How do you define someone as being posh?

My mum used to turn the theme to coronation street down so neighbours wouldn't know she watched it. We lived in large detached house and you couldn't have shouted to nearest neighbour!

Ah yes, really posh people only had a television set to watch documentaries and the BBC news.

What else is there worth watching Ann when you could be de fleaing the labradors or out in your woods taking pot shots at local chavs poaching one’s rabbits.

No KirbyGirl, threads can have 1000 posts and then a new one is started as a continuation.

Bellanonna & Garnet, thank you so much. That really meant a lot as I always worry about sharing thoughts, writing, doing anything really!

Jalima, if you happen to want pukkah-points you can definitely count the silver polishing! Lots of families in grand houses started doing more & more for themselves during WWII & it's gathered steam with things like the Lloyds crash, unavailability of servants, economy in general. Really surprising how many people who seem 'grand' do things for themselves now. The houses eat up so much money that it's almost a new 'noblesse oblige' to do servanty-type things. A sight I hope I never forget: a Duke in his wife's apron with knotted handkerchief on his head, standing on a ladder & dusting a chandelier! 'Sorry no one could meet you at the station, glad you made it all right. Do you know, one sees the most amazing things from up here!' You can't make these things up ...!

Of course you don't need pukkah-points, you've got Potteries-points! There's just something so funny about the whole thing.

Gabriella & Maggiemaybe, India might be worth a thread of its own. My grandfather was there for a few years and my word ... things were definitely done burra. He'd read & heard about that sort of thing but thought much of it exaggeration till he got there. G., you made the point about all of us being human v. touchingly.

Lemongrove lol!

I can't remember who wrote about some of the old familes looking down on the Windsors, but once heard a friend's grandfather refer to them as 'Bloody Germans who didn't have a pot to piss in when they came here, only been two hundred years & they think they run the show!' He was not only in a bait, he looked like he was in a Bateman cartoon as well!

Everyone's written such marvelous things I want to respond to all of you! Best time I've had since I danced with a man who danced with a girl who danced with the Prince of Wales.

Can't believe I forgot to include Martin Clunes, feel awfully guilty now. Definitely a Real 'Un & the nephew of Jeremy Brett. And just utterly marvelous.

Haporthrosie I thought what you wrote was brilliant too - I was smiling and chuckling and nodding all through your wonderful post. And I'm glad you liked mine - that made my day.

This is just an observation. Someone can be dishevelled and really scruffy but if they speak with a posh accent they are just eccentric, if not they are scruffy.

That’s true Wally and of course if you are really posh, then you feel no need to impress anyone by dressing up ( around one’s mansion) although of course you do dress up when the occasion demands.

Not that I would know!

Haporth that was another great post. Are you a writer?

Where my Mum lives there's a Laird and his elderly wife is Lady something (I forget). She speaks with a plum in her mouth, but most of the time she's nearly as scruffy as a bag lady. She's clearly had her clothing for donkey's years and they were probably expensive. Very much like Miss Marple - tweed skirt and wool sweater and sensible shoes!

haporthrosie I enjoy your posts, interesting and entertaining.

Hi I've done OK no complaints but I've got this old working class attitude that if I go into somewhere posh someone is going to chuck me out, unless of course you're posh then it's ask me to leave.

You could knock me over with a paper napkin ... I really can't believe the lovely things people have said & am simply floating on air at the idea that anyone imagines I could be a writer! Especially given the quality of writing here on GN. Amazing! Ta ever so, everyone. (Is it my imagination or is 'ta' vanishing from the language? I still say it all the time but young people don't seem to use it much.)

Wally, any place worth going wouldn't chuck somebody out for not being posh. Honestly. The food and company are frequently much better at the non-posh places anyway!

Haporth yes I remember hearing people say Ta all the time in my youth. In our local Sainsburys here in the south east, one of the men on the checkout calls me ‘me duck’ which really takes me back to my childhood ?

NanKate, I just went completely weak at the knees at the thought of your Sainsbury's chappie! I'm always saying 'ta ducks' and 'ta love' ... at some point it went from being completely normal (though most un-posh, of course!) to being yet another example of the fact that I belong to a nearly extinct species. And when men are still man enough to speak our sweet old language it just does something to me! Thanks for telling me, ducks!

Where do you originate from Harporth ? I was born in the heart of Birmingham where this sort of language was the norm.

If you know what ‘mardy’ means we are both on the same wavelength ?

Sitting in a restaurant last week with SO and 2 friends watching SO eating Chicken Wings and Ribs with a knife and fork (took him a while).
He also gets upset if people do not wipe their mouths with a napkin before drinking during a meal and fell out with his DIL when she quickly licked something off her knife.
I mean a real falling out.
It doesn't matter what he is eating he has to have a knife and fork, I tease him and put them out with soup.

The only time I have ever "lost it" with DH was for putting a knife in his mouth. I know in my head that it really doesn't matter, but it just enrages me to see anyone do it. However, chicken wings are OK to eat with your fingers, if you wrap them in a serviette.

NanKate lol - 'the mardy minx!' - one of my best, best friends was a West Riding chap & according to his Nan any little girl who liked sweets, had curly hair, skipped rope too jubilantly, or basically breathed oxygen, was a 'mardy little minx' or 'a mard'un!' Being a child & grand-child of Theatricals made me extremely suspect in her view but the rest of her family were very cultured and Liberal so she allowed me to darken the doorstep. This is so funny!

I'm such a rag-bag: born London but brought up quite gypsified, which was marvelous. Lots of family from Northumbria, quite a bit of Lancs, Suffolk, a streak of North Wales. Mainly Scots on my father's side. So I picked up all sorts of things. I loved Brummies (well, still do, just haven't been there in ages), they were always marvelous to children. And the men were awfully dishy! Perhaps that's where I got some of my speech from, though my Shepherd's Bush & Battersea family did the 'ta' thing as well. (Funny that my Kensington & Chiswick relations didn't! The difference a mile can make!) Isn't it funny ... for so long there's been so much pain & drama & confusion in my life I sort of trained myself not to think in terms of men (my great love died many, many years ago so it's all been a bit odd.) And now just thinking about a few dear old words & phrases has got me quite wobbly ...

Felice I tried to do the ribs with knife-&-fork once ... how anyone manages that I don't know! I just sat & moved the cutlery about, miming as I quietly starved, thinking of rationing & trying to tell myself not to be so soft as to actually require food! Thank heavens we ended up in a pub later ... I must've got through five packets of crisps! Napkin before drinking is decent, I think. Makes sense to me. Clever you with the soup!

Not shouting to each other from different rooms of the house, posh people will walk to the room, then speak!

Well Harporth my mum went further and called me a ‘mardy arse’ at times and she was right ?

Snap, I am the grand daughter and great grand daughter of theatricals so we have more in common, not just language.

I use mardy a lot and I am Derbyshire born and mostly bred! I once tried for ten minutes to explain the concept of feeling mardy to a man in Bexhill on Sea.

I'm definitely not posh by that rule then, piggypoo! My standard way of calling people who are upstairs for a meal is a loud Ahoy! from the bottom of the stairs. I actually have quite a soft voice so I'm quite proud of my ahoys.

My Nan used to yodel to call someone. Very good at it she was, too! Just remembered that.