Surrey - Home to Britian's Most Prestigious Professionals and Executives

[PST7777]

Surrey has everything a woman of a certain class could ask for. Surrey is home to the top private primary schools in Britain, beautiful golf and tennis clubs, riding facilities, forests, hills, superb shopping in towns like Guildford, Godalming and Dorking, haute cuisine dining in restaurants for every taste, quick and easy train access to the City, Holborn, Bloomsbury or Harley Street if DH is employed in finance, the bar, academia or medicine. Simply paradise. I couldn't imagine why any woman who has been blessed with bounty could want to reside anywhere else.

X-posted. Meant about the gardener shagging?

Things like that just dont happen in Surrey dontcha know?

You reckon?! All those bored, upper middle class housewives who, when they aren't taking tea in Dorking, have nothing better to do whilst their husbands do their doctoring/banking/lawyering???!!!

Well according to earlier posts we are all dull people living in dullsville.

But you have now unearthered the truth- inbetween our gentle knitting and WI meetings everyone's at it with the gardener/milkman/ other bored housewifes. But dont tell anyone- they might find it too exciting!

I think the OP may be my MIL, she is a hideous snob.

No, no - not dull at all! Lots of WAGS and the type in (parts of) Surrey. Spent 7 years there myself, as the wife of a professional sportsman. Have moved just back into London now, though, for work reasons.

I had fun in Surrey. Didn't shag the gardener, though! To be fair, he was older than my dad and less attractive. Smelt a little composty, too ...

"as the wife of a professional sportsman"

Now Im intruiged... a footballer? In the Cobham area? Oh how exciting...

Why do I bother trying to educate some of you?

Let's get a few things straight. First off, I never had the audacity to suggest that I, or my family are upper class. We are what modern day sociologists term, upper middle-class. Upper class people are titled nobility or members of court. That means there are very few of them amongst us. Upper middle-class means you have a surplus of capital--whether that is in the form of money, as in someone who is a wealthy business owner, or it could be intellectual capital, such as an academic, barrister or a medic, or it could be cultural capital, such as an artist, writer, musician, etc. Either way, someone who is upper-middle-class is a step up above somebody who is plain white collar middle class, such as a secondary school teacher or accountant, as well as blue-collar working-class, be they skilled, semi-skilled or unskilled.

DH has a successful bond business in the City, my father was a barrister, my grandfather was a barrister, my great-grandfather owned a furniture manufacturing business, so I am, and was obviously brought up upper middle-class. Note again, I am not upper class, nor do I 'purport' to be. Like most upper middle class women, I was educated at private boarding schools and earned a degree from a well-regarded, well-established and very old English university. I live up to all the other stereotypes of an upper middle-class housewife, if you must know. I speak in RP English, I drive a Range Rover, I live in a 4 bedroom detatched house in a very genteel village located in a leafy area of Southwest Surrey. All of my neighbours work in either top level professions or are high ranking executives or civil servants in London. Some are even upper class old aristocricy, but they must work for a living because they, like most people born into one of those old families no longer are as monied as they were a hundred years ago.

Now, if you must feel compelled to ridicule me and the class from which I come from, please at least level your insults correctly and do not accuse me of being something I am not. Thank-you.

did anyone else get an 'Audrey FForbes-Hamilton' image in their head as they read the OP's latest post?

Did you do a little flounce and sniff as you walked away from the screen there, OP?

So would a penniless artist be upper middle class because they have "cultural capital"

What would a white collar, middle class person be with 300k cash in the bank? Would they be defined by their job or by the fact they have a surplus of capital?

I will never, ever, understand the British class system ...

Your hyphenation is terribly inconsistent for someone who went to boarding school and an old university, OP.

I think the op is fabulous!

Its like stepping back in time into a Jane Austen novel.

Don't feel threatened people- its all quite amusing and quaint if you take it with a pinch of salt....

Viva that's called 'status inconsistency'. Where your occupation basically gives you a certain status (or your education - see poor academics driving taxis to supplement income) but your income falls short.

As I live in Surrey, on the Surrey/Berkshire borders actually, I feel entitled to jump in and educate the rest of you lousy lot whilst OP is taking a well-deserved break .

"Yes, I'm aware that the Croydon's of this world do exist, and there's a lot of tacky new money within the stockbroker M25 beltway towns, but the remainder of Surrey is just as I describe it."

Man I kick your fooking arse if you cuss my 'ome taahhhnn again brah...

Sorry not your, that should in fact be yo

I really don't think you do speak in RP, OP. I've never heard / read such affectation.

I really do hope this is a wind-up. If not, I suggest you get together with the OP who posted a couple of weeks ago wanting suggestions for a high class name for her baby

Case in point:

and the class from which I come from

Oh dear, oh dear.

I love this OP. She's so very entertaining.

She also just 'promoted' me (as she sees it) to her beloved upper middle class on the basis of my profession (and intellectual capital). Awesome (and hilarious given how much everything about me, other than my job title, would offend the OP).

Obviously, I firmly believe the OP is trying to entertain us all rather than being truthful.

Yes, I think I've also been promoted by the OP to upper middle class on the basis of my intellectual capital, my cultural capital and the money I have in the bank. Do I get a prize for ticking all three boxes?

i have just read the OP's 'classometer' thread again and realise she has promoted DH to 'upper middle class', being a muso and all!!

can't wait to tell him when he rocks up later in his transit van

where is this classometer?

post 12.25:31, riven

t'is very entertaining informative

Hilarious!

I'm spending the next fortnight in Surrey as it happens (dh is working there over Summer so I thought I'd tag along so he doesn't get to spend all week in a posh hotel while I have both children all day during the holidays .As I live (whisper it) in the North do you think I'll have to demonstrate my professional credentials as I pull off the M25 in order to be allowed in to such a hallowed area?

Ahh I can see I've sunk my chances now - missing bracket in my last post. Clearly a demonstration of my lowly redbrick university education. Dh will have to divorce me - he is clearly Surrey material and I obviously am not.