I was told that the act of putting milk in first came from when cups were made of clay and if you poured boiling water the cup could explored, milk cooled the water and stopped burns 😊
My maternal grandfather was a tenant farmer BUT that is far from a farm labourer as he would have been more like a manger. Deciding, organising and managing the ups and downs of seasonal work on a farm, including finding and managing many types of seasonal worker. He was numerate and literate keep books of various kinds and managing money.
My paternal grandfather, before industrialisation was a blacksmith. Again he would have been highly skilled and probably managed at least two or more people.
So I guess that puts me somewhere in middle class territory, however, it's a precarious place and life is like a game of snakes and ladders. As I mentioned my paternal grandfather WAS a blacksmith. At the end of his life he stoked the boilers at the local school, so working class.
We "wash baggers" inhabit that area where lucky, technology and social change can slide us down a snake or boost us up a ladder all in the span of a single lifetime.
My mum & dad were respectively a typist and a factory worker so very typical working class.
I via RoSLA ended up continuing my education at a FE college emerging to become a computer programmer, so middle class! Thus we are back where we started🙄
Well I left the UK and f-ed off to Australia. It has its own class system - people in Sydney & Melbourne are forever asking each other which school they went to - 40% of Australians are educated in independent schools - compared to 7% in the UK. However 25% of the population were born overseas, so the structures are a bit more fluid.
Interesting, I think mothers the world over want their children to do better and mine was always correcting my pronunciation. What we now call received pronunciation or the BBC English of the news reader was the standard. Working class culture was go to school only as long as you have to, then get a good job. I sort of accidently ended up at FE college doing IT or Computer science/studies where one of our classes was communications studies. One thing I did get was that you need to talk to your audience in a way they would understand even if it's only 1 to 1.
Thus I mix n match depending on who I talk to and the point I want to make. I talk to trades people in the same way I talked to adults as a young teen. When mainly in London & at work I talk, as I would term it, more posh AND I use longer more difficult words.
One thing which made me smile when we started helping at the community allotment, was being greeted by a cheery "art a noon" making me feel instantly at home by reminding me of my semi rural Norfolk childhood🙂
I was told that the act of putting milk in first came from when cups were made of clay and if you poured boiling water the cup could explored, milk cooled the water and stopped burns 😊
Thanks Nigel. Could be true. but it sounds unlikely. I prefer my theory!
Typical, your upper class theory is based on your ability to afford China cups 🙄
Further thoughts. 🤔What class am I?
My maternal grandfather was a tenant farmer BUT that is far from a farm labourer as he would have been more like a manger. Deciding, organising and managing the ups and downs of seasonal work on a farm, including finding and managing many types of seasonal worker. He was numerate and literate keep books of various kinds and managing money.
My paternal grandfather, before industrialisation was a blacksmith. Again he would have been highly skilled and probably managed at least two or more people.
So I guess that puts me somewhere in middle class territory, however, it's a precarious place and life is like a game of snakes and ladders. As I mentioned my paternal grandfather WAS a blacksmith. At the end of his life he stoked the boilers at the local school, so working class.
We "wash baggers" inhabit that area where lucky, technology and social change can slide us down a snake or boost us up a ladder all in the span of a single lifetime.
My mum & dad were respectively a typist and a factory worker so very typical working class.
I via RoSLA ended up continuing my education at a FE college emerging to become a computer programmer, so middle class! Thus we are back where we started🙄
Well I left the UK and f-ed off to Australia. It has its own class system - people in Sydney & Melbourne are forever asking each other which school they went to - 40% of Australians are educated in independent schools - compared to 7% in the UK. However 25% of the population were born overseas, so the structures are a bit more fluid.
Interesting, I think mothers the world over want their children to do better and mine was always correcting my pronunciation. What we now call received pronunciation or the BBC English of the news reader was the standard. Working class culture was go to school only as long as you have to, then get a good job. I sort of accidently ended up at FE college doing IT or Computer science/studies where one of our classes was communications studies. One thing I did get was that you need to talk to your audience in a way they would understand even if it's only 1 to 1.
Thus I mix n match depending on who I talk to and the point I want to make. I talk to trades people in the same way I talked to adults as a young teen. When mainly in London & at work I talk, as I would term it, more posh AND I use longer more difficult words.
One thing which made me smile when we started helping at the community allotment, was being greeted by a cheery "art a noon" making me feel instantly at home by reminding me of my semi rural Norfolk childhood🙂