up our view 😊. I disagree with you on these things. I am not trying to change your mind, just accept we disagree.

"As covid demonstrated for the hard of hearing at the back: even menial Jobs are valuable, even crucial, to society."

Oh yes, but even in countries where everyone earns exactly the same, some people aspire to non-menial jobs. A good education is valuable in itself anyway and can open doors so people should have the opportunity to take up education and training.

"Again- we can all interpret things in a way that backs up our view"

Well, I knew her and you didn't so I actually know more than you about this particular person's situation.

@Gwenhwyfar

"Again- we can all interpret things in a way that backs up our view"

Well, I knew her and you didn't so I actually know more than you about this particular person's situation.

I don’t know if you intended this to be funny but it reads like ‘well she’s my friend actually so ner ner ne ner ner’ 😂😂😂😂

I’m with you @korawick12345. I know someone who’s off to university at 46 in September. Not because he was put on any career path, wrong or otherwise, but because he had no idea what career path he wanted to be on at 18. Better late than never.

I grew up in a council house in the 90s/00s we knew money was tight and had hand me downs, shared bedrooms, one foreign holiday my entire childhood that they saved up for for years, what we had was far more than my parents had and they worked hard for everything we had.

I realised that while we didn't have much I was lucky when I had a sleepover in my friend's house and the family didn't have any bedding or food in the cupboard, nothing not even a slice of bread.

The more sleepovers I had the more I realised that my house was the odd one in the estate for having food in the cupboards. When I told my mum about it she told me that I should bring them back to ours for a cooked breakfast as a way of saying thanks for having me to stay. She also did the same for my brothers friends when he was old enough. By the time we where teens there was always at least an extra two people at our breakfast table on a Sunday.

My family was not well off but we did live in a big house in an expensive area. We did have a cleaner.

yes you were!

My family was not well off but we did live in a big house in an expensive area.We did have a cleaner
⬆️ You were well off. It’s really a bit off to type that and then protest yiu weren’t well off. Posters are candidly recalling the absolute grind of being broke and you’re recalling having a cleaner

My dad passed his 11+ and went to grammar school, he was one of the most intelligent boys there. They really tried to push him into going to uni etc but my nan needed him to be bringing in a wage so off to the steel mills he went. We lived in a semi detached council house and both my parents worked which was unusual for that time. We were much better off than the majority of people around us (only because my mum worked ) and I remember my mum inviting a particular families kids round every week for tea (we played with these kids but they weren't really our friends IYSWIM) and she used to send them home with some home baking 'that she'd made too much of' every time. Looking back this family where really poor and my mum used to say at least they'd had one good meal a week. I remember us having a back boiler fitted to our coal fire and having too much hit water so we used to pass buckets of hot water across the fence to the neighbours so they could have a mid week bath ! My parents didn't really drink at all as it was just a waste of money.

In Sheffield it's tradition to have just Yorkshire and gravy as a starter - you didn't need as much meat then. You also had the leftover cold Yorkshire's for tea with golden syrup or jam.

I once went to a friends house and they ordered a number of dishes from the Chinese and shared them. We had Chinese once a year and it was always one person one dish 😅 they also made me use chopsticks with rubber bands at the top

I think I'm relatively well off. But I've been so used to living life around kids activities that I now would feel so uncomfortable going anywhere more posh than pizza express. I used to feel OK about eating on Michelin star restaurants.

Mine isn't so much about money but about care.

I was always jealous of how other parents treated their children when I was growing up. I remember going to other children's birthday parties, hearing kids at school talk about treats and plans for the holidays and we never really had anything like that in my family. This wasn't about money: we were working class and lived on a council estate, so when I talk about treats and holidays I don't mean anything amazing, just that my friends' parents would take them on days out and actually spend time with them and enjoy their company. We didn't do anything and we certainly didn't celebrate anything in my family.

On one occasion when I was a bit older and had finished university, my aunty invited us to a party at her house to celebrate my cousin finishing university. It was going to be a big affair and it was quite clear that they were very proud of him. My mum just sneered at the invite and said what was the point in making such a fuss, especially when my cousin hadn't done particularly well (according to her), and I had received a better degree classification than him and my parents weren't throwing me a party. It just made me so sad. Every big event was like that, they were always so miserable that even if us kids attempted something they would just pout or argue and ruin it somehow. Unfortunately their behaviour has rubbed off on my siblings, and they all just seem to be incapable of just enjoying events.

I no longer organise events with my family in mind, and I utterly refuse to see them on my birthday. Happy to see them before/after for a 'birthday treat' but I won't let them ruin the actual day for me.

It's such a shame but their negativity has really stayed with me, and even now when friends talk about their childhood birthdays, events, New Years Eve etc. I still feel a pang of jealousy.

@Gwenhwyfar because the last bus into town goes at 6.45pm, and the last bus home leaves town at 7.20pm. If you're meeting friends for drinks at, say, 8pm then it's a taxi or drive yourself.

@RampantIvy

You are right *@Yrevocsid*. There is a lot of inverse snobbery in the UK. At many (most?) universities the privately educated students are called RAHs. At DD's university the only halls of residence that is catered has a lot of privately educated students because a lot of them went to boarding school, and/or have never learned how to cook.

Oh wow, what a hard time they have, people referring to you as a silly nickname.

@Blossomtoes, Im sorry but don't you mean in your experience, "The sense of failure is bollocks. Expectations were pretty well managed in primary schools, it didn’t come as much of a shock to those who didn’t pass. There was an interview process for a borderline mark in the exam."? Everyone here is posting their own personal experiences which obviously differ. In my experience even in the same family, understanding and recollection of the same event can differ hugely so posters opinions here are bound to vary.

I've been away from this thread and see it took a strong direction to discussing education. When I was 13 at my comprehensive school in th 1970s(for context) I began a 2 year Latin course for the then O Level. Our teacher, a nearly retired man who had taught in the old grammar school, told us ours was the last class to do Latin. At the same time on television a series began which was following a group of young boys either at or preparing for public school (Rugby I think). Amongst other things it showed these boys had begun studying Latin at age 9 or 10. Even then I made the connection that they were going to be far advanced and also in other subjects where they had begun earlier, had more attention, better facilities and so on. Yet pupils like me were supposed to compete at O Level on equal terms. Not to mention I found it hard to concentrate on homework when I had to sit in the only warm room where my brother and sister had either a viscious argument or a tense silence every night. I made the connection that the unfairness applied across the board of all school subjects and in sports etc and then later in finding jobs. Being even then a depressive personality this quite disabled me rather than encouraging me to fight and achieve against the odds. On the other hand I thought I would have loved to go to boarding school but maybe it would not have been what I thought.

I lived in poverty and then care so when I went to uni I was sort of in the reverse situation of this. Realising how few people had life skills like cooking, baking, washing their own clothes, DIY skills etc.I didn't realise that at 18 it was fairly normal to not know this stuff and it baffled me. My friend asked me stuff like how do you make a salad, and how do you cook a crumpet in the toaster etc..

Your mum sounds lovely @notapizzaeater

My older sister was the first in our family to go to university despite leaving school at 15 to look after the family after our mother died. She did this by attending a local college for A levels for 2 years when she judged that I should be old enough to help with the housework and cooking. Unfortunately because she was not great at communicating she did not actually tell me or show me how to cook. So her first day of college meant a much later tea with me desperately trying to work out how I should know when chips fried in a chip pan were done. Clue: it was much sooner than I thought. The rest of the family just sat round getting more and more angry and trying to eat black chips in the end.
I gave up on school before O levels for various reasons and because there was no one at home to stop me staying away. But I still knew it was possible to start again and apply as a mature student which I did after working for a few years.

Oh I meant to add how these situations seem to be generational, at least in my experience. My father was an intelligent man but also had to leave his Scottish High School early depite passing the entrance exam. Due to the Depression of the 1930s he got a job as a delivery boy and when he was old enough joined the Air Force as his dad would not let him join the Merchant Navy as he had wished. They lived on the Clyde so Dad had romantic ideas about travelling. Turns out he was safer serving as ground crew in Egypt and other places when WW2 came. Also turned out that was the only travelling he would do.

@tomorrowalready

My older sister was the first in our family to go to university despite leaving school at 15 to look after the family after our mother died. She did this by attending a local college for A levels for 2 years when she judged that I should be old enough to help with the housework and cooking. Unfortunately because she was not great at communicating she did not actually tell me or show me how to cook. So her first day of college meant a much later tea with me desperately trying to work out how I should know when chips fried in a chip pan were done. Clue: it was much sooner than I thought. The rest of the family just sat round getting more and more angry and trying to eat black chips in the end. I gave up on school before O levels for various reasons and because there was no one at home to stop me staying away. But I still knew it was possible to start again and apply as a mature student which I did after working for a few years.

What’s also really striking is that a basic meal prepared by an inexperienced cook was expected to involve home-fried chips. I can well believe it though- the chip pan was a standard fixture on our cooker and we all learned at school how to put out a chip pan fire (damp tea towel thrown over it). It’s crazy to think of it now.

That was in the eighties.

@HaverinWavering, yes we had certain meals on certain days. So this was chips, fish fingers and peas. I can't remember what happened to the fish fingers. Our family had this the thing were the person doing housework or whatever was expected (silently) to do everything without help. So the rest of them (6 in total) were watching television and complaining. I think my sister was on the autistic spectrum, she did consult someone later in life but never had a diagnosis. But her communication difficulty affected all our lives and my dad was of the generation to keep quiet and carry on. I still find it hard to ask for help.

One of my brothers became a fireman a few years later ( he had followed my dad into the RAF for similar reasons) and gave me that advise about the chip pan. Needless to say when it did catch fire , I panicked and threw it outside uncovered so the fat ignited. I never make home - made chips now. But I did learn better cooking tecniques as referred to in previous comments!

[quote EmmaGrundyForPM]@Gwenhwyfar because the last bus into town goes at 6.45pm, and the last bus home leaves town at 7.20pm. If you're meeting friends for drinks at, say, 8pm then it's a taxi or drive yourself.[/quote]
I live in the city to avoid that problem. I did consider what would happen if I moved out and decided that cheaper housing costs would offset taxi costs.
Driving to the pub sort of defeats the purpose...

"we all learned at school how to put out a chip pan fire"

Yes, I learned this, but luckily by the time I was old enough to be making them myself we had oven chips.

Other end of the spectrum here. I went to finishing school and am an accomplished cook to cordon bleu standards. I have never used a chip pan at home nor invested in a deep fat fryer. My mother did but only occasionally. I remember her making chicken Kievs for a dinner party circa 1976 when you couldn't buy chicken breasts separately so four chickens were involved and I recall a lot of chicken casserole and lokshen for weeks afterwards. It was only when I grew up that I realised how adventurous our food was. We would buy things like fresh ravioli and garlic on trips to London or Canterbury - where you could also buy fresh coffee. However some things were so much better - the village had a specialist pork butcher and poulterer where rabbits, pheasant and hares would hang and the local butcher also sold wonderful pies. All available now of course but the mark-ups seem extraordinary. My father used to come back from London with Kosher chickens and baked cheesecakes from Kossoffs. I would have to go to Stamford Hill to lay my hands on a kosher chicken now.

I think we learnt about the damp tea towel in science. At my school only the girls who were a considered dim did home economics. I really wanted to because I love cooking and always did but didn't have the courage to say "actually, can I drop German and English Lit and join the group that does Art and Home Economics"