High brow or low brow?

I love Come Dine with Me - the voice-over is hilarious. I like Four in a Bed too, even though I know the producers egg them on to be nasty about each other. I have never watched TOWIE or anything about Katie Price or Peter Andre - does that make me high brow?

We were not allowed to watch ITV as children and Mum always said that 'Daz' was common!The daft thing was that Dad worked for British Leyland and many the times I can remember when if it had not been for Wednesday's family allowance we would have gone hungry!

That being said I loathe Eastenders et al and all so called 'reality tv' and have now become quite a know it all about Shakespeare and some aspects of Art. That being said any episode of 'The Big Bang theory' has be in stitches and 'Sex in the City' is still my guilty pleasure.

No, it just makes you not low-brow!

I'll settle for that (actually, I don't really mind either way!)

Wrinkled brow, or should that be 'wrinkly brow'.

I love Corrie but even lower brow than that is - dare I admit it? - that I used to love doing The Birdie Song and Superman, especially the latter.

I would like to do line dancing as well.

I enjoy any old rubbish some days and on others I want a bit more brain food! I enjoyed the docu-play on T last night about the olympic rowers.. was that high or low???

I do not enjoy whole opera very much but I enjoy pieces from opera.. but I love to watch ballet but also stuff like Stomp! I don't watch any soaps now but I used to. I think I must be a sea level brow!

When I was growing up I felt my parents were always watching or listening to heavy serious programmes like The Brains Trust or Jacob Bronowski, and I was never allowed to watch anything populist like Emergency Ward 10 or Crossroads. They did lighten up a bit with the arrival of the Beatles when they both got into the music of the day, because before that it was wall to wall classical and opera which I didn't like then but do now. I also remember as I got older I was allowed to watch the Frost Report and Monty Python with them but not situation comedy because they seemed to regard it as trite. Paradoxically they probably taught me to try to be discerning whilst simultaneously being attracted on occasions to trash. Love going to the hairdresser and getting a pile of OK, Hello and Heat magazines, bliss!

My dad made us all listen to the Palm Court Ochestra every Sunday night! He sat on my very first record - Blue Moon by Elvis Presley - and swore it was an accident.

Greatnan you've just triggered a memory from the deep recesses of my brain, I remember the sounds of Palm Court Orchestra floating upstairs on Sunday evenings when I was trying to get to sleep.

I remember, a few years ago, a friend (who definitely would class herself highbrow in Hyancinth Bucket way) asked me to feed her cat while she was on holiday.When she came back she complained, laughingly, that I had retuned her radio to, horror of horrors, Radio 2 (then on long wave) instead of her usual R4. I didn't like to point out to her that I had actually been listening to the news on a French radio station!

Class really does pervade every aspect of life! I remember being at boarding school and hearing girls 'boast' that their mothers would not allow them to wear stockings until they were at least 16! Any younger and they would have been thought very common! For some bizarre reason it was also considered a bit common to start wearing a bra before you had begun menstruating I had no idea what my mother's views would be on all this so just kept quiet! Eating in the street, not wearing a hat when going out, chewing gum, pierced ears there was an endless list of how to spot a 'common' person! It was all strange to me as mum was from a working class family and dad was a 'bloody foreigner'!!

Why not?

My post was in response to Grannylin's, I hasten to point out!

Because I am truly highbrow!

Being thought common was the dread of many women in those days, including those from the respectable working class.

Incidentally, does anyone remember the term ever being applied to men? I seemt to remember only women could be common.

And being common was linked to doubtful sexual morals as well.

One of the benefits of living in a foreign country is that people can't put you in a particular social class from your accent.

At my convent school our order of nuns considered it common to be seen without one's white gloves and eating chips out of newspaper would have been on a par with lying in the gutter swigging out of a bottle of gin! The full name of my convent was Convent of The Sacred Hearts and Perpetual Adoration, but somehow or other we were known throughout my home town as Convent of the Naked Tarts and Perpetual Abortion! I know not why, it was nothing to do with me, although I will admit to not wearing my white gloves on my way home as they were an impediment to eating chips!

Our nuns were strange - we had to wear thick lisle stockings at first, but when they became fashionable they were banned.
We were told not to sit next to our brothers going home on the bus, in case people did not think we were related. They were absolutely obsessed by sex - but not to the point of giving us any information, even about menstruation!

Ditto Greatnan the nuns at my convent were totally obsessed about sex, even though my friends and I being late developers didn't really give it a second thought, until they the nuns burst into our class, on what seemed like a daily basis to give us talks on the subject and always pointed out that should we embark on a sexual relationship before marriage it would only end in a gradual descent into madness, made me wonder what they were up to when we went home because they all seemed pretty mad to me!

I should add that they didn't actually give us any useful information regarding sex only to say that it was for "married people only" but they didn't point out whether those married people had to be married to each other or whether they could practice sex with any random married person they took a fancy to! How were we supposed to work that out we were only aged 11 to 16!

Never give anything I watch or do a label! I enjoy literature music dance and theatre and like what I like! 'Frankly my dear(s) I don't give a damn!

Grannybug I like your style!

So do I Grannybug!

But it takes confidence not to give a damn, doesn't it? So glas I finally found that confidence.

But when it comes down to what is "common", my mother had an endless list, and I have spent years trying to fathom some items, for example navy blue as a clothing colour. Where did that come from?