What does middle class mean to you?

For my dad, born into a South Yorkshire mining community, middle class was being able to afford to spread jam right to the edge of your bread.

" I was eventually sent to private boarding school, had ballet lessons, joined the Brownies, went riding, grew up in a semi/d house in suburbia "

Oh Gally, that's the kind of childhood I read about and dreamed of having

Gally Harvey Nicks is okay for the upper middles and some House of Fraser stores but Harrods is a bit nouveau these days.

The British class system, which is, I reckon, unique is alive and well and adapting to changes in the world as time goes by, although not very fast. You could spend a lifetime studying it and still not fully appreciate all its nuances. I find it fascinating in the same way as I find watching a sidewinder snake fascinating.

Baubs it was written very much tongue in cheek (you know me) but it certainly wasn't all it was cracked up to be - especially the boarding school bit.

I hated boarding school

Gally & Jeni please don't disillusion me, in my imagination I grew up in the Chalet School.

absent I gave up shopping in Harrods (if only!) when Mr. Al Fayed bought it - principals have to be upheld you know , although I would like to be able to shop in Hamleys - haven't been there since I was taken to see Father Christmas about 56 years ago. Does Hamleys register on the UMC list?

I think that the 'The Middle Class ABC' will have to be really good to beat the comments on this thread.

Gally I agree about Harrods – that's why it became a bit nouveau. Hasn't Hamleys been taken over by some damned foreigners?

My sister and I would read all the Mallory Tower books and then act out the stories - we were always the heroines, of course. I would actually have been devastated if I had been sent away from my mother! My own very poor (materially) childhood was possibly the impetus for me to work very hard so my own daughters could have a 'Janet and John' childhood. We sacrificed a great deal to give them horses and a house with paddocks and stables. As it happened, they loathed the pony club set but they did enjoy the riding.
Eight of my ten grandchildren will eventually have degrees, but the most highly qualified so far has been unable to get a job. With so many graduates working in call centres, the link between higher education and employment appears to have been broken. Let us hope that everybody will be able to find some work that satisfies them at some point in the future.

France is riddled with class distinctions - it is quite amusing how many people still style themselves 'Comte de...' over 200 years after they were supposed to sweep away all titles and privilege.

Well Absent to put it bluntly, I think the UK in general is gradually being taken over by 'other people' so do you think we will become a totally classless society in the end? [little men/women from space emoticon]

'Other people' tend to bring their own class distinctions with them. The only prejudice I ever saw in my huge government office in London was when a high caste Indian refused to work with a person of a lower caste.

It's perfectly possible to live on a council estate and be middle-class. But those middle-class values are usually rigorously defended against the surrounding hordes of undesirables with mothers declining to allow their children out to play.

I used to read Enid Blyton as a child. 'Bunty of the 6th' or whatever. How I envied those private schoolgirls who had midnight feasts, the tuck shop, wore smart uniforms, had such charming nicknames and didn't have to turn up at the local school for the hopeless next to the gassworks every day. And oh the cameraderie!

Oh I forgot the excellent education, especially Latin. How I wished I'd learned Latin.

And learned to speak with a flawless accent and know how to pronounce all the words. And had all that confidence and knowledge of being better than the vast majority of other children.

Phew! That was cathartic!

Before we had pre11+ interviews for places at the 'posh' school we were warned not to mention Enid Blyton or the Daily Mirror when asked what we read at home!

Ah well....I suppose as they say round here, "We're a' Jock Thamson's bairns".
All the same when it comes to it.

My granny used to say that, Marelli and she was a shocking snob! Having 'come up in the world' and married well, she looked down on my mother, whose family had 'come down in the world', for being a hairdresser and certainly not good enough for her university educated son! Topsy turvey world, isn't it?

I suspect that there was a fair amount of loneliness, homesickness and bullying at boarding schools. Not to mention sexual activity - I well remember that there was always a very pretty, 'jolly' gym mistress and all the girls had a crush on her, or on the head girl.
It seems unnatural to me to send your children away from home at the age of seven. Most countries seem to manage to bring up their own children.
And we do know now that there was sexual abuse by some masters in boys' schools - those vulnerable lads must have been a magnet to abusers.

Petallus - good for you for saying how you feel, but you don't need to speak with a flawless accent to be self confident. I have never felt that anybody was superior to me (or inferior, unless they are manifestly doing harm) and if they tried to make fun of my Lancashire accent I had a ready put-down. For example, to 'Come quick, trouble at t'mill', I would laugh and say 'The first hundred people who said that to me also thought they were being witty and original'. They usually had the grace to look a bit shame-faced.
Just think of all you have achieved in life, without the benefit of all those privileges, and be proud of yourself.

anno, you're right! I had an aunt who had had quite a poor start to life. Her father drank heavily and there was little money to feed and clothe the children. Auntie M met and married my dad's brother who 'bettered' himself by becoming an apprentice to an electrician, went to 'night school' and attained the certificates he needed to 'get on'. Eventually they left their little 2 up, 2 down rented house and moved to a newly-built semi. Auntie M started speaking 'posh' and was well known for her malapropisms! As money was still a bit tight, she took a job in Sainsbury's (which was looked on as being an upmarket supermarket).
Auntie M and Uncle R are no longer alive, but last year her son received a phone call from a man who told them he was their brother. Auntie M had had a baby before she'd met Uncle R and had had D adopted at birth. She'd told no-one. I'd always been really close to her and feel so sorry that she was never able to talk about her baby. Knowing her, she would have felt shame, and not of the class that she so wanted to be in.

That's a sad story. Marelli. We've thankfully come a long way from the days when 'unscheduled' babies were adopted and then swept under the carpet.

Thanks greatnan.

I agree it's not just where you got to but your starting point that counts.

Another Scottish saying I remember well is "Ah kent (knew) his faither" which cut anybody who fancied themselves down to size especially the sort who re-invented themselves as "posh". With the surname Thomson, we truly were "A' Jock Tamson's bairns" except my grandpa was Guthrie, not Jock!

My great aunt, a mill girl from Lancashire, met and fell in love with the son of a solicitor in 1913/14. After he was called up she found herself pregnant. He promised to marry her and told his family but was then killed. His family agreed to care for the baby if she had nothing more to do with it. She was sent away by her family, in great shame, to have the baby which was then collected by it's 'other' grandparents. Despite being one of 9 children, only one of her sisters knew about her fall from grace.

My great aunt suffered from Alzheimer's disease and, at the very end, she wandered around either looking for a baby or nursing an imaginary one.

Nothing to do with class, really, but the previous post reminded me and I posted with tears in my eyes. I didn't like that Aunt a lot as she was loving one minute and nasty the next and argued a lot with my Nan who I did really love.

I like that one, Gracesmum. Seem to have heard it somewhere... I find that a Scottish accent, is far from a disadvantage south of the Border. Not the 'Morningside' accent adopted by Maggie Smith as Jean Brodie, nor Rab C Nesbitt's Govan accent. Mine is Scottish but not definably regional... I think.