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

"My Mum taught me that when one leg if your tights laddered you should cut off the laddered leg and then keep the good one, still attached to the body bit, until the same happened with another pair of same-coloured tights. You then wore the two legs with a “double gusset”, which had the extra benefit of keeping your tummy held in grin. We weren’t poor, but she did not like waste."

Hilarious. Especially if they were not exactly the same colour tone.

Tbf, I assumed that everyone would know this trick! It works, provided all your tights are plain black or nude (need to be same denier as well)

My mum's best friend's DD is a SAHM and had two nannies for her two DDs when they were young so she could 'concentrate on tennis'. That was an eye opener!

@RampantIvy

What’s the way out of poverty for bright kids now?

A good comprehensive school.

Bahahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

So sad if you believe this.

@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.

My family had neither encouragement or a quiet place to study and three members from poverty backgrounds got to Oxbridge because of grammar schools. Now, with their backgrounds, they'd have no chance.

It was a system based on merit. Flawed, as all systems are. But way better than a system based on money as we have now. And people wonder why there are idiots in Government with the intellectual capability of an average snail?

“ZednotZee

Most professionals earning 40K would consider themselves resolutely working class.”

I cannot agree with this. There must be many middle class/upper middle class earning this sort of wage.

Think for example of a museum curator.

Cultures are involved not just amounts of money.

@ShowerOfShite

Your story ( yesterday 2.00) of your mother and her little chink of reserved-self shining within the edifice of her marriage to your DF - all symbolised by the one occasion she asked for French mustard out of the blue when she was alone with you, and her one bulb of garlic kept so long in a jar till she could share a bit with you - is so moving somehow.

She must have felt like a soaring bird through her vicarious enjoyment of your life as you went on into new worlds.

@VaguelyInteresting

I havent read the full thread - but just to reply to *@Marmitemarinaded* - am slightly worried this is outing, but the only way to reply to you is with unaltered facts.

I grew up in a single parent family. Im in my early 30s, to date this for you. My single mother was mentally and physically ill my entire life, and my father was physically, psychologically and emotionally abusive to me and my mother. As a child I remember being held up to the electricity meter to break into it for 50ps so she could buy food for our dinner. I also remember all of my books being thrown away because my stepfather didn't like that I knew words he didn't. Funnily enough I was watching Matilda with my son for the first time last night, and had to go make coffee when the scenes early in the film were on - it was uncomfortably reminiscent of my childhood (although sadly I cant move things with my eyes).

We were homeless twice and I spent 6 months, twice, sleeping on relative's floors as a child, thanks to poverty and domestic violence. We had literally nothng but the clothes on our backs.

We had some stability - though no money (I mean that literally - bills unpaid, no food, no money for school busfare etc) -when my mother got divorced, but she had a breakdown when I was 16, so I had to get a job and juggle that wth college so that we had enough money to cover the rent .

I was determined that I would have a better life, and I threw myself into school work. I left school with a straight run of GCSE As/A*s and all As at A Level. I went to top 5 university (for my subject) on a full loan/grant, and worked throughout my three years.

Whilst I was at uni, I sometimes paid my mother's rent with my grant, and went without things myself, as she was still ill and hadnt pulled it together quite yet.

I graduated with a First, and was accepted for a part-funded MA by my department, who thought my dissertation had the potential to be the basis of a PhD thesis, and wanted me to continue to pursue the research, but instead I chose to go straight into employment (I do regret that a little now).

Don't you fucking DARE be skeptical of either the real hardship I've faced, or how inconsequential they are, in the face of my potential and motivation.

And I'm not special. There are thousands of people like me, who delight in showing people like you, that we are not defined by the financial circumstances of our parents.

@VaguelyInteresting - I'm so sorry you went through all that.

What an incredibly strong person you are. I hope you are truly proud of what you've achieved.

@ScrollingLeaves

“ZednotZee

Most professionals earning 40K would consider themselves resolutely working class.”

I cannot agree with this. There must be many middle class/upper middle class earning this sort of wage.

Think for example of a museum curator.

Cultures are involved not just amounts of money.

I'd agree. A 'professional' earning £40k is likely to be middle class - the word 'professional' implies an office based job involving professional qualifications, or possibly a medical specialism.

There are tradesmen earning £60k+ who would consider themselves far more working class than an accountant on £40k.

@ScrollingLeaves

“ZednotZee

Most professionals earning 40K would consider themselves resolutely working class.”

I cannot agree with this. There must be many middle class/upper middle class earning this sort of wage.

Think for example of a museum curator.

Cultures are involved not just amounts of money.

Yes, that's rubbish.

"provided all your tights are plain black or nude (need to be same denier as well)"

All my nude tights if not from the same packet are a slightly different shade of nude.

Most middle class people have regional accents. The middle class is much bigger than just the people who speak RP. It's roughly half the population.

Agreed. Living up north, I know a lot of middle class professionals with regionals accents.

"It does boiling or ice cold water, so basically a fancy kettle & water filter rolled into one. We have people in our family with disabilities and autism, so it's great as you just press a button and a set amount comes out."

Wow.
Poshest thing I can think of that I've seen in a house is being able to control the music with a switch/dial on the wall rather than on the actual stereo.
All the other things I can think of are just on TV.

“lomaamina

ScrollingLeaves
Caffeinefirst
Re: “supper”
“To my ears sounded pretentious and ridiculously posh. Which is strange because it’s just a word but to me supper was your cup of cocoa and digestive biscuit before bed.“

This use of supper has crept in.
Dinner was the main meal of the day ( at lunch time for some, night for others) supper was a small meal or snack before going to bed or late night after the theatre, or a child’s evening meal because they had their main one at lunch.
You can still see this description in some dictionaries.
I’m reading a book recently published called “Scoff”, which has masses of fascinating material on food history in relation to class, as well as geographical differences. www.theguardian.com/books/2020/nov/04/scoff-by-pen-volger-review-food-and-class-in-britain “

Thank you for the link, that book looks very interesting.

Quote from the book review you posted about saying ‘supper’ now instead of ‘dinner’.

“She is particularly good on how the upper middle class have stopped giving dinner parties and instead now invite people round to supper. “Supper” sounds cosy and informal and implies that you don’t need to try too hard. “

I think the would be upper class felt chased when changing demographics in the late 1960s onwards meant more ordinary people envisaged themselves having dinner at night with ‘After-Eight’ mints, or ‘dined in for two’ courtesy of M&S. There w

Some universities with dining halls still say ‘Dinner’ even when the meal is not a formal one.

@Travielkapelka

I genuinely had no idea until I was in 6th form that some people didn’t have a dishwasher. I remember being completely shocked and thought the family must be really poor. (They weren’t). I also remember going to a house and asking where the rest of it was when I was about 8. No concept that people didn’t live in detached houses with drives. I also used to tell people we really were quite poor an explanation for why I didn’t get a car for my 17th birthday like all my friends. I was also convinced we must be very very poor as we never went skiing.

I led a very sheltered life which was interesting as my dad had grown up in absolute poverty

Haha, asking where the rest of the house is! When my daughter was little, we lived in a nice ground floor flat that was spacious, just the two of us. However, her friend came over and asked exactly that. She said "our house is WAY bigger than yours!" We were very happy in that flat though, and still miss it sometimes!

I lived on the edge of a council estate and adjoining us were what my mother described as "the private houses". Years before I realised what they were😂

I commented on a MN thread about etiquette and apparently got it way wrong. It was about taking cake to a, come over for a cuppa invite. In my world you share the cake in upper class homes it's a gift, who new but apparently it would be bad manners to take anything as thats insinuation the host is not supplying good enough stuff. Wow what a mine field so glad my friends are all working class. I would never turn up to a party empty handed, never ever not ever.

I am just reassured that this thread was like a siren call to the usual people who are desperate to tell an Internet forum how upper class they are. All is well.

"Haha, asking where the rest of the house is! "

Can I take the call upstairs.
You can, but we don't live there.

Some of you will know where that's from.

"apparently it would be bad manners to take anything as thats insinuation the host is not supplying good enough stuff"

Interesting.
I was told that bringing wine was an insult in France because you'd be insulting the host's cave. No such problem with chocolate or flowers though.

You can bring wine to mine

@Ddot

You can bring wine to mine

Mine too :) And you can take home what you don't finish if you want to as well, another MN no-no.

@godmum56

what an interesting thread! I guess my family was a real mix up. I was a child of the 50's/60's but am the youngest in the family. By today's standards we were poor (no inside toilet, one cold water tap in the kltchen, we all bathed in a tin bath in the kitchen once a week with water boiled in buckets on the gas stove) but by the standards of our time and area, we were well off (had new clothes, not from jumble sales, hand me down clothes only from within the family, caravan holiday every summer, given pocket money every week) The big "richer than other people" thing was that about 4 times a year, we went out to dinner at Lyons Corner House at Marble Arch in London. We learned proper table manners including use of cutlery and were all expected to use grown up manners. The rule was that we could have ANYTHING on the menu provided we ate it...us kids were given gentle guidance on choice on the lines of saving room for "afters" and being sure that we could eat a WHOLE prawn cocktail starter as well as steak. About the only non comme il faut thing was that my parents would negotiate stuff like if I would settle for tomato juice for a starter, then I could have steak and chips for main and Mum or Dad would give me a little of their prawn cocktail because shoosing is HARD when you are six. There used to be a flower woman that sold rose button holes on the pavement nearby and Dad would buy us all roses to wear....straight out of Eliza Doolittle!

The other thing was that although not churchgoers, Mum and Dad were active in the background passing on bundles of outgrown clothing, toys and occasionally canned food. I didn't realise until much later that some of this stuff was going to women who had left abusive relationships. The rest went to really poor families (no coats in winter and shoes mended with cardboard) I was taught pretty much as soon as I started primary, to say nothing if I saw a child at school in clothes that had been mine or my siblings.

and yes...even to me it sounds like the 1800's not the 1960's!

What a lovely family you all sound. Love that your dad bought you flowers too. Heart warming.

@ZednotZee

Of you have a regional accent you verifiably are not middle class.

I say this as somebody with a regional accent, privately educated via scholarship and two first class honours degrees.

I know plenty of MC people and I'm not one of them.

Give over I think that’s your issue

@godmum56

I think my upbringing was a bit like yours. My parents had next to no money spare for fripperies but they equipped us with excellent table manners and conversation skills, and made a point of ensuring we experienced the ballet, theatre, classical concerts, the snow, flying and so on. These were very occasional and extremely exciting, not a regular occurrence, but gave us a confidence to consider the world our own.

[quote PrettyLittleFlies]@godmum56

I think my upbringing was a bit like yours. My parents had next to no money spare for fripperies but they equipped us with excellent table manners and conversation skills, and made a point of ensuring we experienced the ballet, theatre, classical concerts, the snow, flying and so on. These were very occasional and extremely exciting, not a regular occurrence, but gave us a confidence to consider the world our own.[/quote]
We couldn't do most of those things (50's 60's) but yes, we would go to museums which were free, shop in posh shops, go and see places and, yes, were generally given the expectation that anywhere was open to us because we knew how to behave, what to do...kind of a confidence that we would fit in.