How do you define being Common !!!

baNANA Those women (I won't dignify them by calling them ladies!) are beyond common.

I think it is a bit harsh to call all the ladies at Aintree common. Is this the north south divide rearing it's ugly head. I have seen ladies in equally revealing outfits at Royal Ascot! I do a lot of work with ladies from the Liverpool area and on the whole they are intelligent, bright and bubbly with a great sense of humour and they love to dress up.

baNana - I for one would preferred to be called a woman. I wonder why you think it is derogatory? I associate the word 'lady' with patronising men.

I haven't seen any of the pictures of women at Aintree, but I think you will find that the spread of style, intelligence, and humour is pretty even over the whole of the UK!

Sorry, it was nanachrissy who seemed to think 'woman' was derogatory!

I saw the picture of the women at Aintree. My thought was "Gosh! I hope I never look like that!" I guess that could be called a derogatory thought. So be it. I'm not ashamed of the thought, but I would be ashamed to be pictured as those women are pictured. However, if that's what they like, so be that also. I just don't have to find it attractive or appealing myself. I don't think I'd call them common even, just unattractive — in my eyes.

Seasider I don't think all the women at Aintree are common looking,just the awful ones in the paper.

Personally, I don't think a lady would dress like that.
Yes,*Greatnan*, I do think that dress style is spread across the whole of the UK, and I don't think it looks good anywhere.

I didn't mean to imply that woman was derogatory. That's what they are, women.

Seasider, you are quite right Ascot throws up some pretty awful sights as well, and I'm not referring to the horses. I agree with nanachrissy, I wasn't implying a north south divide in bad taste, you get that overdone look everywhere in the UK these days. Personally, I think less is more, I can't imagine that too many French women would go out looking like that, but then again I may be wrong.

Depends where you are in France -the women in my village wear mainly tabards and wellies.

Same here, greatnan! I'm trying to avoid the tabards, but frequently wear the wellies.

Greatnan following on from your previous post about preferring to be addressed as a woman rather than a laydee. I totally agree with you, I have calmed down a bit, but when I was younger say 20s/30s being referred to as a lady used to leave me feeling incandescent. I think this was borne out of attending too many dinner/dances put on by my late father-in-law's golf society, these were patronisingly called "Ladies Night" and the captain or whoever he was then made some awful speech where he thanked the ladies for letting their other halves out to play golf, which for most of these men was pretty much all the time, and then all the women got a God awful present which, if I remember rightly, was some useless piece of china crap to put on a dressing table or a lace handkerchief. My late mother-in-law and the other golfing widows were a mass of simmering resentment, as most of the men, even on this designated night when they had condescended to include "her in doors" still spent the evening talking to the other men about golf, cars and little else. However, I think David Walliams' sublime Emily Howard parody definitely helped me get over the whole "lady" thing or maybe it's because I'm now on the wrong side of 55 the expression just washes over me. Strangely as annoying as I found the use of the word lady, instead of woman, when my children were small and we were buying something in a shop I would invariably ask them to say "thank you to the lady", rather than thank you to the woman, somehow that wouldn't have sounded right. Now I find the "Here Come the Girls" as played in the Boots ad. when you have a whole load of women dressed up to the nines and trooping out together really annoying.

Doesn't bother me what I'm called (within reason!). I have never felt patronised when referred to as a 'lady', or 'girl' - although my hackles would certainly rise at 'little lady' . Simmering resentment at how I'm addressed seems to have passed me by - thank goodness.

I'm not bothered either as long as it isn't dear as in Michael Winner!

No problems in France - we are all 'madame'.

Well, this thread has certainly evoked a few memories for me! At primary school in the 1950s, I first realised that I was perceived as 'common' because I was segregated to one side of the classroom with the other poor kids, whilst the teacher addressed all his comments and questions to the middle class children on the other side of the room. I may have been common, but I wasn't stupid and realised I had to be moved to the posh side if I was to stand a chance of passing the 11 plus. I persuaded my mother to write to the teacher asking for a move of desk on the grounds that the poor kids all swore non-stop. Of course, this wasn't true but I was indeed moved and later passed the exam. I suppose that makes me a class traitor. Later on in life, I went to university and then became a lecturer, but I'm afraid I still use my knife like a pencil.

Good heavens, vegasmags, what a terrible primary school! I have never heard of anything like that happening (I'm assuming it was in the UK?). When I was at school in the 50s I don't think we were really aware of any class or rich/poor differences, and certainly weren't made so by the teachers.

Indeed it was terrible. This was in Manchester. I remember that when I went to the grammar school, many girls had elocution lessons to rid them of their Northern accents and it was common (no pun intended) to refer to someone as having an 'educated' voice if they had managed to erase their flat Northern vowels! This really puzzled me as a child, as I assumed it was the person who was educated rather than their voice. My voice has remained uneducated, I'm happy to say.

I went to school just outside Manchester too, vegasmags. I also went to a Grammar School, and I never heard of anyone having elocution lessons, or being told they needed them. But it's a big place - perhaps you were in north Manchester rather than south?

My catholic junior school in Salford was exactly the same. The head nun would take about eight girls in the top class each year and give them extra tuition to get them through the 11+ (or 'the scholarship' as we called it). They were not the brightest girls, just the ones whose parents were well in at the church and contributed most to school funds.
My own Salford accent has been diluted because I haven't lived in Lancashire for almost 50 years and I had to learn to speak clearly when I was teaching/lecturing.
I don't see anything 'common' about holding your knife like a pencil , but don't you find it less efficient when cutting meat? I never noticed this until fairly recently. There is a rather strange way of holding a fork now, with the handle sticking up through the fist as though it were going to be used to stab someone! I just find the traditional way of holding both utensils with the handle in the palm is the most useful.

Never seen that way of holding a fork, greatnan, but the American way of cutting up the food with the knife, leaving it on the side and then using the fork as a 'shovel' seems to be catching on here, unfortunately.

I think a lot of grammar school educated, working class children developed different modes of speech and discourse for home and school. Many parents had commendable aspirations for their children, but also feared them 'getting above themselves'. This conflict of culture has been the source of many novels about the period, of course. I suppose it largely came to an end with the advent of the 1960s and the introduction of comprehensive schools.

Fortunately, my family were all great readers and my parents loved classical music, so I didn't have any culture clash with home and school.
My problem was their low expectations - they thought being a secretary, rather than on the factory floor, was a huge leap forward. I had to wait until I was 27 before starting a degree and it was damned hard work with two children under four and a long bus journey each way.

Elocution lessons were fairly commonplace where I lived, I did not have them but my younger sister did. We did not speak badly, mother just thought that it would give my sister another string to her bow.

I can't remember there being discrimination at my Midlands primary school (next to the gasworks). We were all working class and only one of us (a boy) passed the 11 plus. But anyway for most of the children I knew passing only meant you left school at 16 and went to work in a posh shop like Boots, rather than leaving at 15 and going into a factory or Woolworths. One person in his twenties was a legend in our neighbourhood because he had been to 'the University' (whatever that was we thought ).

I found my way through to middle class life in the end, via a secretarial course and the Open University and I suppose natural inclination but I don't feel like a class traitor because I never deny my roots even now I'm now living in the posh South East.

Just think, once I didn't even know how to spell knackered emic and now I is one!