one thing that really pisses me off about my upbringing was that my parents both thought it was perfectly acceptable that my "bed" was a foam sheet laid on the floor in a box room with my brother and half-sister above floor level on the bunk beds for years of my formative era. Watching mice scurrying about at head level was so fucking nice for all that time you fucking tossers! Partly the reason I didn't speak to my dad for decades and didn't give a flying shit when he was dying of throat cancer a few years back.
― calzino, Wednesday, 24 July 2019 21:53 (four years ago) link
"Definitely posh enough to get lined up against the wall by comrade alphabet when the revolution comes."
🤯 🔫
― xyzzzz__, Wednesday, 24 July 2019 21:56 (four years ago) link
I could actually write stories like Gorky if I could actually write and wasn't a one dimensional fucking troll!
― calzino, Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:01 (four years ago) link
the point of pondering goethe & beethoven's street clash is bc poshness is not just a q of social status; the same family or institution can produce ppl of varying levels of poshness. even if yr so common that you think the queen is the poshest person in the country you'd have to accept that not every queen/king is of identical poshness and the extent to which they are able to define poshness also varies.
poshness as assigned on the basis of signifiers/etiquette is unreliable and subjective cf. the weird things ppl dismiss as posh (including, according to someone i went to school with, having any interest in yr family tree), rory's new tweeds. you can get these things right and still get it wrong.
slight tangent: at the either end of the class spectrum signifiers are often about positive distinctions: group membership & belonging (altho this works v differently for plebs & proles), but in the middle a lot of the time it's negative: ppl avoiding class signifiers and aiming for classlessness. while it can lead to some weird affectations this attempt at classlessness is more successful than cynics give it credit for - in the post-normcore world it's harder than ever to tell much abt a lot of ppl's status/wealth/bg (hence this thread, to the extent that it's not disingenuous). the idea behind the similar categories of nouveau riche and 'cultural middle class' is that they have basically swapped material/status positions while retaining their ancestral class attitudes to distinction.
the deeper q is why some ppl are more successful at laying down the rules: what makes ppl influencers & determiners of poshness beyond raw wealth, power and status. also: what is all that carefully practiced distinction and schooling and mannered bearing supposed to inculcate? what are posh ppl trying to imitate/fake? i think it comes down to disposition. poshness aims for effortlessness & refinement, for nobility. the power of the noble disposition comes from the delicate mixture of offhand confidence and grace. the comfort w/ flouting norms, w/ understatement (and of men w/ effeminacy) & the ability to pull off or mask being eccentric/amoral all stem from that deep sense of security & facility. so does it show more security, facility and nobility to agreeably defer to the empress' entourage or to disdainfully stride through it? idk.
anyway i'm the only true nobleman on ilx as has been previously established.
― ogmor, Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:14 (four years ago) link
Port out, starboard home.
― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:20 (four years ago) link
its only another superb thread from meself
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:21 (four years ago) link
as my friend said when teased abt his (incredibly powerful innate) poshness in infant school: "posh is a silly word the children made up"
― ogmor, Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:23 (four years ago) link
Educated working class. Earn what would have been a decent wage 20 years ago but which is shit now. Managed to buy a house. Two paycheques away from serious trouble. Don’t know how many peers afford the lifestyles they appear to have. Know how to use posh cutlery in theory but never had to.
― Hey Bob (Scik Mouthy), Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:24 (four years ago) link
darragh u forgot an "im an american and waht is this" option
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:37 (four years ago) link
You can wait in the anteroom until we finally get this sorted out.
― Andrew Farrell, Wednesday, 24 July 2019 22:47 (four years ago) link
the american option is in the title that says its for ukilxors
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Thursday, 25 July 2019 00:20 (four years ago) link
I know but I’m addicted to voting in polls
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Thursday, 25 July 2019 00:23 (four years ago) link
nervous tick
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Thursday, 25 July 2019 00:28 (four years ago) link
Americans all use our forks and knives in a totally insane fashion that the rest of the world can spot a mile off and are therefore ineligible for this poll even if we meet all other criteria
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 25 July 2019 02:53 (four years ago) link
I have been doing it what I was told was the European way since childhood because it is way more logical and fuck passing a fork into my dominant hand
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Thursday, 25 July 2019 02:56 (four years ago) link
anyway I’m bourgeois down to my bones and at peace with that
― president of deluded fruitcakes anonymous (silby), Thursday, 25 July 2019 02:58 (four years ago) link
Americans all use our forks and knives in a totally insane fashion that the rest of the world can spot a mile off and are therefore ineligible for this poll even if we meet all other criteria― El Tomboto, Thursday, 25 July 2019 02:53 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
― El Tomboto, Thursday, 25 July 2019 02:53 (four hours ago) bookmarkflaglink
That would explain a few things...
SO, how is your cutlery ordered in your drawer, UKILXors?
Mine:<Spoons>, <Forks>, <Knives><......teaspoons..........>
― Mark G, Thursday, 25 July 2019 07:09 (four years ago) link
<......teaspoons..........> <Forks>, <Knives>, <Spoons>
Chopsticks in the long section the right of the spoons and teaspoons.
― American Fear of Pranksterism (Ed), Thursday, 25 July 2019 07:52 (four years ago) link
<random mishmash>
― imago, Thursday, 25 July 2019 08:19 (four years ago) link
^trv p05h m8
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Thursday, 25 July 2019 08:41 (four years ago) link
xp ah yes, the chopsticks, skewers, free-with-drinks swizzlers and other random implements section
(I was going to say "Pimms swizzlers" but that might have accidentally outed me as posh)
(everyone not from Oxford believes everyone from/in/around Oxford to be posh anyway)
― a passing spacecadet, Thursday, 25 July 2019 08:47 (four years ago) link
i use a spoon for everything
all other cutlery is a tool of the oppressor
― another no-holds-barred Tokey Wedge adventure for men (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 July 2019 08:53 (four years ago) link
today was a bad day to wear my gold top hat, it has melted to entomb my head
― mark s, Thursday, 25 July 2019 09:29 (four years ago) link
your a bloody trendy steampunk, not a real stovepiper. I was just looking at some online top hat sellers, there seems still a demand for them and some of them cost over £300!
― calzino, Thursday, 25 July 2019 09:36 (four years ago) link
I don't really consider it a genuine top hat unless it's completely saturated with mercuric nitrate.
― calzino, Thursday, 25 July 2019 09:41 (four years ago) link
I lived in Reading for several years and you either got that impression or the opposite where people would say well you think Oxford is posh but Cowley Road is a post-apocalyptic hellscape where you would be stabbed in 5 minutes if you set foot there (which it may be, I have never set foot there, so have not been stabbed)
― Colonel Poo, Thursday, 25 July 2019 09:42 (four years ago) link
schrodinger's stabbing
― another no-holds-barred Tokey Wedge adventure for men (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 July 2019 09:45 (four years ago) link
cut ffs
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Thursday, 25 July 2019 10:03 (four years ago) link
fuck him up deems
― mark s, Thursday, 25 July 2019 10:06 (four years ago) link
My friend who grew up in Blackbird Leys would LOL at this concept (she has a poshish name despite this, or at least one that doesn’t strike instantly as common).
― suzy, Thursday, 25 July 2019 10:09 (four years ago) link
mark it may well be that a gold topper sporting toff can inveigle a sassenach urchin of my approximate means and background to acts of random violence against his middle/upper-middle betters but squire as a gael and therefore essentially unrecognising of your grading system i have to sadly decline
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Thursday, 25 July 2019 10:10 (four years ago) link
mods pls delete my account
― another no-holds-barred Tokey Wedge adventure for men (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 July 2019 10:12 (four years ago) link
xp and a fine gael u make sir
― Aston "Family Court" Barrett (Bananaman Begins), Thursday, 25 July 2019 10:48 (four years ago) link
my god the local knowledge is worrying
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Thursday, 25 July 2019 10:50 (four years ago) link
I recently found an old cassette from 1976, with 14-year old me doing his own alternative Top Twenty countdown. DAMN I sounded posh back then.
― mike t-diva, Thursday, 25 July 2019 11:03 (four years ago) link
when i was a small child i sounded posh because my mum has a bougie accent despite working class background and my dad is ESL and learned english from a posh english woman. had to amend it when i went to school because id have been bullied otherwise
― bookmarkflaglink (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 25 July 2019 16:51 (four years ago) link
^ That could almost be me.
My mum very convincingly dropped her Irish accent for something like RP when she got to the UK and I enjoyed trying to speak proper so got called posh a bit when I got to secondary school. Hasn't happened since.
― Thank You (Fattekin Mice Elf Control Again) (Noel Emits), Thursday, 25 July 2019 17:03 (four years ago) link
Despite a facility for languages my dad has never come close to losing his European accent.
― Thank You (Fattekin Mice Elf Control Again) (Noel Emits), Thursday, 25 July 2019 17:10 (four years ago) link
Occurs to me I actually haven’t got much of a sense of how many ilxors are actually posh - not in this thread’s sense of having gone to school up to age 16 or whatever but actually meaningfully posh. You could all be a load of fleabag-sounding fuckers for all I know (nb I do not know how fleabag sounds)
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Thursday, 25 July 2019 17:11 (four years ago) link
posh iirc
― another no-holds-barred Tokey Wedge adventure for men (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 July 2019 17:15 (four years ago) link
They’re showing the play it’s based on at the cinema. I’d go but theatre is for poshos iirc
― shhh / let peaceful like things (wins), Thursday, 25 July 2019 17:26 (four years ago) link
i think you’re allowed to go to see it at the cinema as long as you get a ticket for something else then sneak in once the film you paid for is finished
― another no-holds-barred Tokey Wedge adventure for men (bizarro gazzara), Thursday, 25 July 2019 17:33 (four years ago) link
I'm the anti-jim - had (fairly mild tbh) regional accent as a child until I went to public school (assume this automatically makes me posh for the purposes of this thread, despite any protestations I might make) but had to lose it because I was bullied for it. not that losing my accent stopped them calling me common scum on a regular basis because I still lived in a council house no matter how I talked
― Colonel Poo, Thursday, 25 July 2019 17:45 (four years ago) link
Occurs to me I actually haven’t got much of a sense of how many ilxors are actually posh
got to keep a bit of ambiguity in case need arises to poor mouth it to win an online argument in future
― Aston "Family Court" Barrett (Bananaman Begins), Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:06 (four years ago) link
absolute facts
― phil neville jacket (darraghmac), Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:13 (four years ago) link
my favourite bit of poor mouthing is that lauren lauverne wiki entry where it mentions her grandparents were shipbuilders and coalminers or fucking cheese scraping factory trolleyboys that lived in a hole in the road or whatever first. And then it mentions her dad was a sociology lecturer and her mum was a teacher!
― calzino, Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:38 (four years ago) link
i had a posh classmate at uni. so posh that he sounded english despite being from perthshire or some shit. about a year into hanging out he dropped that he assumed i was a working class person who grew up in the east end of the city and it was funny for me to realize that i just assumed that everyone could completely hone in on your social class based on your accent because everyone i knew who was local could.
― bookmarkflaglink (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:45 (four years ago) link
like i can hear a scottish woman talk and mentally be like "working class, university educated"
― bookmarkflaglink (jim in vancouver), Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:47 (four years ago) link
I used to have this posh Belgium friend at school who I felt sorry for because he did get bullied a lot. But I ditched him when he coldly admitted to me that his mother had told him to avoid "anyone from that appalling Irish family" and it was causing him angst. I got the last laugh on his posh bigoted mum when his older brother (who was quite well known in W Yorkshire because he was the model on the Opera North poster) was taken to hospital then prison after a huge condom of coke split open in his stomach on flight from Indonesia or somewhere like that. tossers!
― calzino, Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:53 (four years ago) link
True or False: Only in UK would one's degree of poshness be gauged solely in terms of one's accent, regardless of one's present class or social standing?
― A is for (Aimless), Thursday, 25 July 2019 22:55 (four years ago) link