When I started to understand that some people lived different lives! When did you know and what opened your eyes?

I was definitely poor but middle class. My widowed mother found life a huge financial struggle and there was no money for anything but the basics. When I went to the grammar school she sold her engagement ring so that I could have an all new uniform (of peculiar hideousness) and not stand out. Her attitudes were definitely aspirational and good manners were expected, which meant that I was welcomed by other people’s mothers as a suitable friend for their daughters. There was not much in the way of creature comforts but I was loved and guided, and the nice house came my way in due course.

I suppose I was quite privileged really. Middle class parents. Private school. A cleaner every week. My grandparents had a live in maid and a cook. A proper bath. My husband had a tin bath in front of the fire. Certainly no cleaner. Thank goodness things are more equal now. Or are they?

I wish I had realised how lucky I was compared to the families who lived beside us . My parents both worked hard in our business but we never did without and had a holiday every year mostly to stay with a relative who lived by the sea . The family next door had about 7 children and I have vivid memories of one of the older girls lying on our sitting room carpet listening to " Dick Barton Special Agent " We had a young girl who worked for my parents and I realised she did not have what I had . It was only when I was opening birthday presents in front of her that I realised how she felt to see me with so much. I remember going to the pictures with this girl and thought nothing of it but my aunt said she was not a suitable companion for me . We got the first TV in our street but my father insisted the mast was put on a long pole in our garden in case people thought we were showing off .
Our children had a very middle class upbringing and I was so moved by one of my daughter's friends who often visited us. She had a meal with us ,which must have included ice cream, and when we finished she thanked me and said they did not have nice meals like that because they did not have a deep freeze.

Freya5

It was when I was a child, had three friends, farmers family, who lived in big houses, had ponies, and went to boarding school.
Did it bother me and our other friends,no, went riding with them, played around the farms, goodness no health and safety then, climbing large haystacks, invited for tea, in the holidays. got to ride ponies whilst they were at school. Letters exchanged.
Normal people who happened to be well off.
I have never been envious of people with lots of money, good luck to them. Envy only makes for wanting something you'll never have.

I don’t think anybody has said they “envied” anybody have they Freya? Sounds to me that most kids even at a very young age noticed the differences but just accepted how their family operated.

I might have “wished” that I could have, say, piano lessons but I knew that wasn’t going to happen due to lack of money but I didn’t really envy anybody.

During the summer holidays a family used to come to their beautiful holiday home in our village. 3 girls and a boy and their uniformed Nanny. Their very wealthy parents stayed in London. We all palled up for many summers and the Nanny was lovely and let me almost live there, play in their beautiful garden and swim in their pool. They were great times and I was fascinated by everything but not envious because they weren’t allowed out by themselves (even though the girls were in their teens) and they saw very little of their parents.

I lived in the London suburbs where we were aware from fairly young that some people were poorer than others. There was a mix of owner occupiers and rented in the same roads. Some father went to work in a suit commuting to the city whilst others did manual work, but all the children just played together.
In the summer between primary and secondary school, I was in the park with my friend and we were asked by other girls which school we would be going to. We both said the Grammar school and the other girls told us that was only for posh people. That puzzled us as we had been expected to pass the 11+ and considered Grammar school normal.
There were a fair number of girls at the Grammar who lived in large detached houses and had gone to private primary schools so they were richer than us but again we all mixed together.

Callistemon21

Did other people's parents call one another Mum and Dad or by their first names?

Mum and Dad. I wanted my own kids to call me by my name, but they refused, point blank.

It was when I was a child, had three friends, farmers family, who lived in big houses, had ponies, and went to boarding school.
Did it bother me and our other friends,no, went riding with them, played around the farms, goodness no health and safety then, climbing large haystacks, invited for tea, in the holidays. got to ride ponies whilst they were at school. Letters exchanged.
Normal people who happened to be well off.
I have never been envious of people with lots of money, good luck to them. Envy only makes for wanting something you'll never have.

AreWeThereYet

When I was about 13 I had a friend whose family were quite well off - at least, much better off than us. They had two week holidays in Torremolinos every year 😲 One day after school her mother asked if I would like to stay for tea. I imagined all sorts of wonderful things on the table so said yes. Tea was tomato or cucumber sandwiches followed by a cup of tea and a shortbread biscuit. Not great for someone who doesn't like tomatoes. I waited for the lovely things I was sure were coming - creamy cakes or puddings - but eventually left still starving and happy to go home to chips, sausages and beans.

That made me laugh! 🤣. Reminds me of when my small daughter invited two little girls for tea at very short notice. Their Dad was a local GP.

I made them egg, bacon, chipolatas and tinned tomatoes. As they left the older girl thanked me for her tea and I said I was pleased they enjoyed it. She then said “we usually have food like that for breakfast.” 🤣🤣

This post has been my favourite by far foxie48, thank you. I’ve really enjoyed reading everybody’s memories and input, it really takes you back. The main thing that sticks out for me was a new girl joining our class when I was 8. She always smelled really beautiful and told me she had a bath every morning and hated getting her hair dried. A morning bath…a hairdryer! And she was driven to school, I suspect not by her mum. Then I was invited to her house for tea, and omg I’d never seen anything like it, stunningly beautiful grand house with ‘help’. Another world entirely. She was a really lovely girl but they moved on after what felt like a fairly short time, probably her father’s job I imagine.

When I was about 13 I had a friend whose family were quite well off - at least, much better off than us. They had two week holidays in Torremolinos every year 😲 One day after school her mother asked if I would like to stay for tea. I imagined all sorts of wonderful things on the table so said yes. Tea was tomato or cucumber sandwiches followed by a cup of tea and a shortbread biscuit. Not great for someone who doesn't like tomatoes. I waited for the lovely things I was sure were coming - creamy cakes or puddings - but eventually left still starving and happy to go home to chips, sausages and beans.

I was born at the end of WW2. No-one had much then, there wasn't much to be had. And in the winter we were cold.
But... my best friend's parents had a farm! They had eggs, butter, meat, a car with petrol, plenty of wood for the fires. I loved going there. In fact, my friend felt slightly embarrassed that her home was so comfortable. She died last year, I remember her and her generous parents with gratitude.

I have often wondered how my parents were able to afford to feed and clothe a family of 6.

I was born in 1947 and when I was 5 we moved down to a small village on the coast near Portland. We stayed there until 1960 when we moved to Hounslow.

My parents were 21 when I was born and 3 more came after me in fairly quick succession. We had a dog, a cross between a Westie and Scottie I think. He was called Tojo which was an odd name to chose given that they must have got him in 1946.

My dad was a design engineer and my mum had been a nurse. She used to work nights sometimes. She became ill with encephalitis, caught at work and she eventually got a payout of £750 which was used as the deposit on a brand new house on the outskirts of Basildon. I remember seeing a photo of a house that they went to look at when they were house hunting. It was in Richmond, Regency detached with a circular drive. I think that it cost about the same of the Basildon house. I used to think how life would have been different had they bought that house.

My mum made most of our clothes, often using the same dress fabric for my sister and I. I had dropped waists and my sister had a waisted dress with a large bow at the back. There is a photo somewhere of the whole family wearing sweaters that mum had knitted using oiled wool.

For holidays we visited mum's relations who lived in South Wales or we had days out. In the 50s my father rode a motorbike to work an he built a sidecar big enough for the 4 of us, the dog and a large hamper.

We occasionally went to the cinema and I remember seeing Bambi and also a film of a Russian ballet company. We also went to the circus when it came to Dorchester and my dad's employers organised trips to the pantomime in Bournemouth.

I did very well in the 11 plus (downhill thereafter) and so went to school in Dorchester. This involved a long walk, a bus ride and then a train journey. The parents of my best friend at school owned a bakers shop in Weymouth. She used to take cream cakes to school and I used to take Welsh cakes and we often use to swap. I used to be OK at team games but I soon realised that this meant staying behind after school and traveling at weekends so I started to slacken off.

I wasn't aware of my contemporaries' backgrounds. The only ones I do remember were 2 Jewish girls - twins, whose father was a doctor - who didn't go into assembly.

Life changed when I moved to London, sharing a flat with two girls from very different backgrounds. At first I had to go into a hostel and moved in on the day England won the World Cup. I became friends with 2 other girls who lived in the hostel. They were both at the Royal College of Music and I remember going to the Proms one night for a concert of music by Debussey and following the score. We were little snobs and looked down on people who liked Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff.

London in the mid sixties was a great place to live. I went to dozens of concerts - rock, jazz and classical - and started going to contemporary dance. It wasn't very expensive get in in to the various venues. I managed to spend my salary in the first week and so ended up getting evening jobs in order to fund the rest of the month.

I was born in 1959, lived in a 2 bedroomed terraced house (shared a bedroom with parents until I was 11), had 3 brothers. We were very poor but used to visit Granny in Barnes, every so often. She had a bathroom! And a garden! Her house was a council house, but seemed so big and posh to us

I had a fortunate upbringing in the countryside. My parents didn't come from that kind of background, so they made it clear that we were fortunate and we went to a state school so knew we were more fortunate than our class mates. My mum worked full time as a teacher so earned more than other mums I came across.

I remember we used to go and have to fund raise for stuff at school and we would go and ask all our neighbours, but we went to one who took some coppers from her jar and I remember feeling terrible that we had probably wiped her out. I paid for it from paid work after that.

I started work earlier than most and had a paper round at 7, worked at a local horse riding school from 5 and by the time I was 8 I was there after school and all day at weekends. Moved on to babysitting at 14 for 3 or 4 nights a week, so then worked before and after school in two different jobs and all day at weekends. Still did school work, but never had to be entertained.

I couldn't work as much as that now and yet work was really enjoyable then.

I'm also enjoying this thread. I remember when we got our first fridge, it ran on gas! Our neighbors came round to look at it and my mother was so proud. Life in the winter also seemed to centre around the paraffin heater as we only had one room heated by a coal fire the heater got moved around and we queued up to get dressed by it. We always had a cooked breakfast but one egg scrambled on toast did for my sister and me, no wonder we were slim but we were both healthy and happy.

My childhood was not great mainly due to my mother being so strict and controlling .
I loved her and I do understand how she felt .
I think that she was terrified of things going wrong and unfortunately it affected me .

We lived in an immaculate beautifully furnished and decorated home with Constance Spry flower arrangements .
I had nice clothes and good food .
I had ballet and riding lessons .
I was about 15 when I started to visit and stay with school friends and it really opened a different world to mine .
Some of my English friends were so free and easy with their mothers .
They smoked , laughed and joked with them . They weren't afraid of them .

I discovered Jewish cooking and customs in my Jewish friend's homes .
And the world of Indian cookery was opened to me .
I loved wearing sarees and shalwar kameez .

Other cultural delights were revealed :
I had friends from Africa and was introduced to their customs .
I loved the accents and humour of my Caribbean friends .
Their mothers and grandmothers were so earthy and warm .

To this day , I have a huge mixture of friends from other countries and consider myself to be really fortunate .

I had a very working class childhood, living in two rooms in a tenement. These weren’t two bedrooms, just two rooms. My parents slept in the kitchen/living room, and I in the other room.No bathroom, just an outside toilet, shared with a family of five, who did nothing to keep it clean! We had no hot water, and though there was a fireplace in each room, my parents only used one, then after a couple of years, only a paraffin heater was used. We never had a car, or holidays, but did have family picnics. One of my mother’s sisters married someone quite well off, and they owned their own three bedroomed house, and a car. It was such a novelty to visit them. Gradually, people we knew got new council houses with actual bedrooms and a bathroom. I was quite envious. My cousin and her parents lived with my granny in her two rooms. They slept in one room and granny in the kitchen. My cousin was twelve when granny died, and she finally got to sleep in a room by herself, while her parents moved into granny’s kitchen. Those tenement houses are long gone. I don’t know anyone now who doesn’t have a bathroom. Having said that, nowadays, some people have no home at all, so we weren’t so badly off.

i have a problem not buying because of the way i grew up, i always end up with so much and giving it to the foodbank.

Aah 😦 Grandma70s that was so sad for your friend.

I too was middle class. Not rich by any means, but we had a nice house and garden, a car and a telephone. This was the 1940s and I now know that those last two items were not common then. My brother and I went to fee-paying schools, so most people we knew had similar lifestyles.

My senior school (1950s) had some children on scholarships, and my best friend there was one of them. Her father was docker, usually on strike though he didn’t want to be, and she lived by the docks in a house with no electricity, no hot water and no bathroom. There was an outside lavatory. This was a real eye-opener to me. There were three books in the house - the Bible, and a two-volume History of Socialism. Her mother was virtually illiterate. They were a very respectable and nice family, and she was always neat and clean. Once at school she felt ill and one of the teachers offered to drive her home. She completely refused the offer, which puzzled me, but she said “I didn’t want her to see where I lived”. I was very shocked that she should feel like that.

I grew up in a council house and all my friends lived in similar circumstances to mine. Holidays, if we were lucky enough to have them, were spent at the seaside, mostly in rented caravans. After passing the 11+ I attended a convent school in a bigger town. The boarders had branded tennis racquets instead of Woolworths ones but what really astounded me was when one classmate announced that her family was going to Spain for their summer holiday. I could not begin to comprehend how anyone could get from NI to Spain!

Lemsip Not much seems to have changed from that report!

What a lovely interesting thread .
My childhood was the opposite of many on here . My parents were middle class. My dad was an underwriter at Lloyd’s of london and my mum a housewife initially. We lived in a large detached house in a Surrey stockbroker belt . I had ballet and riding lessons and we went to Cornwall for holidays and then abroad.
However my parents were both labour supporters and sent myself and my siblings to state schools and there I realised not everyone lived as I did . We were considered posh due to our accents and my dad drove a jag.
I remember going to a friends house for tea and we had egg and chips . My mum was at the time a devotee of Robert Carrier ( I think that was his name ) .
My town didn’t have grammar schools then , this was 1970 and I went to the local comprehensive school . I used to get my dad to drop me off away from the school due to his jag .
Interestingly my dad was working class, my granddad was a docker and they lived in Deptford in south london . My dad went to grammar school and then started as a junior at Lloyd’s and worked his way up . Despite having money , He was insistent that we had to learn the value of money and we all had paper rounds and then a Saturday job.

I consider myself lucky and quite ordinary. I guess being Canadian, I never really thought anything other than average upbringing existed. We don't have a class system here, no manor houses etc., to compare one person against another. Maybe if you lived in a government city, or perhaps even a larger city with posher neighbourhoods, but our town was solidly middle/working class.

Everyone I knew at school and my neighbourhood was average; single family home, factory or tradesman fathers and stay at home mums. Everyone had a car, none of us ever went overseas, we were all well clothed, fed and given Barbies or EasyBake Ovens at Christmastime.

My parents became foster parents in the early 70's. Our first boys gave us a bit of a sense that our life was a privileged one. From what I remember, theirs was a life of a mum on welfare who liked to 'party', an alcoholic father that only showed up once in a while. They arrived with a lice infestation and didn't know how to eat a boiled egg (why I remember that I'm not sure).

Like Candelle, my father was diagnosed with MS when I was an early teen, so our circumstances changed. Mum had to go to work, Dad was in a hospital bed at home. We did not have friends over, and we were comparatively poor. so no school trips or ski weekends for us. But by that time my older sis and I had summer jobs, so we could still get the clothes we wanted. We stayed in the house, although Mum had no money for upkeep, so things slowly deteriorated. But looking back, still not really lacking for much.

I bet no possession has given you as much pride and pleasure since Kim19. Even more so as you saved up for it.

I loved my bike and cycled miles on my own. A blue and red BSA.