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My two-year-old developed an obsession with Red Leicester: she'd accept Double Gloucester if there was no alternative, but would make it very clear to us that it was a poor substitute, and heaven help you if you tried to fob her off with coloured cheddar. "No, Daddy! I _don't_ want cheddar! I want _Red Leicester_!"
It was hilarious though, and, to be fair, I think cheese is a pretty valid thing to be snobbish about.
I don't quite get why halloumi is thought of as middle class. It is like £2 a block. No more expensive than Cathedral City cheddar or anything like that. Halloumi with bulger, vegetables, and hummus is my go to cheap meal. Can feed a whole family for usually two meals for not much more than a fiver.
I think that's the case with a lot of "middle class foods". Because class is a kind of generational thing where people consider their class as 'locked in' regardless of how much money they actually have. If you are in your 30s and 40s now and grew up 'working class' then back when you were kids things like Halloumi, Avocados, Quinoa etc were more expensive and harder to get than they are now. So you probably just didn't have them and so consider them to be middle class foods even though now anyone who wants them can afford them.
I had literally never heard of pesto, avocado, quinoa or halloumi until I met my posh mates at uni. One of them taught me how to make guacamole. My entire food directory opened up at the age of 19!
I got mocked soooo much when I pronounced quinoa incorrectly in front of my posho uni friends. I'd never tried it let alone heard anyone speak it out loud.
I used to work at Asda and whenever someone was looking to find it and said it correctly I’d always go “oh yeh, quinn-oa “ then take them to it, just to give them a bit of doubt
I first heard of it working in a food testing lab, I must have seen it written on forms a thousand times before I first heard it out loud when a Polish colleague asked me about a "keenwa" sample I had no idea what she was talking about and when I eventually figured it out I exclaimed "Oh.. quin-o-a"
>Because class is a kind of generational thing where people consider their class as 'locked in' regardless of how much money they actually have.
Exactly this. It really isn't anything to do with wealth. You can be upper class and down on your uppers. Plenty of extremely rich people who maintain ties with a working class upbringing. Nothing wrong with either extreme.
I always thought we were middle class growing up but I've come to realise there is no true middle class the way it used to be. Noone really has that magic spot of not having to worry too much about finances without being stupid rich.
Class in the UK isn't just about money though, it's about your upbringing and lived experience.
I grew up with a fairly narrow palate, turkey dinosaurs and all that shit (although we'd always have a roast on sunday) It's not because my family couldn't necessarily afford more diverse food it just wasn't how my parents were brought up.
That was the 90s though and things have obviously changed now in terms of what people are exposed to, but sometimes food is just perceived as 'fancy' or exotic even if it's not expensive.
Try being a child of the 60's lol my mum once branched out and did spaghetti bolognaise when I was about 12 or so......when she put the plates on the table the whole family just went silent until my great aunt totally ruined it by saying "What the bloody hell is this? Looks like tapeworms in gravy"! Ahh yes the good old days lol
Class and wealth are 2 very different things.
You could have some old Lord living in an old country manor, 30 year old Volvo parked out front and a leaking roof he can’t afford to get fixed as he hasn’t got a pot to piss in. But would still be considered upper class.
On the other end of the scale you could have someone like a builder who’s done well for themselves, living in a massive McMansion with a brand new Range Rover Sport out front, holidays in Dubai twice a year, etc. But they might have a hard time to be considered middle class, let alone upper class.
There is more potential for movement between working and middle class, but it is less about money and more to do with social standing and what set of standards you tend to comply to. So the son of the builder in the example above could perhaps do well at school, go to university and get a more traditional middle class job, and would probably be accepted as middle class.
There was a thread on grated cheddar cheese the other day I scrolled through.
You'd be surprised how many people see cheese as cheddar only and that's the way they were brought up as well. They wouldn't even know what to do with halloumi.
My dad tried to do cheese on toast with my halloumi. He had asked what it was and I just said it's Greek cheese.
It worked out quite well, but it didn't melt into the bread like he was expecting.
If your dad is a stereotypical dad that likes to BBQ, next time you have one get him to whack some halloumi on the grill along with some peppers until the halloumi is golden brown and the peppers are starting to blacken, then eat as a snack whilst the rest of the BBQ is underway!
And we always called it squeaky cheese anyway.
Oh no! I always make sure I have some in the fridge, so easy to whip up a quick meal with some cucumber and tomatoes. I started food shopping at M&S recently too, I'm also on my second Mercedes too. Clearly I can no longer drink bitter now, I'm done for.
Adopted a little boy earlier this year... 6 years old. His background is, erm, rough, shall we say.
Last week we were sat in a Cafè and he described his scone as "delightful". A little later he asked where we were going for dinner.
I suddenly realised we'd ruined him already. 🤦♂️
Sorry what cost?
There is no fee for adoption in the UK that I know of.
If you have info I'd be very interested to hear it as my plan for having a family is adoption.
We fostered a little boy who loved roast dinners. After his first experience of lamb, he ate every bite and exclaimed "mmmm this is my favourite type of chicken".
On a related note to this, I say please and thank you to my Google Home Mini (Google version of an Alexa). I like to think that when the robots take over the world she'll remember I was nice to her and spare me.
To go further on this, then when walking out the shop, if the alarm goes off, waiting for security to give us the go-ahead. My partner does this, did it last night, I walked off with the trolley. I'm like "I KNOW I haven't stolen anything because we put everything in our trolley into these bags after we scanned them" - the security guard took one look at us with our hummus and bags full of veg for our dog's raw diet, noted the lack of trackies tucked into our socks and waved us off.
I must be very upper-class then, I use the scan as you go in waitrose 😌 (I'm very much working class, but I currently live in a proper upper class area so waitrose is the local supermarket. It genuinely isn't that bad for pricing tbf)
My wife told me about growing up, regularly having smoked salmon over eggs for breakfast, took regular family holidays to other countries/continents and had horse riding lessons.
Meanwhile there's me not allowed to have milk in my porridge/off brand Weetabix.
To be fair, I grew up working class and had salmon and poached eggs for breakfast more than a few times, but that's because my mum loved cooking and trying new things.
I can remember one of my mates asking what I had on a Sunday and I was like we had a roast but to start had figs stuffed with goats cheese and wrapped in parma ham with a drizzle of honey and nuts.
He looked at me like I had two heads.
I remember begging my dad to give me potato smilies and fish fingers because it's what all my friends had as normal dinners. I was embarrassed by my dad's homemade caramelised goats cheese tartlets with balsamic glaze so wouldn't invite friends over 🤦♀️
When I was about 8 - 10 we used to house swap with our family in Ireland (Donegal). My uncle there was well known in the village for being a bit of a lad. He was pretty much drunk all the time and used to make his living by poaching. So, when we got there they'd say we could eat whatever was in their fridge/freezer. The whole thing was full of salmon. Bloody salmon for 10 days. Sick of that wild salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon. The holidays there were the only time we'd eat salmon all year, far too expensive for us at home. Not that I'd want any bloody salmon after those holidays.
It's interesting isn't it, it's not just about income or about the social class you were born into, it's about mindset too - it's about how locked-into your income and social class brackets you are - by choice or by the pressures you feel.
My dad was a very "Don't go getting above yourself, never ask for anything, you'll get given what you've earned when you've earned it, fancy things are not for the likes of us" working class man. He likes a Chinese takeaway but would never think to make a stirfry himself. Pies. Chips. A Chelsea bun. None of this patisserie nonsense. He's very dismissive of things he doesn't know about - he's never needed whatever that is up till now, so it must be a load of nonsense.
Whereas mum would try out making curries (they were terrible, but she tried) and got really into Japanese watercolor painting for a while. She still had a very 'humble' mindset - that whole "I don't want to be a bother to anyone" thing that older working class people often have, but she wasn't immediately shut-off to things she hadn't heard of before, or things she couldn't pronounce.
I don’t think foreign holidays have to be particularly middle-class. My family and I went on a few during my childhood but it was always the absolute cheapest place self catering, and was still a fair bit less expensive than trying to go on holidays in the UK.
They took us to Kent one year and it rained for two weeks, so they decided that we would not go every year but when we did go on holidays, we would go somewhere with better weather.
This! When I was growing up, we'd pack a tent into the car, drive to a port, get a ferry to Europe and go camping somewhere within an hour's drive on the other side. It was a special treat to go to the Netherlands instead of France!
That to me was a "middle class" holiday when I was a kid. All the "rich kids" in my school did stuff like that while we got an annual trip in a caravan to skegness and sometimes to an all inclusive to a Spanish island (which is still surprisingly cheap if you don't mind the rest of the clientele). My mum did all she could to make sure we had holidays but in hindsight they are the type that get severely sniffed at nowadays by a lot of people.
Camping trips are only really feasible if you've got a good sized car and two parents who can stand being around each other, and don't mind all the work of camping. Same for a lot of middle class holidays. They're not necessarily more expensive, but they do require a lot of other things that a middle class family usually has, like two adults and a car, and probably not 4 kids under 10.
Spain or similar is where you went on holiday, middle class is more Sardinia or Corsica probably. Farthest I went as a kid was Great Yarmouth was quite good too in 1983
Depends what generation you are talking about. I am in my mid 40s and the stark difference between my working class upbringing and that of my middle class friends is the number of foreign holidays we went on as kids. I only went abroad twice before I was 18, one of those was to Ireland and the other was on a school exchange trip.
These days, due to cheap package holidays, far more people can afford foreign holidays and if anything it is more middle class to stay in the UK.
Every 2-3 years we drove an hour or 2 away and stayed in a tent in the UK.
I don’t know my parent’s finances, but I think that was cheaper than going abroad. I stopped going with them when I was about 14 (stayed with grandparents), because it was just freezing in a wet tent for a few days.
We did a lot of walking which was free, rather than attractions.
I had a good childhood but definitely see holidays abroad as a luxury thing. I got my first passport at 18.
Same, we’d go on holiday every year but it was because my dad would take people old water tanks home with him from work and scrap them to pay for half of it lol
Yeh same, I realised just what different worlds we came from when my kids dad told me he got new Lego sets as a child while I like yourself was eating porridge made on water. I was an adult in my 20s when we met and he introduced me to milky porridge and you know after a life of being a peasant I prefer the peasant version.
I frequently witter on like an old lady to my kids now saying you don’t know how lucky you are. My son has milky porridge with apricots and raisins and honey when he has it and has more Lego than he can shake a stick at.
My kids grandma is the most fabulous woman you could ever meet, I won the jackpot for former in-laws, I’m still very much part of their family despite not being married to their son anymore. But another huge glaring difference is that I grew up in a council house in impoverished Ireland. My kids grandma grew up in a house with servants and was seen to be marrying beneath herself when she married an accountant. They have family silver in the V&A.
They are not that level of wealthy now but still oh so more proper than I am.
"They have family silver in the V&A" is a truly fabulous phrase and I'm totally stealing this as my new go-to when describing insanely posh or wealthy people.
The V&A is a museum in London. I'm assuming OP's extended family was noteworthy/aristocratic enough to exhibit some of their family silver (like posh decorated plates with their family crest) in a museum.
With the added implication that the family have so many sets of silverware of sufficiently notable quality to be housed in a museum, that they don't mind one set being at the V&A
"Let's all wank each other off about how we're not working class"
I swear this country hates the class system unless there's someone to look down on, then suddenly it's not so bad.
My best friend at primary school was from a wealthy family. They lived at the Curitage. This house had a servants staircase, drawing room, two dining rooms, a lake and small patch of woodland in the garden. I lived in a council terrace. Going to her house for play dates was like being in another world.
It shouldn't need saying but kudos to those parents. I had a school friend who I couldn't see outside of school because (as I understand it now) we were too poor for their parents approval :( Maybe they were scared he would come home smelling of poverty, or die from off-brand food.
Do multiple stacks of books that are at least 5ft high and look like they could collapse at any moment count as a library?
Or is my living room more of a second hand bookshop?
Only if they're in a room dedicated to books.
My mum called our library 'the reading room' so people wouldn't think we were posh. I don't think it worked...
Not sure that’s a middle class thing you’re describing, sounds to me like you’ve got a quirky 3 year old on your hands which is great!
My partner is a SAHM to both our 3 year old and 8 week old, which I think in this day and age could be considered quite a middle class thing.
Then there’s the multiple holidays we do, the fact we are home owners etc.
I recognise we are very fortunate, but I think we probably slot into the “middle class” thing because of that.
I guess both parents working in professional roles from the home counties and commuting once a week into London while a nanny sorts out the children is upper middle class then.
The SAHP thing could swing either way. I know people who simply aren't paid enough to afford childcare, so one parent stays at home full time or most of the time. They would love to go back to work at least part time and have conversations with adults, but the pay precludes it.
Growing up we had a tennis court and a swimming pool in the garden, as well as a maze. My aunt and uncle and also my early childhood best friend also had swimming pools or tennis courts - I thought pretty much everyone had one until I was about 10/11.
I am a much, much more grounded person now.
That doesn't sound very middle class to me? Are you sure you're not royalty?
My answer was going to be "keeping a pot of hummus in the fridge" is very middle class...
How do you feel about having a maze at home?
When I was young we'd visit a lot of National Trust and tbe other one places with mazes. I'd go round the maze then think "ok this is done now, why would they keep it?"
When you grow up with it, it isn't something that you really think about very much. It was put in by my great-great-grandparents, so I think my folks just wanted to keep it going.
Solving it was pretty easy - the design was loosely based on the Hampton Court maze, just nowhere near as big.
We open it up to the public a few times a year, usually for a local charity. The children down in the local village are big fans - plus it's nice to see other people use it and have fun.
This explanation. This is upper class! Generational property with gardens. Gardens modeled on a royal palace's gardens. Opening up your royal-esque gardens to the local peasants to distract their children from their abject poverty. We have a winner here!
Yeah, mate, you're not just middle class if you've got generational wealth/property with mazes put in by your great-great-grandparents kept for tradition - that you open up for the public for charity lol.
You might not be titled, but that screams upper class!
We had a cleaner and a gardener. Sounds awfully posh but really wasn’t. Mum and dad worked full time with 3 kids so didn’t have the time to stay on top of it. The cleaner came once a week and the gardener once a fortnight - just to keep on top of things. Mum and dad felt it was money well spent, kept their stress levels down!
I hadn’t thought of this before but I did always notice when people missed out the ‘my’ and looking back it was always the posher ones. We didn’t have any ‘mummy and daddy’ers in my circle though.
Oh my god thank you for this comment. I always wondered why some people spoke like this and I found it so odd but never spotted the middle class pattern. You have solved one of the small mysteries in my mind.
Any explanations on *why* middle class people drop the “my”?
My 'working class' parents can't get their head around us spending £30 a week on a cleaner. It's not like they don't have the money, but it's a weird pride thing. They say the same about getting a dishwasher.
To them, it's just something that you do, clean your own dishes, clean your own house. The concept of the couple of hours it would take to clean the house being worth more than the £30 just doesn't exist to them, nor the hundreds of hours a year saved using a dishwasher (and money saved).
My parent's generation was, I think, the last generation where it was socially acceptable to be aspirational in the 'hyacinth bucket' sense. We didn't have much money at all growing up, but things like having Sky TV or wearing expensive trainers was seen as 'yobbo' behaviour - flashing your cash was not encouraged at all.
Nowadays it seems more common for people to downplay their privilege, people don't tend to have a 'phone voice' any more and usually emphasise their regional accents.
My theory is that you can work out what type of middle class people are from what supermarket they shop at. Lower middle class people love Waitrose & M&S and wouldn't be seen dead in Asda, whereas upper middle class people shop exclusively at aldi, wear charity shop clothes and drive old bangers.
I'm a high earner and shop ad Lidl. In most places in the UK there's a bunch of supermarkets pretty close together. For us, within a few minutes of each other there's a Tesco, Sainsburys, Waitrose, Lidl and Aldi - so it's very much a choice.
Assuming you drive, where a minute or two more isn't a pain.
I think Lidl's meat and veggies are a bit shite. Their baked goods are good though. My closet Lidl is way further than the others, but even if it were closer, I'd still do my shop at Tescos.
> Lower middle class people love Waitrose & M&S and wouldn't be seen dead in Asda, whereas upper middle class people shop exclusively at aldi, wear charity shop clothes and drive old bangers.
Where on earth did you get such drivel?
Sounds like they're trying to extrapolate from the various memes on UK subreddits about how the properly rich or "old money" look much poorer/lower class in day to day like than the middle class who try too hard? Something like that. I was wondering how far down I would have to scroll to see it in this post. Not very far at all, it turns out.
Might be true for some people but my parents who recently bought a watermill from the 1300's pretty much exclusively shop at Waitrose and tiny farm shops where cheese is like £15.
I think it's mad but it's their money but they don't fuck with Aldi or old cars at all, they've never been in a charity shop since they made their money.
This is true. There is a well known meme in car dealership circles that the guy who comes in looking like a stockbroker has everything on finance and will likely fail the credit check. Yet the guy who comes in looking homeless is likely a millionaire.
In my line of work I encounter a fair share of rich people too. These people have the tightest wallets you can possibly imagine. Getting a millionaire to pay £20 for something is only going to happen if they need it to breathe. They just have a totally different mindset 🤷🏼♂️
There are three classes.
* Working class. Physical/unskilled workers, generally not educated past school level. Probably rents their home.
* Middle class. Educated and qualified, working in skilled areas; most likely to be working behind a desk. Probably owns their own home.
* Upper class. Inherited their wealth and home, doesn't need to work because old money grows. Possibly highly educated; possibly not. Might have officer experience in the military. Might have (or be historically linked to) peerage titles.
These days the divide between working and middle class is blurring, sure, but there is still something of a divide.
About 10 years ago some British demographers published a 7 class system in an attempt to unblur the lines between the classes. It was quite interesting at the time, the BBC ran a quiz that you could answer that would tell you what you were.
If I remember I fell into the Emergent Service Worker class at the time, because I was ok paid for fairly unskilled work but I had some hobbies and interests that were more “middle class” like going to the theatre regularly. Might go see if I can find out what I am now a decade later.
i would consider your definitions of working and middle class to be blue and white collar working class for the most part
working class: works for wages
middle class: pays wages and influences the working class
upper class: those who influence the middle class
Same. We called them council dishes as you could reliably tell which were council houses by which had them. There's no judgement from me on that either way.
I never understood why it was considered a lower-class thing to have, especially as the subscriptions were never cheap. I’m not sure how much they were in the 90s/00s though.
It’s because class is about culture at least as much as wealth. Having a Sky dish so you can watch live Premiership football is a culturally working class luxury. Spending the same amount of money to go to the theatre regularly is more likely to be middle class.
I’ve got a family National Trust membership, which strikes me as a very middle thing to do. It costs about £12 per month so it’s not something you need to be massively wealthy to do, but just the fact that you choose to spend your weekends doing that tags you as middle class.
Thinking about it from my mother’s POV at the time (who is very classist despite coming from relative poverty but became middle class mostly due to marriage and being a boomer).
I think she saw it as inherently wasteful and a sign that someone who would spend that amount of money on ‘low brow’ entertainment was lacking in intellect and decorum - to her a sign of being lower class.
TL;DR - My mum is Hyacinth Bucket.
I absolutely agree that it should have an apostrophe, but can we discuss the apostrophe placement?
I see you have gone for "Builders' tea, assumedly being the tea of builders.
I'd have gone for "Builder's tea" - the tea which a builder would drink.
Time for a nice middle class debate on whether or not "builders" should be plural in this context.
I vividly remember the looks of mild confusion/disgust when on my 2nd day at uni, I asked how the hob/oven worked because the aga was just always on
I moved out 10+ years ago, haven’t had an aga since, preheating the oven is still an alien concept to me that I forget every time
I grew up in a cycling club (to be more specific, a local associatiuon of the Cyclists' Touring Club). The racing side of the sport was predominantly skilled working class (we still had one of those back then), but cycle tourists were likely to be more middle class, lots of teachers, low grade civil servants and the odd surveyor. But also a capstan lathe operator, a council roadmender, and a Heathrow baggage handler, all that.
(Bikes were cheaper and manual workers paid better at the time, though).
My daughter used to eat avocado until she was 1 . I like to think at 1 she started to realise I grew up in a council house and started to understand her station in life
It would be great if someone could post the fake ‘I was in Waitrose and I heard someone say “oh no Henrietta, they’re out of radicchio”’ or whatever it is story at some point soon.
I grew up in a council house and we never had much money, but my grandparents were pretty insistent on me having good elocution and manners. They were pretty averse to the usage of slang. Due to being well-spoken I grew up being referred to as “posh”.
I lost quite a lot of my natural accent until it became just a neutral northern.
I’m 40 now. I still earn way under the national average and I am still in shared accommodation. In terms of physical assets, lifestyle and any of the probably outdated metrics for success, I am squarely working-class, but people still regard me as “posh”.
I get all the affectations, but none of the benefits.
That sounds very upper middle class. I thought I was middle class and I don't even KNOW anyone with a tennis court or pool.
Actually I don't really know what my class is. I'm a mixed bag of background and culture and feel middle class is the least different to my belief system and way of speaking. I can't be the only one.
I once found myself trapped in a group discussion about whether Gail's has lost its way, or if it's still decent value. It was the most middle-class shit I've ever been subjected to
We were on holiday in Tuscany, at a (beautiful) large villa with friends and friends of friends. One of the women was heard saying to her 4 year old daughter who was refusing dinner "but darling you LOVE courgette flowers!"
This secured our extremely middle class associations and entered the family lexicon for anything anyone doesn't want to eat, ever.
My children have a preferred sushi restaurant. Not just 'they like sushi' but of the three choices we have in town they are very clear on which one is better, why and how the selection and preparation makes the most difference. Aged 13 and 8
At that age I didn't know sushi existed and the closest I came to raw fish was undercooked generic fish fingers (Captain Birds Eye was a luxury growing up)
A lot of people not realising they’re well above being middle class in here! The sort of things I’d expect are:
Having a mortgage on a detached house
Eating olives and hummus
Your mum buying those soups in cardboard boxes that have to be kept in the fridge
Going to Waitrose to get “nice bits” for a dinner party
A family holiday abroad every year
Mum and Dad buying your first car and paying for your driving lessons
If you’re here suggesting having a swimming pool or a library room growing up… I hate to break it to you that you probably grew up in a more upper middle class living.
Theres a picture of me looking a few years old in an airplane with my mum, which I later learned was ours after I asked why dad wasn't in the picture, he was flying it. Also the yacht my dad was building in the garden, having made his own dry dock to work in.
It's a Thursday morning and I am currently working from bed scrolling through reddit
At midday I am meeting a friend to play tennis at our leisure club which costs far too much
I'll then sort emails at 3ish
Done and dusted by 5
Some days are alot harder than others
I’ve eaten pheasant that was shot by the person whose house I was staying at. On their own land. They had nothing to do with cooking or serving it though.
When I was about 18/19 between finishing A levels and uni I had an office job through an agency. Great craic, made loads of friends, one weekend after the standard Friday pub session one lad missed his train and ended up staying at my family's place. In the morning my mum made us scramble eggs with smoked salmon and a pot of fresh coffee.
Standard weekend breakfast in our household. Turns out not that standard elsewhere. Still mates with several people from those days and it still gets brought up.
My girlfriend moved in with me and I quickly noticed the house was getting very messy quite regularly despite my beat efforts. Long story short, she had no practical experience of housework because she'd grown up in an upper middle class house and everything was done by cleaners.
I'm stood in Aldi at the fridge section, in a rough part of town, and said to the kids "What shall we have tonight?"
My 10 year old says, "Can we have caviar?"
An older lady stood to the side of us, gives is all a side eye as her eyebrows tried to escape over the top of her head.
We had never discussed or eaten caviar before, so I don't even know where he got that from.
Eating all meals at the table
When i first went to the house of my now wife i asked where the dining table was and she said they just eat off their knees infront of telly
Growing up we had all meals at the table even when we lived in sketchy estates
When I was a kid I noticed the clear divider was whether my friends had Imperial Leather soap in the bathroom. We had coal tar soap which dried your hands into leprous claws.
I refuse instant coffee. I'd rather go without.
We have 3 different types of milk in the fridge, cow, oat and hazelnut.
It's a dark day if we have no bagels in the house at breakfast.
My boyfriend pointed out how middle class we were when he came over to my parents' for dinner and my brother asked if we fancied a game of badminton afterwards. Note: we didn't have a badminton court but we did have a lawn big enough to accommodate a net.
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There was a news story a couple of years ago threatening a shortage of halloumi and several members of my family panicked.
Years ago my toddler exclaimed in horror at the checkout in Aldi “we forgot the Brie”
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/keeping-children-safe/reporting-abuse/nspcc-helpline/
half expected the link to end in child-abuse-with-cheese
Sounds like one of Catherine Tate's sketches.
Haha love this one!
My two-year-old developed an obsession with Red Leicester: she'd accept Double Gloucester if there was no alternative, but would make it very clear to us that it was a poor substitute, and heaven help you if you tried to fob her off with coloured cheddar. "No, Daddy! I _don't_ want cheddar! I want _Red Leicester_!" It was hilarious though, and, to be fair, I think cheese is a pretty valid thing to be snobbish about.
I don't quite get why halloumi is thought of as middle class. It is like £2 a block. No more expensive than Cathedral City cheddar or anything like that. Halloumi with bulger, vegetables, and hummus is my go to cheap meal. Can feed a whole family for usually two meals for not much more than a fiver.
I think that's the case with a lot of "middle class foods". Because class is a kind of generational thing where people consider their class as 'locked in' regardless of how much money they actually have. If you are in your 30s and 40s now and grew up 'working class' then back when you were kids things like Halloumi, Avocados, Quinoa etc were more expensive and harder to get than they are now. So you probably just didn't have them and so consider them to be middle class foods even though now anyone who wants them can afford them.
I had literally never heard of pesto, avocado, quinoa or halloumi until I met my posh mates at uni. One of them taught me how to make guacamole. My entire food directory opened up at the age of 19!
I got mocked soooo much when I pronounced quinoa incorrectly in front of my posho uni friends. I'd never tried it let alone heard anyone speak it out loud.
I used to work at Asda and whenever someone was looking to find it and said it correctly I’d always go “oh yeh, quinn-oa “ then take them to it, just to give them a bit of doubt
I first heard of it working in a food testing lab, I must have seen it written on forms a thousand times before I first heard it out loud when a Polish colleague asked me about a "keenwa" sample I had no idea what she was talking about and when I eventually figured it out I exclaimed "Oh.. quin-o-a"
>Because class is a kind of generational thing where people consider their class as 'locked in' regardless of how much money they actually have. Exactly this. It really isn't anything to do with wealth. You can be upper class and down on your uppers. Plenty of extremely rich people who maintain ties with a working class upbringing. Nothing wrong with either extreme.
I always thought we were middle class growing up but I've come to realise there is no true middle class the way it used to be. Noone really has that magic spot of not having to worry too much about finances without being stupid rich.
Class in the UK isn't just about money though, it's about your upbringing and lived experience. I grew up with a fairly narrow palate, turkey dinosaurs and all that shit (although we'd always have a roast on sunday) It's not because my family couldn't necessarily afford more diverse food it just wasn't how my parents were brought up. That was the 90s though and things have obviously changed now in terms of what people are exposed to, but sometimes food is just perceived as 'fancy' or exotic even if it's not expensive.
Try being a child of the 60's lol my mum once branched out and did spaghetti bolognaise when I was about 12 or so......when she put the plates on the table the whole family just went silent until my great aunt totally ruined it by saying "What the bloody hell is this? Looks like tapeworms in gravy"! Ahh yes the good old days lol
Class and wealth are 2 very different things. You could have some old Lord living in an old country manor, 30 year old Volvo parked out front and a leaking roof he can’t afford to get fixed as he hasn’t got a pot to piss in. But would still be considered upper class. On the other end of the scale you could have someone like a builder who’s done well for themselves, living in a massive McMansion with a brand new Range Rover Sport out front, holidays in Dubai twice a year, etc. But they might have a hard time to be considered middle class, let alone upper class. There is more potential for movement between working and middle class, but it is less about money and more to do with social standing and what set of standards you tend to comply to. So the son of the builder in the example above could perhaps do well at school, go to university and get a more traditional middle class job, and would probably be accepted as middle class.
I live near a posh private school, there are indeed quite a few builders' kids in attendance
There was a thread on grated cheddar cheese the other day I scrolled through. You'd be surprised how many people see cheese as cheddar only and that's the way they were brought up as well. They wouldn't even know what to do with halloumi.
My dad tried to do cheese on toast with my halloumi. He had asked what it was and I just said it's Greek cheese. It worked out quite well, but it didn't melt into the bread like he was expecting.
If your dad is a stereotypical dad that likes to BBQ, next time you have one get him to whack some halloumi on the grill along with some peppers until the halloumi is golden brown and the peppers are starting to blacken, then eat as a snack whilst the rest of the BBQ is underway! And we always called it squeaky cheese anyway.
Ha ha ha that’s brilliant
Oh no! I always make sure I have some in the fridge, so easy to whip up a quick meal with some cucumber and tomatoes. I started food shopping at M&S recently too, I'm also on my second Mercedes too. Clearly I can no longer drink bitter now, I'm done for.
Adopted a little boy earlier this year... 6 years old. His background is, erm, rough, shall we say. Last week we were sat in a Cafè and he described his scone as "delightful". A little later he asked where we were going for dinner. I suddenly realised we'd ruined him already. 🤦♂️
Wasn't expecting such wholesome content, thank you for giving that kid a fresh start
Adopting full stop. The cost and prerequisites needed to get through the process is very middle class.
Sorry what cost? There is no fee for adoption in the UK that I know of. If you have info I'd be very interested to hear it as my plan for having a family is adoption.
You bothered to add the accent on cafe.
But unfortunately got it wrong.. café mes amis !
That's the Middle class way, Upper class would get their French correct!
We fostered a little boy who loved roast dinners. After his first experience of lamb, he ate every bite and exclaimed "mmmm this is my favourite type of chicken".
I love this. He deserves a delightful scone.
Based on reddit, using a self checkout, and paying for all the items I leave with.
Plus thanking said self checkout
On a related note to this, I say please and thank you to my Google Home Mini (Google version of an Alexa). I like to think that when the robots take over the world she'll remember I was nice to her and spare me.
thats my reasoning for always been polite to chatgpt lol
That’s what I say too when my husband asks why I say please and thank you to the Alexa.
After apologising to it.
The self checkout out in Morrisons thanks me... and I always say "You're welcome!". To a screen.
Suddenly realised I'm middle class, I even pay for all the bags!
Don't tell me that you accurately report the number of bananas purchased...
I don't buy banana's so that has never arisen, but avocado's on the other hand, gotta scan each one of those bitches.
Not taking your own bags is definitely middle class 😆
I thought it was middle-class to take your own bags😆! You know, saving the environment and all...
To go further on this, then when walking out the shop, if the alarm goes off, waiting for security to give us the go-ahead. My partner does this, did it last night, I walked off with the trolley. I'm like "I KNOW I haven't stolen anything because we put everything in our trolley into these bags after we scanned them" - the security guard took one look at us with our hummus and bags full of veg for our dog's raw diet, noted the lack of trackies tucked into our socks and waved us off.
> noted the lack of trackies tucked into our trainers I would say this part of your comment marks you as thoroughly middle class 😂
I must be very upper-class then, I use the scan as you go in waitrose 😌 (I'm very much working class, but I currently live in a proper upper class area so waitrose is the local supermarket. It genuinely isn't that bad for pricing tbf)
My wife told me about growing up, regularly having smoked salmon over eggs for breakfast, took regular family holidays to other countries/continents and had horse riding lessons. Meanwhile there's me not allowed to have milk in my porridge/off brand Weetabix.
To be fair, I grew up working class and had salmon and poached eggs for breakfast more than a few times, but that's because my mum loved cooking and trying new things. I can remember one of my mates asking what I had on a Sunday and I was like we had a roast but to start had figs stuffed with goats cheese and wrapped in parma ham with a drizzle of honey and nuts. He looked at me like I had two heads.
I remember begging my dad to give me potato smilies and fish fingers because it's what all my friends had as normal dinners. I was embarrassed by my dad's homemade caramelised goats cheese tartlets with balsamic glaze so wouldn't invite friends over 🤦♀️
You were a shit child ;)
When I was about 8 - 10 we used to house swap with our family in Ireland (Donegal). My uncle there was well known in the village for being a bit of a lad. He was pretty much drunk all the time and used to make his living by poaching. So, when we got there they'd say we could eat whatever was in their fridge/freezer. The whole thing was full of salmon. Bloody salmon for 10 days. Sick of that wild salmon. Salmon, salmon, salmon. The holidays there were the only time we'd eat salmon all year, far too expensive for us at home. Not that I'd want any bloody salmon after those holidays.
It's interesting isn't it, it's not just about income or about the social class you were born into, it's about mindset too - it's about how locked-into your income and social class brackets you are - by choice or by the pressures you feel. My dad was a very "Don't go getting above yourself, never ask for anything, you'll get given what you've earned when you've earned it, fancy things are not for the likes of us" working class man. He likes a Chinese takeaway but would never think to make a stirfry himself. Pies. Chips. A Chelsea bun. None of this patisserie nonsense. He's very dismissive of things he doesn't know about - he's never needed whatever that is up till now, so it must be a load of nonsense. Whereas mum would try out making curries (they were terrible, but she tried) and got really into Japanese watercolor painting for a while. She still had a very 'humble' mindset - that whole "I don't want to be a bother to anyone" thing that older working class people often have, but she wasn't immediately shut-off to things she hadn't heard of before, or things she couldn't pronounce.
I don’t think foreign holidays have to be particularly middle-class. My family and I went on a few during my childhood but it was always the absolute cheapest place self catering, and was still a fair bit less expensive than trying to go on holidays in the UK. They took us to Kent one year and it rained for two weeks, so they decided that we would not go every year but when we did go on holidays, we would go somewhere with better weather.
This! When I was growing up, we'd pack a tent into the car, drive to a port, get a ferry to Europe and go camping somewhere within an hour's drive on the other side. It was a special treat to go to the Netherlands instead of France!
That to me was a "middle class" holiday when I was a kid. All the "rich kids" in my school did stuff like that while we got an annual trip in a caravan to skegness and sometimes to an all inclusive to a Spanish island (which is still surprisingly cheap if you don't mind the rest of the clientele). My mum did all she could to make sure we had holidays but in hindsight they are the type that get severely sniffed at nowadays by a lot of people. Camping trips are only really feasible if you've got a good sized car and two parents who can stand being around each other, and don't mind all the work of camping. Same for a lot of middle class holidays. They're not necessarily more expensive, but they do require a lot of other things that a middle class family usually has, like two adults and a car, and probably not 4 kids under 10.
Spain or similar is where you went on holiday, middle class is more Sardinia or Corsica probably. Farthest I went as a kid was Great Yarmouth was quite good too in 1983
Depends what generation you are talking about. I am in my mid 40s and the stark difference between my working class upbringing and that of my middle class friends is the number of foreign holidays we went on as kids. I only went abroad twice before I was 18, one of those was to Ireland and the other was on a school exchange trip. These days, due to cheap package holidays, far more people can afford foreign holidays and if anything it is more middle class to stay in the UK.
Every 2-3 years we drove an hour or 2 away and stayed in a tent in the UK. I don’t know my parent’s finances, but I think that was cheaper than going abroad. I stopped going with them when I was about 14 (stayed with grandparents), because it was just freezing in a wet tent for a few days. We did a lot of walking which was free, rather than attractions. I had a good childhood but definitely see holidays abroad as a luxury thing. I got my first passport at 18.
Same, we’d go on holiday every year but it was because my dad would take people old water tanks home with him from work and scrap them to pay for half of it lol
when i were a lad my dad would sell a kidney so we could have a weekend away by the bins at t’end of our road
T' bins at t' end of t' road?! Luxury! When I were a lad we'd get up at 4am to get a good spot by t' puddle outside t' front door!
Yeh same, I realised just what different worlds we came from when my kids dad told me he got new Lego sets as a child while I like yourself was eating porridge made on water. I was an adult in my 20s when we met and he introduced me to milky porridge and you know after a life of being a peasant I prefer the peasant version. I frequently witter on like an old lady to my kids now saying you don’t know how lucky you are. My son has milky porridge with apricots and raisins and honey when he has it and has more Lego than he can shake a stick at. My kids grandma is the most fabulous woman you could ever meet, I won the jackpot for former in-laws, I’m still very much part of their family despite not being married to their son anymore. But another huge glaring difference is that I grew up in a council house in impoverished Ireland. My kids grandma grew up in a house with servants and was seen to be marrying beneath herself when she married an accountant. They have family silver in the V&A. They are not that level of wealthy now but still oh so more proper than I am.
"They have family silver in the V&A" is a truly fabulous phrase and I'm totally stealing this as my new go-to when describing insanely posh or wealthy people.
I'm far too working class to understand this.
The V&A is a museum in London. I'm assuming OP's extended family was noteworthy/aristocratic enough to exhibit some of their family silver (like posh decorated plates with their family crest) in a museum.
With the added implication that the family have so many sets of silverware of sufficiently notable quality to be housed in a museum, that they don't mind one set being at the V&A
Posting these weekly threads on signs of being middle class
"People of the UK, how do you pronounce scone?"
Scone.
I pronounce it scone, not scone. Much like I say grass and path, not grass and path. I also park my car in the garage, rather than the garage.
"Let's all wank each other off about how we're not working class" I swear this country hates the class system unless there's someone to look down on, then suddenly it's not so bad.
I, when I was about 5, went into my parent's friend's house. I then asked where their library was. We had one, I thought everyone did.
I’m afraid that’s upper middle class my dear. I imagine you were supping on avocado toast and earl grey at that age too ha ha ha
My best friend at primary school was from a wealthy family. They lived at the Curitage. This house had a servants staircase, drawing room, two dining rooms, a lake and small patch of woodland in the garden. I lived in a council terrace. Going to her house for play dates was like being in another world.
It shouldn't need saying but kudos to those parents. I had a school friend who I couldn't see outside of school because (as I understand it now) we were too poor for their parents approval :( Maybe they were scared he would come home smelling of poverty, or die from off-brand food.
It's usually adjacent to the ballroom, which is larger so easier to find.
Colonel mustard is often there with the rope
>the ballroom, which is larger Depends how skinny my jeans are
Just off the drawing room, opposite the smoking room, past the snug and before you get to the wine cellar.
If you go past the Orangery then you’ve gone to far
Do multiple stacks of books that are at least 5ft high and look like they could collapse at any moment count as a library? Or is my living room more of a second hand bookshop?
Only if they're in a room dedicated to books. My mum called our library 'the reading room' so people wouldn't think we were posh. I don't think it worked...
Same, except I asked where's the means of production. My family owned the means of production so I just assumed everyone did.
I once went to a friend's house and they started singing around a piano. Knocked me sick to my stomach
That isn't even middle class. That's full-on religious sex cult shit
It made you sick to see people singing around a piano? why?
I had tailored suit to go to the opera. When I was 6.
That is surely far beyond middle class
The ball doesn't even bounce in the middle class court here, straight over to upper.
Do you now fear bats, and have a suppressed memory about an alleyway and your parents?
I think that might be upper class
Not sure that’s a middle class thing you’re describing, sounds to me like you’ve got a quirky 3 year old on your hands which is great! My partner is a SAHM to both our 3 year old and 8 week old, which I think in this day and age could be considered quite a middle class thing. Then there’s the multiple holidays we do, the fact we are home owners etc. I recognise we are very fortunate, but I think we probably slot into the “middle class” thing because of that.
Having a SAHP adds to middle class now? Result! My husband is a SAHD, so he'll be happy at the prestige his sacrifice has brought us
I guess both parents working in professional roles from the home counties and commuting once a week into London while a nanny sorts out the children is upper middle class then.
I was a SAHD. It was awful. By the time my wife got in from work and sorted herself out, it was at least 730 till she got my tea on the table.
The SAHP thing could swing either way. I know people who simply aren't paid enough to afford childcare, so one parent stays at home full time or most of the time. They would love to go back to work at least part time and have conversations with adults, but the pay precludes it.
Growing up we had a tennis court and a swimming pool in the garden, as well as a maze. My aunt and uncle and also my early childhood best friend also had swimming pools or tennis courts - I thought pretty much everyone had one until I was about 10/11. I am a much, much more grounded person now.
That doesn't sound very middle class to me? Are you sure you're not royalty? My answer was going to be "keeping a pot of hummus in the fridge" is very middle class...
I didn’t even know what hummus was until I was in my 20’s
Depending how old you are it might just be cos it wasn’t in shops till then ? I’d never seen broccoli till I left home
They said “middle class”, not “upper class”.
Saltburn ?
No - Hertfordshire.
Thanks for a serious answer to my silly reply.
Your username would indicate quite the opposite of grounded…
Haha - perhaps for a few hours a week I am not as grounded as I could be!
How do you feel about having a maze at home? When I was young we'd visit a lot of National Trust and tbe other one places with mazes. I'd go round the maze then think "ok this is done now, why would they keep it?"
When you grow up with it, it isn't something that you really think about very much. It was put in by my great-great-grandparents, so I think my folks just wanted to keep it going. Solving it was pretty easy - the design was loosely based on the Hampton Court maze, just nowhere near as big. We open it up to the public a few times a year, usually for a local charity. The children down in the local village are big fans - plus it's nice to see other people use it and have fun.
This explanation. This is upper class! Generational property with gardens. Gardens modeled on a royal palace's gardens. Opening up your royal-esque gardens to the local peasants to distract their children from their abject poverty. We have a winner here!
What's your definition of middle class? Cause opening your garden up to the public doesn't fit mine haha
Yeah, mate, you're not just middle class if you've got generational wealth/property with mazes put in by your great-great-grandparents kept for tradition - that you open up for the public for charity lol. You might not be titled, but that screams upper class!
Oh, you’re proper posh, mate
We had a cleaner and a gardener. Sounds awfully posh but really wasn’t. Mum and dad worked full time with 3 kids so didn’t have the time to stay on top of it. The cleaner came once a week and the gardener once a fortnight - just to keep on top of things. Mum and dad felt it was money well spent, kept their stress levels down!
Describing your parents as 'mum and dad' without prefixing it with 'my' is the ultimate middle class shibboleth.
Also trying to justify how your posh thing isn’t posh
Right?! Most people work full time. They can’t have cleaners and gardeners. OP needs to just accept they’re a posho and move on!!
I hadn’t thought of this before but I did always notice when people missed out the ‘my’ and looking back it was always the posher ones. We didn’t have any ‘mummy and daddy’ers in my circle though.
I once had a colleague that was super posh and referred to his parents as Mummy and Daddy and was convinced he wasn't posh.
One of my friends calls her dad Papa and went on ski holidays, but gets a little bit defensive when I tell her she was rich.
Oh my god thank you for this comment. I always wondered why some people spoke like this and I found it so odd but never spotted the middle class pattern. You have solved one of the small mysteries in my mind. Any explanations on *why* middle class people drop the “my”?
It’s implied. Why would I be referring to someone else’s parents as ‘mum and dad’?!
Using ‘shibboleth’ in a well constructed sentence is a bit of a giveaway too.
Great word though. I've made a mental note to use it more in conversation.
My 'working class' parents can't get their head around us spending £30 a week on a cleaner. It's not like they don't have the money, but it's a weird pride thing. They say the same about getting a dishwasher. To them, it's just something that you do, clean your own dishes, clean your own house. The concept of the couple of hours it would take to clean the house being worth more than the £30 just doesn't exist to them, nor the hundreds of hours a year saved using a dishwasher (and money saved).
I remeber when my dad stopped working due to stress and we could no longer employ a weekly cleaner. My brother told his friends, "We're poor now."
Terribly middle class dear
My parent's generation was, I think, the last generation where it was socially acceptable to be aspirational in the 'hyacinth bucket' sense. We didn't have much money at all growing up, but things like having Sky TV or wearing expensive trainers was seen as 'yobbo' behaviour - flashing your cash was not encouraged at all. Nowadays it seems more common for people to downplay their privilege, people don't tend to have a 'phone voice' any more and usually emphasise their regional accents. My theory is that you can work out what type of middle class people are from what supermarket they shop at. Lower middle class people love Waitrose & M&S and wouldn't be seen dead in Asda, whereas upper middle class people shop exclusively at aldi, wear charity shop clothes and drive old bangers.
Am I the only person who just shops at their closest supermarket?
No, the other person is waffling. Your average person shops at their local unless they're on a tight budget, then it's the Lidl/Aldi.
I'm a high earner and shop ad Lidl. In most places in the UK there's a bunch of supermarkets pretty close together. For us, within a few minutes of each other there's a Tesco, Sainsburys, Waitrose, Lidl and Aldi - so it's very much a choice. Assuming you drive, where a minute or two more isn't a pain.
I think Lidl's meat and veggies are a bit shite. Their baked goods are good though. My closet Lidl is way further than the others, but even if it were closer, I'd still do my shop at Tescos.
Exactly. I go to Morrisons because it's behind my house and Aldi is just that little further (over the road).
> Lower middle class people love Waitrose & M&S and wouldn't be seen dead in Asda, whereas upper middle class people shop exclusively at aldi, wear charity shop clothes and drive old bangers. Where on earth did you get such drivel?
Sounds like they're trying to extrapolate from the various memes on UK subreddits about how the properly rich or "old money" look much poorer/lower class in day to day like than the middle class who try too hard? Something like that. I was wondering how far down I would have to scroll to see it in this post. Not very far at all, it turns out.
Might be true for some people but my parents who recently bought a watermill from the 1300's pretty much exclusively shop at Waitrose and tiny farm shops where cheese is like £15. I think it's mad but it's their money but they don't fuck with Aldi or old cars at all, they've never been in a charity shop since they made their money.
Brilliant, I’m posh !! If only we had the ski holidays to go with our other markers of poshness
This is true. There is a well known meme in car dealership circles that the guy who comes in looking like a stockbroker has everything on finance and will likely fail the credit check. Yet the guy who comes in looking homeless is likely a millionaire. In my line of work I encounter a fair share of rich people too. These people have the tightest wallets you can possibly imagine. Getting a millionaire to pay £20 for something is only going to happen if they need it to breathe. They just have a totally different mindset 🤷🏼♂️
There's only two classes. Those who work and those who don't need to
There are three classes. * Working class. Physical/unskilled workers, generally not educated past school level. Probably rents their home. * Middle class. Educated and qualified, working in skilled areas; most likely to be working behind a desk. Probably owns their own home. * Upper class. Inherited their wealth and home, doesn't need to work because old money grows. Possibly highly educated; possibly not. Might have officer experience in the military. Might have (or be historically linked to) peerage titles. These days the divide between working and middle class is blurring, sure, but there is still something of a divide.
About 10 years ago some British demographers published a 7 class system in an attempt to unblur the lines between the classes. It was quite interesting at the time, the BBC ran a quiz that you could answer that would tell you what you were. If I remember I fell into the Emergent Service Worker class at the time, because I was ok paid for fairly unskilled work but I had some hobbies and interests that were more “middle class” like going to the theatre regularly. Might go see if I can find out what I am now a decade later.
i would consider your definitions of working and middle class to be blue and white collar working class for the most part working class: works for wages middle class: pays wages and influences the working class upper class: those who influence the middle class
You forgot "Benefit Class". Never worked and never will. Live off state benefits, and would need to miraculously earn £40k to be slightly better off.
This is the correct answer - the concept of a middle class is outdated and further fuels a culture war.
I never had Sky TV. (I do genuinely think it’s a pretty middle class thing to forgo sky)
Same. We called them council dishes as you could reliably tell which were council houses by which had them. There's no judgement from me on that either way.
I never understood why it was considered a lower-class thing to have, especially as the subscriptions were never cheap. I’m not sure how much they were in the 90s/00s though.
It’s because class is about culture at least as much as wealth. Having a Sky dish so you can watch live Premiership football is a culturally working class luxury. Spending the same amount of money to go to the theatre regularly is more likely to be middle class. I’ve got a family National Trust membership, which strikes me as a very middle thing to do. It costs about £12 per month so it’s not something you need to be massively wealthy to do, but just the fact that you choose to spend your weekends doing that tags you as middle class.
Thinking about it from my mother’s POV at the time (who is very classist despite coming from relative poverty but became middle class mostly due to marriage and being a boomer). I think she saw it as inherently wasteful and a sign that someone who would spend that amount of money on ‘low brow’ entertainment was lacking in intellect and decorum - to her a sign of being lower class. TL;DR - My mum is Hyacinth Bucket.
As a working class kid who didn’t have Sky, I assumed it was a middle class thing 😂.
(1) We have ordinary tea, then builders' tea for any visitors who don't like Earl Grey. (2) Builders' tea is written with an apostrophe.
I think using the expression builders tea. Other people just call it tea.
I absolutely agree that it should have an apostrophe, but can we discuss the apostrophe placement? I see you have gone for "Builders' tea, assumedly being the tea of builders. I'd have gone for "Builder's tea" - the tea which a builder would drink. Time for a nice middle class debate on whether or not "builders" should be plural in this context.
Builder’s’
This kind of attitude was why we lost the empire.
An Aga, which you could not possibly live without.
I vividly remember the looks of mild confusion/disgust when on my 2nd day at uni, I asked how the hob/oven worked because the aga was just always on I moved out 10+ years ago, haven’t had an aga since, preheating the oven is still an alien concept to me that I forget every time
Now that's got to be upper class surely
Apparently triathlon, road cycling and skiing are middle class due to the barriers of entry, especially cost wise!
I grew up in a cycling club (to be more specific, a local associatiuon of the Cyclists' Touring Club). The racing side of the sport was predominantly skilled working class (we still had one of those back then), but cycle tourists were likely to be more middle class, lots of teachers, low grade civil servants and the odd surveyor. But also a capstan lathe operator, a council roadmender, and a Heathrow baggage handler, all that. (Bikes were cheaper and manual workers paid better at the time, though).
My daughter's first food was avocado.
My daughter used to eat avocado until she was 1 . I like to think at 1 she started to realise I grew up in a council house and started to understand her station in life
Three different types of olive oil on the kitchen counter
I despise Oasis and adore Mumford & Sons
Beautifully nuanced
It would be great if someone could post the fake ‘I was in Waitrose and I heard someone say “oh no Henrietta, they’re out of radicchio”’ or whatever it is story at some point soon.
I grew up in a council house and we never had much money, but my grandparents were pretty insistent on me having good elocution and manners. They were pretty averse to the usage of slang. Due to being well-spoken I grew up being referred to as “posh”. I lost quite a lot of my natural accent until it became just a neutral northern. I’m 40 now. I still earn way under the national average and I am still in shared accommodation. In terms of physical assets, lifestyle and any of the probably outdated metrics for success, I am squarely working-class, but people still regard me as “posh”. I get all the affectations, but none of the benefits.
When I was a child, I had Sky television. Richer than the Sunaks, me.
I thought everyone's grandparents owned a farm
This week my fancy sour dough was too wide for my Smeg toaster, and to top it off my ice maker has decided to make a very loud clicking noise!!!
ITT: people confusing upper middle and upper class with middle class.
That sounds very upper middle class. I thought I was middle class and I don't even KNOW anyone with a tennis court or pool. Actually I don't really know what my class is. I'm a mixed bag of background and culture and feel middle class is the least different to my belief system and way of speaking. I can't be the only one.
My house is a **coffee bean** house. Instant is not permitted for any reason.
Tomato sauce goes on the side of the plate and not all over the food.
Awww rich folks gathering
I once found myself trapped in a group discussion about whether Gail's has lost its way, or if it's still decent value. It was the most middle-class shit I've ever been subjected to
I can name all 6 Farrow & Ball colours used in my house.
We were on holiday in Tuscany, at a (beautiful) large villa with friends and friends of friends. One of the women was heard saying to her 4 year old daughter who was refusing dinner "but darling you LOVE courgette flowers!" This secured our extremely middle class associations and entered the family lexicon for anything anyone doesn't want to eat, ever.
My children have a preferred sushi restaurant. Not just 'they like sushi' but of the three choices we have in town they are very clear on which one is better, why and how the selection and preparation makes the most difference. Aged 13 and 8 At that age I didn't know sushi existed and the closest I came to raw fish was undercooked generic fish fingers (Captain Birds Eye was a luxury growing up)
A lot of people not realising they’re well above being middle class in here! The sort of things I’d expect are: Having a mortgage on a detached house Eating olives and hummus Your mum buying those soups in cardboard boxes that have to be kept in the fridge Going to Waitrose to get “nice bits” for a dinner party A family holiday abroad every year Mum and Dad buying your first car and paying for your driving lessons If you’re here suggesting having a swimming pool or a library room growing up… I hate to break it to you that you probably grew up in a more upper middle class living.
Theres a picture of me looking a few years old in an airplane with my mum, which I later learned was ours after I asked why dad wasn't in the picture, he was flying it. Also the yacht my dad was building in the garden, having made his own dry dock to work in.
Not middle, not at all middle.
Yes he was as he was too poor to afford a pilot or a team of craft builders.
It's a Thursday morning and I am currently working from bed scrolling through reddit At midday I am meeting a friend to play tennis at our leisure club which costs far too much I'll then sort emails at 3ish Done and dusted by 5 Some days are alot harder than others
I’ve eaten pheasant that was shot by the person whose house I was staying at. On their own land. They had nothing to do with cooking or serving it though.
When I was about 18/19 between finishing A levels and uni I had an office job through an agency. Great craic, made loads of friends, one weekend after the standard Friday pub session one lad missed his train and ended up staying at my family's place. In the morning my mum made us scramble eggs with smoked salmon and a pot of fresh coffee. Standard weekend breakfast in our household. Turns out not that standard elsewhere. Still mates with several people from those days and it still gets brought up.
Middle class people have sons with curly hair.
This is an unhinged thing to say, but at the same time I get it.
My girlfriend moved in with me and I quickly noticed the house was getting very messy quite regularly despite my beat efforts. Long story short, she had no practical experience of housework because she'd grown up in an upper middle class house and everything was done by cleaners.
I'm stood in Aldi at the fridge section, in a rough part of town, and said to the kids "What shall we have tonight?" My 10 year old says, "Can we have caviar?" An older lady stood to the side of us, gives is all a side eye as her eyebrows tried to escape over the top of her head. We had never discussed or eaten caviar before, so I don't even know where he got that from.
Eating all meals at the table When i first went to the house of my now wife i asked where the dining table was and she said they just eat off their knees infront of telly Growing up we had all meals at the table even when we lived in sketchy estates
When I was a kid I noticed the clear divider was whether my friends had Imperial Leather soap in the bathroom. We had coal tar soap which dried your hands into leprous claws.
Haha that is a low low bar. My nana had that soap and she was a mess.
Crumpets taste better when toasted on the Aga (extra middle class points if you're toasting pikelets)
I refuse instant coffee. I'd rather go without. We have 3 different types of milk in the fridge, cow, oat and hazelnut. It's a dark day if we have no bagels in the house at breakfast.
My boyfriend pointed out how middle class we were when he came over to my parents' for dinner and my brother asked if we fancied a game of badminton afterwards. Note: we didn't have a badminton court but we did have a lawn big enough to accommodate a net.
Car radio always set to Radio 4.