How do you define being Common !!!

It's only a small harp

Our rag and bone man gave us goldfish in bags in exchange for our old clothes.
We also had a 'wireless' (I still call it that sometimes) but it had a massive battery which had to be taken to the rag and bone yard to be recharged.

Most families who had pianos sold them and bought TV sets.

I think having a harp is very, very posh!

The rag and bone man used to park his horse and cart outside my granny's house in the cul-de-sac where she lived, and she or granddad always went out to collect the manure, for their roses. That was in the 1950s.

The rag and bone man used to pay for old jam jars as well, I remember.

petallus, from when she was three in 1912 my grandma was sent out with a bucket and shovel to collect manure left by passing horses. her father (whom she adored) was a keen gardener. i think you got off lightly with the fag ends!
greatnan, having books in the house was still considered posh in the 80s - at primary school my daughter was told she was 'posh', though we lived in a tiny terraced house two minutes from school and never had holidays, because she spoke clearly and read books.
i should imagine having a piano is still fairly posh in some parts of salford - a lot of my pupils are from salford and those who are doing well financially are more likely to have home gyms than pianos.

We were considered posh in our back street in Salford in the 1940s because we had a piano, an indoor bathroom (the house was an ex pub which had been requisitioned during the war), books, and our parents did not hit us.
In the country of the blind..............

Where about in the midlands? I'm a wednesbury girl,

My mother was a working class girl growing up in a Midlands street. However, she considered herself a cut above her neighbour who was 'a dirty cat' for putting up her long hair with a solution of sugar and water.

When my brother and I were children, our grandad, who was very poor, used to send us out with a small tin to look for fag ends (no tips in those days) in the gutters, open them up and put the tobacco in the tin. We got a real sense of achievement from filling the tin.

No wonder poor grandad died of a serious lung disease when he was seventy!

Yes expat now one is judged by money. I grew up in a comfortable family but all were frugal and lived conventional lives. Now I am a pensioner in a council bedsit and I am treated as if I haven't got a brain. Acquaintances who would have lived near me in council houses/prefabs now boast about what they have and where they go on holiday. I am the same person. Money and youth seem to be the new 'gods'.

No. 'course not Greatnan.

I've bought a Celtic harp with sharping keys and am TRYING to teach myself to play it!
So far, ican play twinkle twinkle little star!
I've just found Denman college does a short course on the harp and I am thinking of enrolling.
Has anybody ever been there?

The harp - tell us more!

It all sounds quite logical to me. Like taking up cruising and the harp in the 60s
'nearer my god to thee'

I am not sure about you, jingle, but just because I live alone up a mountain does not make me eccentric and nor does taking up mountain walking at the age of 70 nor going snorkeling alone all over the world ............

And we're not that, are we ^Greatnan*?

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?

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.

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.

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

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

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!

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!

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!

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'?