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?

After my DS birthday party, one of the school parents asked how much the entrance fee had been for the attraction the party had been held at. They then completely casually and without pretension compared it to the entrance fee to a world famous British castle....that their family own.

@Gwenhwyfar @Alcemeg also learnt about chip fan fires the hard way…

Before I moved to London I had never seen men shove women out of the way to get on a train or bus, shocking, or knew anyone who got a taxi to get their shopping home - no one in my family ever used taxis for anything

@Blossomtoes

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.

At 63 I now know what I’d like to have done career and education wise but I’ll never have my time over again so it’s all water under the bridge.

I can however try and make sure that my grandchildren are never in the same position.

I was 12 when I had my first meal in a restaurant.
This was a huge treat. It wasn’t an upmarket establishment yet I felt like a princess. It had tablecloths, and many spoons. How wonderful. I told my classmates who didn’t think this was unusual. I was beginning to realise some are more equal than others.

Money was spent with great caution and when I hear today some choose not to pay off their mortgage as a priority and have regular expensive holiday and coffee out on a daily basis. Phew it makes me confused!

Oh gosh, where do I begin?

As a child, discovering that friends didn’t get to choose their whole take away because they had to share one dish between 2 or 3, or that they had never been to a restaurant.

As a child discovering that people live in castles and have birds of prey - for which collecting roadkill was entirely normal! 🤢

As a boarder, that friends had the money to pop into Versace and buy their friends a jacket because the weather changed.

At uni visiting an ex overseas, son of a politician, that armoured cars and guns in the footwell were normal.

Living overseas, that it was entirely acceptable to have a baby and hand it over to the nanny for it not to be seen for 12 hours - and less acceptable to have skin to skin and your baby in the room with you (I fought the system and won on the latter)

Working in the UK, that a significant number of people are so poor that they share a single mattress on the floor, have rats under the sofa, can’t afford to clean their clothes let alone have a tv, that dinner is a slice of bread, and that chn go to school with holes in their one pair of shoes.

That wealth really can be taken away in a minute and that having relatively little does not prohibit happiness.

I have had such a diverse range of experiences, I have been what some would consider comfortable, and have been broke. I have learnt that those with little seem to give the most and that people are what really matter.

My aunt and uncle were middle class but seemed very wealthy to me as a child. I remember my aunt talking about my cousins having swimming lessons and I thought it was sad that their parents hadn't taught them to swim. My cousin was brought a big Sunday house for Xmas. My dad made me one from old bits off wood. Again I felt sorry for her, because mine was bigger and my dad had made it.

My dad was in the RAF and we lived in Hong Kong. When we came home we had stuff people had never seen before or they were rare. People would come over to look at our microwave...not in it as we all know that fries your eyes. We had a TV with a remote control (that wasn't attached to the TV).

I went to boarding school (as Dad was in the forces). I went to some girls houses and never realised people really lived in houses that big. I just thought it was something that happened in history.

About 10 years ago my friend won a holiday to Mexico. We stayed in a hotel where we had a butler. The fact that would be normal to some people still blows my mind. Everytime we got up from a beach towel it was taken away and changed. We ended up wrestling them off the staff as I couldn't take the waste of energy/ resources.

@cariadlet

The quiet place to study and plenty of encouragement are more than many kids from really deprived backgrounds would have had so even though your dd is clearly very bright and although she wasn't tutored, she still had considerable advantages. I would guess that she also grew up in a house full of books and with parents who talked to her a lot, both of which would also have given her a headstart in her education.

Yes she did but all of that (apart from the books maybe) is POSSIBLE for people from deprived backgrounds if the parents have the desire for their children to do well. DH grew up in a poor background but he passed his 11+ and went to grammar school.

@UserAtLarge

I was at university with someone who asked why I was getting the coach home at the end of term and not driving. When I explained I didn't have a car, I could see him genuinely struggling with the idea that someone might not be able to afford one.

I was at university with a group of friends who were astonished I was commuting from home rather than having my parents buy me a flat to live in closer by. When I explained they were still renting their own flat the penny (sort of) dropped.

There is so much on this thread I recognise. Working on a market stall from aged 14 cash in hand to buy my clothes. Skipping school dinners as I didn’t have the money. The teachers were clueless about my home situation.

I try and ensure my DC are aware of how other people live. It helps they went to a comprehensive, so had friends living in small flats as well as massive houses with swimming pools, but it’s not the same. Still, I’m jolly aware of my own good fortune.

I witnessed poverty as a child not in my home but in our neighbours. We didn’t spend what we didn’t have. No debt and no new clothes in my home.
Just now in 2021 there are Mothers and Fathers going without to provide for their children. I don’t mean holidays I mean food. Children coming to school hungry. If the family is on benefits they are better off. It’s the struggling working class who are the underdogs. There’s a different poverty in 2021 but some are still physically and emotionally hungry. Oddly some have a poverty lifestyle yet have expensive cars. Most confusing.

Just to comment on the Operation Raleigh post on the previous page - if you’re not from a wealthy family, you don’t have to fundraiser £2000.

My son had to raise £800 for his VSO. What crippled me was having to fund the trains to his training (up North) and to Heathrow. That was reimbursed but my fellow paupers know that isn’t helpful if you haven’t got it in the first place.

@Iwastheparanoidex

Just to pick up on the point of the cost of uniform and the secondary modern having a uniform too.

My blazer at the grammar in 1980 was 4 times the cost of the high school.

My sons comprehensive school uniform all had to come from the specialist shop (apart from plain white shirts) and had embroidered logos on everything - even the sports socks. It cost an absolute fortune.

My daughters grammar school uniform was all unbranded and could be bought anywhere apart from the iron on blazer badge. Our local grammar school actually has one of the cheapest uniforms in the area.

The one thing that really leaps to my mind is when a girl I was friends with invited me to stay at her parent’s house. I was already married approaching 30, & she was 27 living with her DP. We’d socialised together a lot, but her parents lived in a different place near a big city, where we were going out for the evening. I expected to simply be going there, introductions, go out & return to sleep over. When we got there, it was a council house in a sprawling, obviously deprived estate (nothing wrong with that). Her parents were welcoming, but then something very weird happened - we were served a meal by her mum at a Formica table for two in a tight spot over the dog’s bed; it was chips, fish fingers, baked beans & mushy peas all on the same plate, but very strangely with a side of salt & vinegar crisps and I was told that I needn’t worry, they’d already been crushed ready to sprinkle over. There were also dairylea triangles on the table, almost as a condiment. My friend excitedly did exactly that. I was dumbfounded, I still don’t know if this is a thing or just their thing. I felt like I was 8! I’d never considered myself particularly different, but I’d not been brought up eating that kind of food, nor had my DH who was v.privileged. It taught me a lesson, & that I liked fish fingers, but absolutely not beans & mushy peas together.

When I was in college, so around 2005, one of my friends said 'my Dad only earns 90 grand a year, that's not very much is it?'

At the time my Mum earned 16k, which meant I was entitled to a £10 a week payment through a government support scheme designed to encourage teens from low income households to stay in education. She couldn't understand why she wasn't entitled to it too....her £50 per week pocket money wasn't enough.

When I was a kid ordering a cornetto was the height of decadence...and as for a King Cone..they were 50p!!!!

Oh and garlic mushrooms for starters..my first restaurant meal as an 18 year old ( 1989) . That was exotic decadence too 🤣. My boyfriend's mum had lemon mayonnaise in the fridge..posh!

@RosesAndHellebores

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"

Your last paragraph reminds me of a friend at school, a grammar school, who told the Physics teacher that she was going to Domestic Science College to become a DS teacher and he was appalled. But you're expected to get very good A levels, why waste them on Washing-up College!

@Bertiebiscuit

Before I moved to London I had never seen men shove women out of the way to get on a train or bus, shocking, or knew anyone who got a taxi to get their shopping home - no one in my family ever used taxis for anything

Before I visited London, I'd never seen adults running apart from on TV or a parents' race!

Totally OT but kind of linked....I remember a time before freezers when peas were expensive and seasonal unless tinned.

At uni in the 90s, i learnt that a meal at Pizza Hut wasn't the height of sophistication.

@Bertiebiscuit

Before I moved to London I had never seen men shove women out of the way to get on a train or bus, shocking, or knew anyone who got a taxi to get their shopping home - no one in my family ever used taxis for anything

Things like not using taxis are very deeply ingrained, I had to take the car into the garage for some work to be done and I considered walking home. My daughter was appalled, it's not too far but it's a bit hilly, Get a taxi! In the end I did, it was only a fiver, but it seemed so profligate!

That each parent had their own car, some girls got a car for their birthday and that ponies were a thing.Also that racism wasn’t funny and that I would have a secretary to use a computer for me when I started my dream career (thanks for that one)…I won a government assisted place to a private girls’ school in the 80s from a very ordinary, occasionally short of cash for food ,type household when we lived on a dilapidated boat with no car and definitely no pony!

@HoneyNutLoop

Oh gosh, where do I begin?

As a child, discovering that friends didn’t get to choose their whole take away because they had to share one dish between 2 or 3, or that they had never been to a restaurant.

As a child discovering that people live in castles and have birds of prey - for which collecting roadkill was entirely normal! 🤢

As a boarder, that friends had the money to pop into Versace and buy their friends a jacket because the weather changed.

At uni visiting an ex overseas, son of a politician, that armoured cars and guns in the footwell were normal.

Living overseas, that it was entirely acceptable to have a baby and hand it over to the nanny for it not to be seen for 12 hours - and less acceptable to have skin to skin and your baby in the room with you (I fought the system and won on the latter)

Working in the UK, that a significant number of people are so poor that they share a single mattress on the floor, have rats under the sofa, can’t afford to clean their clothes let alone have a tv, that dinner is a slice of bread, and that chn go to school with holes in their one pair of shoes.

That wealth really can be taken away in a minute and that having relatively little does not prohibit happiness.

I have had such a diverse range of experiences, I have been what some would consider comfortable, and have been broke. I have learnt that those with little seem to give the most and that people are what really matter.

That's a really wonderful post, @HoneyNutLoop 💗

I grew up on a council estate, god I thought it was heaven. Huge groups of kids romping through woods and trees, always some one to play with. Holidays and weekends by the sea in our caravan and roast dinners on Sunday with the rest of the family. I didn’t realise that we didn’t have much money, I thought we had everything. There were huge but (as I perceived) shabby houses in the village that I thought were ugly and old but now realise are gorgeous and home to rich people. I just didn’t know that people looked down on the council house families, that on the french exchange the well off kids got matched with the french well off kids and the ‘poor’ kids ended up with the families who could barely afford to feed their own kids (I just thought I’d lucked out). Nobody where I loved had a dad that went to work in a suit…

My husband grew up with 1 sibling in a 7 bedroom manor house. I grew up with 6 siblings in a tiny 3 bed terrace. But my parents raised and loved us, he got put in a nursery at 3 months old and was raised by numerous nannies until he went to boarding school. Money really isn't everything when you end up that messed up from having no stability or love.