How do you define being Common !!!

Speak for yourself Anagram mine is all gluteus maximus

Oo-er![ shock]

When I was a child I had a great aunt who thught herself a cut above the rest of us because she lived in a posh area.Her husband had inherited a house there from a wealthy relative.One day her daughter brought her latest boyfriend home to tea.My GA was describing him to my grandmother in these words;''He is a nice enough lad but a bit common, he doubles his bread''.
After hearing this my uncle would amuse us by folding his bread rather than cutting it and saying ''I am common I double my bread''
GA's daughter did not go on to marry this boy,I think her mother scared him off.

Too much flesh on show, especially the white wobbly sort!

I was told that it was 'common' to cut your roll - you are supposed to rip it apart with bare hands!
I have joined in this thread in a jocular manner, but I agree with those who feel it is unbecoming in any of us to look down on other people because of their size, shape, accent or upbringing.

DD1 once came across a list of old rules of etiquette. No idea how authentic they were. The only one I remember is: Bite not thy bread, but break it — presumably into small enough pieces to pop delicately into your mouth. Sliced bread is, of course, a whole new potential battle ground as the bread-doubling shows. Some people must have very empty lives if folding bread upsets their sense of propriety.

I've got a friend who is very well brought up, boarding school etc. I notice that when she eats she delicately removes the food from the fork without her lips touching the fork. She must be quite offended at the way I gobble my good down.

When I first went abroad at the age of 39 I had no qualms about asking my host or the waiter how to deal with food that I had never met before.
I was once eating alone at the Grill of the Hotel de Paris, Monaco, and I was trying to get a snail out of its shell with the little fork whilst holding the shell with the small gripping thing. Of course, everything was slippy with garlic butter and the shell skidded onto the floor. A passing waiter did not look at either me or the shell, just dipped his knees and whisked it away. That is what I call a good waiter
Another test of a top class restaurant is when you complain that a bottle of wine is corked. In a second-class establishment, the waiter will sniff the cork before agreeing with you. In the best places (which I no longer patronise now I have to pay for myself) the waiter will simply whisk the bottle away without argument but with an apology.

If you can read a book while a person in the same room is watching TV then that is middle class.

or good powers of concentration.

Or you have taken out your hearing aid.

How on earth can that be middle-class?
Surely anyone can do it if they're keen enough on reading!

I am able to read, surf and watch TV at the same time. Does that make me upper class?

I like quietness for everything, not only reading. I must be thoroughly low class!

bagitha!

Quietness I have, bagitha - nobody left in the flats now the ski season is over. Once I have turned off the radio/TV there is dead silence - it wouldn't suit everybody, but I like it.

I'm only able to read in bed, because my husband seems to need background music in the morning, and television in the afternoon, and I can't concentrate enough to read. I usually wake around 6am and read for a couple of hours before getting up. I then read for an hour or so when I go to bed.....perfect silence it isn't, due to the snoring beside me, so I use earplugs. Maybe I could use them during the day too - I think that would perhaps be considered 'eccentric upper-class'?

This thread is getting more and more surreal.
I don't find the spitting per se funny, just the cluelessness of 14 year old males.
They do not I find improve a lot with age. Introduced to an ex-brit this evening who proceeded to be very rude about the place I live... how to create rapport!

Jess , I have been amused by the terrible enmity shown on expat forums to all things British - some posters claim they speak only French and run a mile if they hear an English voice. I have never understood why it is considered necessary to hate your home country just because you decide to emigrate.
The daftest are those who tell you they have left England to escape 'all those immigrants' - my daughter has been told this in NZ too, and of course she replies that she IS an immigrant.
I have enjoyed very good relationships with the 'natives' in all the places I have lived, possibly because I go to some pains to tell them how I love their beautiful country, but I don't criticise Britain, which also has some incredibly lovely areas. The suburbs of Paris and Marseille are not too pretty!

Not speaking the Queen's English or BBC English. ie dropping the letter T, strempf for strength, Febuary for February. Regional accents ok though.
Smoking and eating in the street.
Dyed hair showing roots, especially peroxided.
Long unstyled hair especially in the older woman.
Lipstick gone over the edges.
Woollies with cotton skirts and stilettos.
Picking up fag ends to use again in a cigarette roller.
Spitting in the street.
My English teacher said I was too common to make anything of my life but I did. I taught myself to speak good English from the radio and now people think I'm posh!

Some of your comments have had me laughing and some have had me shuddering ('gobbing' ... YUK! The thought turns my stomach. Spitting is description enough).
Some of your thoughts I have agreed with and some I thought outrageous (not asking questions of someone of a higher status - archaic!).
But most of all I've learned that in some respects I must indeed be common ...oh woe is me. How on earth have I managed to survive for 60-odd years? Perhaps all my friends are common too and none of us realised it. So I hereby apologise for my common-ness - and for not knowing the noun related to the adjective ( commoner perhaps? lol)
Thank you for a ver pleasant half hour

ellenaitch, you can't be common, or your username would be ellenhaitch!

My mother said when I was a child (60 years ago) "She's common, she's dyed her hair" in which case now there would be a lot about. Now I see it as ashamed of being older/trying to look younger as there is so much ageism.

This thread is really interesting. I didn't know that being common or middle- upper or working class was still so prevalent, as I left England over 40 years ago. There is officially no class system in Germany just those with and those without money. My daughter sat in primary school next to the daughter of a millionaire factory owner and a Turkish girl. She was friends with both.

WE did go back to the UK for 5 years in the 90s and lived in Manchester I was amazed at the reaction of a politician at a cocktail party when he asked me in which part of Sheffield I had grown up. You could see on his face that he was demoting me from being middle class ( for having such a professional man as a husband) to being working class from the area where I lived as a child.

Later, back in Germany I tried to explain this to German friends and family more or less as a joke but they just could not understand what I meant.
DH has his views and puts it down to retaining an aristocracy in the UK. headed by the Queen and in Europe it has been either done away with, or reduced in significance.

Commonality is a nice word - nothing to do with being common though!
If 'common' means 'not rare or unusal' surely most of us are common, unless we are eccentric?