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Original poster

You reluctantly concede you are indeed a living breathing liberalpinko cliche when...

101 replies

motherinfestivemood · 21/12/2004 13:32

You're capable of dithering for a full five minutes between the Organic and the Fair Traded bananas

You vividly remember the first time you took a deep, transgressive breath and bought South African produce

You used to think sex shops were the most oppressive places out, and now you think they're a necessary element of self expression

If and when you find out you're not on any secret lists (insert files, phone-taps, etc, as appropriate) you'll be terribly miffed

Your children's stockings have fair-traded chocolate coins in them

And, for our more mature members...
A secret part of you feels nostalgia for the 80s, because You Knew Where You Were with Thatcher

If someone shouts 'Maggie Maggie Maggie' at you, you'll respond automatically.

I could go on

OP posts:
oopsanta · 21/12/2004 22:29

I just worry about Billy's appaling taste in jumpers these days. Nooooo Billy, why didn't he just slink off or better still die at his peak like Jimi Hendrix or Jim Morrison.
He does frighten me a bit now- the years have not been kind.
Oh and yes, Tom Robinson isn't gay any more- is he still glad? or has he become more morose these days? How does that work?

PaRumPumPumScum · 21/12/2004 22:29

You forgive Billy and all your mumsnetter mates for selling out because you feel a certain nostalgia for their previously pure pinko credentials?

oopsanta · 21/12/2004 22:30

I'm not sure if i do forgive him. He's a bumbling old git like me now. Who do I aspire to these days- I don't know now he's got old

PaRumPumPumScum · 21/12/2004 22:31

You feel gutted when your children insist they are heterosexual.

joashiningstar · 21/12/2004 22:42

You are so chuffed and feel that at least one of your children are 'normal' when she admits that she's shacking up with a woman ...yaaaahhhhh!!!

alexsmum · 22/12/2004 09:53

yeah, what was all that about Tom Robinson??? married with children??? what's the world coming to??
remember doing project on clause 28 for o'lvel politics and being really steamed up about it.

what about badges? 'war is not good for people or other living things' and the like?? did you wear them?

alexsmum · 22/12/2004 09:54

don't you think that those of us who were teens and twenties in the eighties, were far more political than our equivalents today? do you think it was growing up in the thatcher era?

DingDongDinosaurOnHigh · 22/12/2004 09:57

The collected works of Andrea Dworking are taking up a lot of space on your bookshelves, they haven't been opened for years but you can't bring yourself to get rid of them in case your DSs want to read them one day...

alexsmum · 22/12/2004 10:10

ditto the beatrix campbell books!

hester · 22/12/2004 11:55

I knew I could count on you, motherinfestivemood! Bet you still remember the TUNE to 'You can't kill the spirit', don't you?

Oh, and to show my impeccable credentials, my childhood activities included:

  • going on NUT marches
  • telling children in the playground, very seriously, that we were all going to be nuked before we grew up
  • taking the Little Red Schoolbook to primary school (anyone remember it? kind of anarcho-marxist tract for kids - oh, we were so popular with the teachers!)
  • leafletting for Friends of the Earth
  • helping divvy out the lentils for the wholefood co-op we were part of
  • aged around six, marching up and down the street chanting, 'We hate the Queen!'
  • reading my mother's copies of 'Spare Rib'
  • having furious debates with mini Powellites at school about the ethics of India's population control policies...

I didn't stand a chance, really

DingDongDinosaurOnHigh · 22/12/2004 12:59

Hester - I don't know the "can't kill the spirit" one - what is it, just out of curiosity?

Motherinferior - I bet you used to daub slogans on Oxford's one and only sex shop, didn't you???!!! The barman at LMH (I knew him quite well, funny that) used to get a tenner for going over there on Sunday mornings and painting over the graffiti.

Original poster
motherinfestivemood · 22/12/2004 13:05

Dino, I will ring you up and 'sing' (I use the term loosely) You Can't Kill the Spirit. She is, in case you were wondering, Old and Strong, and goes On and On (and on and on and sodding ON).

I didn't paint the sex shop, but did refer to my boyfriend as 'this bloke in my house' in a vague wimminly way.

I drank that appalling Nicaraguan coffee too. I can still taste it, if I retch hard enough.

OP posts:
MariNativityPlay · 22/12/2004 13:06

at Billy, but the one that really makes me fuming is Ben ELTON.
Tom Robinson married a woman I was at school with who had been stalking him adoringly at all his gigs since we were all 12. I think he's fairly glad about all this but stoutly maintains he's still a gay man who fell in love with a woman...

Tinker · 22/12/2004 13:07

Last night my daughter was moaning about it not being fair that girls can't marry girls and boys can't marry boys. But that's because she wants to marry me

spacedonkey · 22/12/2004 13:07

oh yes, when Ben Elton got in bed with the devil (aka Lloyd Webber) I could hardly contain my disappointment

Original poster
motherinfestivemood · 22/12/2004 13:07

Wow, Marina, how did she manage it? Now that IS an achievement.

OP posts:
hester · 22/12/2004 13:08

She Is Like A Mountain, don't forget!

Well, I used to paint my local sex shop - and superglue the locks at Barclays. And at one point I lived in a separatist house - the owner/landlady didn't let any men in.. apart from her boyfriend, who lived in a converted shed at the bottom of the garden (I kid you not) and used to be let in occasionally for baths (and, I assume, sex)!

hester · 22/12/2004 13:11

Tinker, a right-on friend was explaining to her small daughter about gay couples recently, and she (the daughter) said, "I understand about ladies and ladies, Mummy, but how can two men get married? Who would wear the dress?"

Quite right too - what would be the POINT without a frock?

Original poster
motherinfestivemood · 22/12/2004 13:12

Surely the answer is 'both'? One white and one lavender?

OP posts:
Tinker · 22/12/2004 13:19

hester

happymerryberries · 22/12/2004 13:47

For all of you who knew Oxford in the early 80s, do you remember when one wit painted black above one cash dispenser and white above the other at Barclays in the Cornmarket???

And reclaim the night marches?

PamiNativity · 22/12/2004 13:53

HMB . Before my time! But I am smiling at the recollection of the Private Shop - can't remember if it was on Iffley or Cowley though!

feastofstevenmom · 22/12/2004 13:55

Cowley, PamiNa - well at least in my day anyway. Iffley was far too dull for anything like that.

hester · 22/12/2004 14:06

I certainly remember Reclaim the Night marches. 'Porn is the theory, rape is the practice' - at least until we decided to 'reclaim' porn and make it trendy again!

DingDongDinosaurOnHigh · 23/12/2004 16:30

Yes I do remember Reclaim the Night marches...jolly good they were too!

Missed the cashpoint one though...