Now we know who is middle class - next, who is posh?

[Takver]

following on from this thread I was tickled yesterday by two definitions of what is posh:

• talking to a friend about croquet, which I think is a really tedious game, her answer was that only posh people play croquet, and that the problem was that I was not posh enough . . .
• and description by dd's friend (age 8) of the woman her mum cleans for that she is 'really posh, she has double sky that you can record on as well as watch, and a fountain that looks like stone but is really made out of plastic, and loads of trophies from horseriding' So now I want the collective wisdom of MN - apart from croquet playing and fake stone fountains, what is really, really posh ?

Agree with the "no need to buy furniture" definition! A friend from university's family owns 5 houses around the country each stuffed to the rafters (and I mean stuffed) with various antiques handed down from long dead ancestors. Most are in woodwormy states of decay and not worth the scrap cost, but they'd use them before buying something new (and why not).

Indeed, the houses are dusty, cobwebby, covered in dog hair, horse hair, mud - but they never seem to notice!

They didn't take the photos, they were presents.

Boco Well beats those phil & teds discussions.....

of course you don't have to be posh to live under a thick crust of dust, cobwebs, dog and horse hair and mud

abetadad

Expats are almost always middle class.
A proper toff wouldn't spend an arm and a leg on a gym. In fact, I'm not sure they would even be a gym member, would they?

Gym bunny toff sounds all wrong.

It's the 21st century now, we'll need a new word for the gym bunny toff

Boco - That's hilarious. And are they nice people? Unhygienic and eccentric but welcoming in a bonkers kind of way?

I don't know what class I am, but I feel that I am properly posh as we fly out to DH's family in Malaysia every year and I make sure we fly on the north side of the plane each way (Port Out, Starboard Home). They don't chalk the acronym on our luggage though, so perhaps we are not really posh.

But interestingly all toffs over 50 are called Bunny.

NorkyButNice - it is true. I have a friend who lived in a house just like that - frankly it would have been condemned by the local authority as unfit for human habitation but it was the 'family seat' and he was not allowed to sell it.

What, male and female?

No just the women. The men are called Alan.

My granny does have a back passage in her house with a scullery, a gun room, a boot room, a servants' common room, a butler's scullery, a housekeeper's room and a servants' staircase leading off it, I suppose that is quite posh. Most of them are not used for the purpose that they were originally named for, but we still refer to them by those names.

at the NCT meeting.
I felt a bit the same on first going to university - fancied a go at the student paper - went along to a meeting - first person I met was called Gervase (truly) . . . I never went back. . .
Come to think of it I think being able to go through life called Gervase or Rupert without any scars must be a good definition of being posh.

Anyway, you lovely people. I am off to watch Mad Men and then bed.

Thanks for a great thread - It's been a larf.

Now that is not what my gran would have meant when talking about her back passage

Oh dear I just ticked off another four definitions. Beginning to feel a bit less classless now .

My next door neighbour in university halls was called Prudense.

She didn't have a suitcase, she had her brother' trunk that he took to boarding school.

She wss posh!

Are you called Gervase or Rupert, Betadad??? I want to know!

One of my ex bfs was at school with a boy who was the illegitimate offspring of a social worker and an Italian count. Another schoolfriend of theirs was invited to come for a visit in his palazzo. Anyway, at the airport he was made to remove his luggage from his cheap suitcases, leave the cases in the left luggage office, and decant his belongings into carrier bags. Because it was ok to be seen with things stuffed into the right kind of carrier bags but he could not be seen with cheap luggage.

Perhaps he's a Cecil.

Oh no - I still have my trunk from boarding school.

No I really have a very ordinary first name.

LOL at trunk. I went to Uni with an embarrassing suitcase, a duvet and lots of cardboard boxes.....

There is an easy toff self test:

Do you run the family estate?
Do you work as an agricultural surveyor?
Was your father or grandfather an MP?
Do you run an artisan business from the family estate?
Do your family own a brand (eg Smythson)?
Are you an Estate Agent with Strutt and Parker's Country House division and is your name Toby?
Is your great grandfather's house still in family ownership?

If you answer NO to all of the above, you are not a proper toff.

The funny thing is that when I went to college it was fine to be working class/lower middle class and fine to be upper class, the ones who were embarrassed and tried to hide their origins were the posh-ish but not very posh (private school but not Winchester sort of thing)