How did you define 'Posh' when you were a child?

Did you live in Pagford, Falconbird

I agree, people are more relaxed about accents these days. The BBC accent has disappeared in the main. Even HM doesn't sound as 'posh' as she used to!

My paternal granny, who came from a very humble background, but had married 'up', was undeniably 'posh'! She had a housekeeper and a gardener, a huge garden with a summer house and - poshest of all - a croquet lawn. She also put new ropes on the swing for our arrival every summer, and fresh sand in the sandpit when we were younger. She was, despite her background, a first class snob!

No sorry I didn't live in Pagford but I think this happened in a lot of areas in the UK when they built all the new estates on what had been rural land in the 1950s.

Some of the council houses were really lovely and built to Parker Morris standards. I lived in a low rise block which wasn't that great.

I do remember being really surprised by my first sound of a "posh" accent. I honestly had never heard anything like it before.

I remember being in a shop and a customer said,
"Really all these dreadful people coming into our shops."
Mum replied
"Well how rude - I'm sure you're more than happy to accept our money."
I was so proud of her that day.

We were definitely not posh. But my mum had standards. You never went outside with your slippers on, or smoking a cigarette. Also it was dead common to have pierced ears or a tattoo. Only sailors and gypsies had those.

Marty you never went out in an apron either.

When my younger brother married someone who wasn't 'quite like us' and they bought a house near a tiny corner shop, mum said 'She'll be popping into that shop in her carpet slippers, mark my words!' And, she was right!

We were not posh by any standards but I remember visiting a friend just as they were having "tea", they were having fish and chips and I was surprised they weren't using fish knives! (does anyone use those any more?).

It depends on the context. On a scale of 1 - 10 where 10 is the poshest, on GN I reckon I'm about 6. If we all went back to our childhoods, I'd be 3 at a push

On the other hand, whilst partying in a working man's club I was once accused of being posh.

One of many bullies I endured at school accused me of 'speaking posh' as a reason for many vicious acts.
I really couldn't understand why as I had no awareness of how sounded when I spoke!

So many of these posts rang bells with me. I was particulary envious of the Corona man which several of you have mentioned. I think my mum thought that was common.

As for the Davenports Beer at home vans, they were to my teetotal parents just the work of the devil.

My mum had leanings to be posh but was very unsucessful at acheiving it.

One of the funniest comments from her was when the minister visited after my mum had been in hospital and afterwards I was "told off" by her by leaving the Daily Mirror when the minister could see it.

My dad was buying a terraced house when I was born, we were never flush with money, he trained as a teacher in the early 1950s when he was in his mid 30s and worked as a teacher for 25 yrs. He was a good manager of money, but we did not live in luxury.

Posh was ponies and big houses and boarding schools.

I hate the word too. I remember it being used when I was a child and someone commented on a hair-ribbon I had on. I thought then, and I still think now, that it means 'showy', 'put on', 'done for show'. Linda Snell's voice, to me, is posh, because it's studied and not her real voice. I don't like it when people who speak with what used to be called 'received pronunciation' are labelled 'posh', because in most cases that voice is real to them, it's what their parents spoke and their parents before them. It's not consciously produced or done for effect.

I worked in three boarding-schools and also went to two. There was a healthy mixture in all of them. People who could afford to send their children away to school and arrived in huge shiny cars and people who scrimped and saved to send their children to boarding-school because they valued the available opportunities, and arrived in old and usually muddy cars; which of those were the posh ones? Of course those are extremes. All sorts of children were there, some blissfully happy, others not so happy perhaps because their parents were engaged in bitter divorces - it is impossible to generalise. I was aware of a lot of kindness among the children - as well as some spitefulness. Society concentrated in an institution, I suppose. They had to learn how to get on with all sorts.

We were posh on our estate in Southampton. Dad bought our council house in 1972 and the letters went into the council complaining that we were being 'modernised' before folk who'd lived there for 30 years or more when dad put in central heating and hot running water!

Also, when we had a phone put in (on a party line!), the neighbours queued up to use it and mum didn't have the heart to say 'no' - the neighbours thought it was free as we didn't have to put any money in! Dad was not impressed with the bill!!

Daisyanswerdo - I totally agree. However, mum always said it was better to be thought 'posh' than the alternative.

Although dad was a bus driver and mum didn't work, we were apparently 'posh' because us kids went to the Catholic schools (taken out of the state schools because of bullying for being Catholic - not a nice experience) and wore a smart uniform.

Our neighbours were mainly dock workers and seemed to spend a lot of time either on strike or drinking heavily and creating disturbances in our street. As dad seemed to be the only person going to work at one point, we ended up with bricks through our glass-front door. This contributed to my mum becoming very isolated and agoraphobic.

My youngest has developed what might be called 'Received Pronounciation' due to the friends she has had for the last 8 years or so. In her new job with one of the newspapers, she manages to get interviews with all kinds of interesting people, as she knows how to string a sentence coherently together. Her colleagues say she sounds 'posher than the queen'! However, she is a great mimic and does a cracking 'Vicky Pollard'!!

My late MiL, who had done elocution in her youth, had two voices. She was pure Yorkshire with the family but on the phone, she put on her 'elocution' voice!

As children, my brother and I used to refer to our father's 'doctor voice' which was what he used when speaking to our doctor in particular but also to anyone else he thought was further up the social scale than he was.

I've just remembered that when we were due a visit from our doctor, mum used to change all the sheets on the bed and give the house a clean

I don't think I thought about posh much as a child, everyone mixed in and we all spoke geordie. It was wartime and that was a social leveller.
The only exception I can think of was one of my uncles who was a tenant farmer in Northumberland. I was with him once when he went to the estate office in Alnwick, and the Duke of Northumberland appeared - Uncle spoke to him in a really posh fruity voice which I'd never heard before. At home talking to the shepherds etc he spoke rough Northumbrian.

I've just remembered that when we were due a visit from our doctor, mum used to change all the sheets on the bed and give the house a clean
petallus I remember that, you could be lying in bed feeling ill but cosy, then mother would come and haul you out to sit on a chair in the freezing cold while she changed the sheets because The Doctor was coming!

Just outed DH as being an ex a poshy. When he was a child not only did his parents own their own house, they also had a car ! How posh was that? He probably would have looked down his nose at me, the girl from the Tyneside council estate.

Like me gilly you married well!

Hmmmm not sure I did though Riverwalk I did say he was an "ex" poshy!