What does 'effortlessly middle class' mean?

I'm effortlessly, contentedly, proudly, no class at all.

I was a gardener so consider myself working class. Monty Don is a gardener and middle class. Roddy Llewellyn was a gardener and a baronet who ahem , 'mixed with' royalty.

Who's the other TV gardener? Is he working class because he has a strong accent?
Adam Frost

No, he's Adam the tv Gardener

My dear friend begins nearly every conversation with “ being brought up in a working class family”.
I have never understood why she needs to do this.

Calistemon

^I was a gardener so consider myself working class. Monty Don is a gardener and middle class. Roddy Llewellyn was a gardener and a baronet who ahem , 'mixed with' royalty.^

Who's the other TV gardener? Is he working class because he has a strong accent?
Adam Frost

No, he's Adam the tv Gardener

Never mind his accent. Have you seen the stately pile he lives in?

Adam Frost lives in one of the Burghley Estate houses doesn't he?

He's probably terribly posh with RP but the accent is just an affectation ?

Actually, I do like Adam but I like Monty too
Anyone who gardens, in fact!

I have twice dealt with men with the entire country estate look: cut glass accent, barbour, green wellies, Agricultural land rover, the full pack, who were perfectly ordinary and had deliberately adopted this persona because the real deal were their clients for their businesses and by appearing to be one of them, they did more business and got more referrals.

M0nica, my father went to great efforts to appear less 'posh' and quite 'ordinary' when working for himself as a builder - while my working-class mother did the complete opposite. It would make a great comedy show.

Still, the upper and working classes tend to get along just fine. They have quite a lot in common.

I don’t ever think of class, take people as I find them.

My late father-in-law felt himself very elevated (Oxford Don).
When I met him, he looked down his patrician nose, and said "Well now, girl - which social class might YOU fit into?"
I was only a humble nurse, but feisty with it, so I told him I was in a class of my own.
Looking back, I realise I was far too good for that snobbish family!

Excellent reply!

Does it really matter? we are all part of a wonderfully mixed humanity. The Dalai Lama treats everyone the same with kindness

LauraNorderr - I was taught that the "lounge" lived in an hotel or airport building!

Who gives a flying feather whether other people think you're middle class?!!! I don't! I'd have thought being on Gransnet was almost diagnostic of being MC!

Having just read most of a long MN thread on what constitutes ‘poshness’ I would say (tongue in amused cheek) that it’s someone who calls the thing you put the car in, the ‘garaaazh’ rather than the ‘garridge’, without having to be told.

(It really is high time I went and did something useful instead of still sitting here in my dressing gown at 11 minutes past 11.)

Hope you have all your ‘requisites’ in order Aveline- shops will be closed for New Year!

I am with you PaddyAnn 54

That’s a great response sluttygran?

I think class is a state of mind. Education, to me, is the measure and also the tool . My great grandparents were illiterate but their son gained an education and was an optician and his son was a doctor. It makes me sad and angry that so many waste the gift of education. Money and power doesn’t always define class. Premiership footballers and reality stars don’t spell out a better class- just more money. House of Lords incumbents are not always examples of a higher class type of person. I can think of one, mentioned on here, that I wouldn’t allow in my garden - let alone the House of Lords .

My 'requisites' are all in order thank you Katek. Can't risk 'soiling the doilies' after all.
(I do love that poem)

I suppose it all depends on what you think about "middle class"? Personally I know that I was technically born middle class but don't see it as a virtue, just something you are. And I think the current three class system is out-dated, there are newer classifications of where you fit in the world.
I've always tried to avoid being put in a pidgeonhole and find people with middle class pretentions a bit of a pain.

Err - Dunno. It is one of those 'If you need to ask' you clearly aren't things?

The conversation about the "drawing room" is quite funny and a bit of inverted snobbery. We used to live in Bath (where everybody is pretty middle class) and anyone who didn't call their living room the drawing room was considered pretty awful. But I suppose that if you live in a Georgian house it has always been called the drawing room?
We used to deliberately annoy a friend by calling dinner "tea", he even thought that "supper" was barely socially unacceptable. I suspect that his mother had married someone from what was perceived to be a higher social class than herself and was very particular that he should maintain his language superiority!

Well, my parents were snobbish enough to call themselves middle-class, but as they told me my birth was somewhat chaotic with the midwife pronouncing me stillborn until I started to yell, I can't call myself "effortlessly middle-class", can I?

I apparently had to make a heck of a din before being admitted to the society of the living of any class!

It wouldn’t be my description of Monty Don, class has nothing to do with it, he just seems like a lovely person