My lawn looks like a customer of Sweeny Todd at the moment.

Fallible wrote:My lawn looks like a customer of Sweeny Todd at the moment.

Mine have always looked like that. And they're usually loaded with dog poo mines. I just haul out the hose and flush them into the soil. It works as a wonderful compost and it's natural. You should see my perfect lawn friend's face when I say that I lived in a little housing complex with a minute garden and a labrador. I used to water the lawn every day. My roses grew like weeds and my lawn was always overgrown. The guys who cut the grass used to complain that I had the greenest lawn in the complex and my friend used to sniff and roll her eyes.

Mine's mainly dead and brown with a few green tufts here and there. Mainly because we let it grow too long so it went brown underneath. Another fun thing is that we're surrounded by mature (huge) trees and never sweep the leaves up in autumn. Oh we are popular. See, due to some bloody amazing good fortune (we bought our first tiny house just before such things rocketed out of our price range in the late 90s for £50,000, then sold it for double 3 years later. Then we moved up North where house prices are much cheaper and bought a detached house in a 'posh' area with lovely trees and garden and stuff for the same price we had sold our tiny Southern box for), we live in a nice area and our neighbours are mostly snobs who have expensive car competitions and pick the bones out of 'her next door's curtains'. Next door to me has a gardener come every week - goes to show the class difference. I was dumbstruck the first time I learned this. The circles my parents moved in, we considered it posh to have a garden to look after oneself, it simply never occurred to anyone to get a man in. No more would I hire someone to clean my house - I'd have to go round and do it before they arrived I think.

Fallible wrote:Mine's mainly dead and brown with a few green tufts here and there. Mainly because we let it grow too long so it went brown underneath. Another fun thing is that we're surrounded by mature (huge) trees and never sweep the leaves up in autumn. Oh we are popular. See, due to some bloody amazing good fortune (we bought our first tiny house just before such things rocketed out of our price range in the late 90s for £50,000, then sold it for double 3 years later. Then we moved up North where house prices are much cheaper and bought a detached house in a 'posh' area with lovely trees and garden and stuff for the same price we had sold our tiny Southern box for), we live in a nice area and our neighbours are mostly snobs who have expensive car competitions and pick the bones out of 'her next door's curtains'.

Yes I know exactly what you mean, when I was young we bought a tiny two-bedroom place in one of those suburbs. I had two enormous oak trees that did that to the grass as well. In the winter, I'd just sweep the leaves into piles in the flowerbeds, I still do that, it's nature's compost. Why these snobs sweep them up and throw them away and then buy bags of compost is way beyond my understanding. They do it because it's :neater." I've done the same thing here and now I have practically a jungle around me. I have to get bushwhackers in every three months to clear it. I love it that way.

You'd love it round here. There's a pond full of frogs and newts at the bottom of our garden somewhere, god knows where. In the spring/summer you can tell, because the mallow that lives in it produces bright yellow flowers.

Keeping up with the Joneses

"Keeping up with the Joneses" is a catchphrase in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one's neighbour as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up ... he_Joneses

Fallible wrote:You'd love it round here. There's a pond full of frogs and newts at the bottom of our garden somewhere, god knows where. In the spring/summer you can tell, because the mallow that lives in it produces bright yellow flowers.

It sounds perfectly wonderful.

tuco wrote:Keeping up with the Joneses

"Keeping up with the Joneses" is a catchphrase in many parts of the English-speaking world referring to the comparison to one's neighbour as a benchmark for social caste or the accumulation of material goods. To fail to "keep up with the Joneses" is perceived as demonstrating socio-economic or cultural inferiority.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up ... he_Joneses

One of my favourite movies is the Lucille Ball one Mame.
There's a fantastic scene in it when she goes to have lunch with her nephew's prospective in-laws WASPS from Connecticut, who want to buy the plot next to their country home "for the children" so that the "wrong people" don't move in. Mame buys the property and then tells them she's building a home for unwed mothers on it. I love it.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=URlZefwng5k[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw2gGfD5R4g[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eAMtKpOTuM4[/youtube]

Yp, precisely. We won't have any of 'those' people in our neighbourhood!

Agrippina wrote:

Fallible wrote:My lawn looks like a customer of Sweeny Todd at the moment.

Mine have always looked like that. And they're usually loaded with dog poo mines. I just haul out the hose and flush them into the soil. It works as a wonderful compost and it's natural. You should see my perfect lawn friend's face when I say that I lived in a little housing complex with a minute garden and a labrador. I used to water the lawn every day. My roses grew like weeds and my lawn was always overgrown. The guys who cut the grass used to complain that I had the greenest lawn in the complex and my friend used to sniff and roll her eyes.

Aggy you just made my day. Dog poo mines! I have those. In spades. I just can't keep up with the mobile large poo producer that is my hound. They do make wonderful lawn food. Or weed food.

Funny thing, the 'Jobby Man' (motto 'NO JOBBY TOO BIG') who's business is sucking all the human poop out of the septic tank and carting it away goes bonkers if there is even the remotest chance that he will step in a doggie doo. Arrgghhhh! he cries.... I can't stand it!

Doubtdispelled wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Fallible wrote:My lawn looks like a customer of Sweeny Todd at the moment.

Mine have always looked like that. And they're usually loaded with dog poo mines. I just haul out the hose and flush them into the soil. It works as a wonderful compost and it's natural. You should see my perfect lawn friend's face when I say that I lived in a little housing complex with a minute garden and a labrador. I used to water the lawn every day. My roses grew like weeds and my lawn was always overgrown. The guys who cut the grass used to complain that I had the greenest lawn in the complex and my friend used to sniff and roll her eyes.

Aggy you just made my day. Dog poo mines! I have those. In spades. I just can't keep up with the mobile large poo producer that is my hound. They do make wonderful lawn food. Or weed food.

Funny thing, the 'Jobby Man' (motto 'NO JOBBY TOO BIG') who's business is sucking all the human poop out of the septic tank and carting it away goes bonkers if there is even the remotest chance that he will step in a doggie doo. Arrgghhhh! he cries.... I can't stand it!

that is so funny. I've always found that so amusing. The guy comes around with a huge stinking truck to suck up the septic tank's contents and then whines about a bit of doggy doodie in the way!

Thanks for the laugh.

I deliberately leave landmines on the lawn when I'm expecting the anal types, but my husband, ever the gentleman carefully cleans it up.

RE Curtains: My mum has a wierd thing about curtains. I tend to tuck my curtains out of the way of my window, to let more light in, and it worries her no end that the neighbours will think we've got no curtains O_o

Wiðercora wrote:RE Curtains: My mum has a wierd thing about curtains. I tend to tuck my curtains out of the way of my window, to let more light in, and it worries her no end that the neighbours will think we've got no curtains O_o

And what is it with the English and lace curtains? Even at Windsor Castle, we laughed at the serious lace curtains.

I have white denim ones to cover the windows at night or to keep the hot sun out. I open them first thing in the morning, at night I close them so the burglars can't see in when the lights are on. My mother used to go crazy about windows with nothing on them, and one of my sisters has four layers of curtains. She hates exposed windows. I'm such a slob.

To be honest net curtains aren't as common as they used to be. They're being replaced by blinds. It's more an older generation thing - my mum has them but I never have. No one in my road has them either.

Fallible wrote:To be honest net curtains aren't as common as they used to be. They're being replaced by blinds. It's more an older generation thing - my mum has them but I never have. No one in my road has them either.

My mother used to love them. She used to say "the neighbours can see in" without them, as if the neighbours really had time to look at other people's houses and besides, unless the lights are on inside, you can't see in anyway. I really hate them. In my ideal house I'd be up on a hill overlooking the sea with no neighbours to look in even if the lights were on and no curtains at all. Just huge picture windows. Sigh!

Or I'd buy this place:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=15xGyPtW8e0[/youtube]

Where I live being middle class involves:

Buying your own home - that is very important. Even if you are in negative equity and are paying your mortgage with your credit card every month you are a 'home owner' and are better than everyone else

Having a new shiny car (and as soon as you are planning to have kids you must get a huuuuuuuge people carrier) - it doesn't matter if the monthly car payments are bigger than the aforementioned mortgage you 'need' to have the right car.

Children - you should have 2. A boy and a girl. You have to join the NCT while you are pregnant in order to make 'mummy friends'. You need 'mummy friends' so that you have people whom you can do pregnancy, birth and baby care better than. Your babies will be brighter then theirs. Everythng they do - tantrums, not sleeping etc will be a sign of them being gifted. You will do baby signing, baby music, baby gym, toddler groups. When they are at school you will ferry them to lots of activities...tennis, football, french, yoga, music classes. You will organise 'playdates' with suitable children of suitable mummies.

Holidays - skiing in the winter of course, and either Italy or The Algarve in the summer. If you are having a lean year a bijou cottage in cornwall for a week will suffice.

Food - you must be a foodie. A bag of crisps and a ham bap will never do for your childs packed lunch. Wholemeal pasta in a little pot tossed with olive oil hand squeezed by peasants. Mind you, you will only be able to afford to eat pasta due to the house and car payments...

The Voice - you must have a braying, carrying voice so that people can hear little snippets of how wonderfully middle class your life is... "And so Tarquin said 'Oh mummy, must I miss a week of advanced latin while we trek along the Hindu Kush' ...oh how we laughed....'

There are a lot of middle class people round here. They scare me.

Oh Melchior I love that. It describes the Middle Class in SA as well.
Of course now that you have Frick and Frack with their public school middle class values running the place there are going to be so many more of them.

We were watching Spartacus yesterday, with all the braying women talking about how well off they are compared to the other women int he company with those voices. We were saying just how frightfully frightful they all sound.

being prepared for a fall-back career, getting married because it's expected of you, taking your kids to Sunday School, even formal schooling. Also included in this is the idea of :king and country" family genealogical line, the "right" address, conforming names, generally conforming to the 'rules' of society, and so on.

In my experience, not too many of these apply to the Canadian middle class, which seems to constitute an awful lot of the population really. I would say these more apply to the unusually wealthy rather than the "middle class". I would call this kind of "aspiration to seem upper class" to be "upper middle", a distinction that doesn't really exist in my experience because there is no really obvious upper class distinct from the simply really, really rich.

The idea of a "fall-back" career for the newly minted young person is somewhat amusing to me because I don't actually know many people who are working full time in a real job and not underemployed. They're already in their fall-back career whether they grew up wealthy or poor unless their parents got them a job.

It's possible there are more middle class people in the suburbs, but even in the suburb where I grew up there was no general meme, except possibly people cared a little about education and most kids went on to do some kind of post-secondary education. I think you could say education was a key factor. I would say that middle class means you're likely to go onto the post-secondary education whether that's college or university, although it was mostly just university until recently when somebody realised all the university educated people were unemployed and the college-educated people were doing very well.

Erm, as for lineage, I've never heard anyone boast about their lineage. But we don't have the same unifying principle of the past as somewhere like Britain does. People might say that part of their family are quite old Canadians, but it doesn't really carry much weight, if any at all, I don't think. It might among this "upper middle" class of aspiringly wealthy people.

One of the reasons I think my parents moved to Canada is that class is messed-up, if not missing entirely. I have difficulty categorizing people I know into middle or not middle or "aspiringly wealthy". There are people of a "low socio-economic background" and they must be the "working class", but the lines are very blurred between the two.

But perhaps it's just the people I know.

Yes and the idea that "the internet" and television are bad for kids. They say stuff like: "I allow my kids to watch TV but I'd never let them have a TV/computer in the bedroom, they have to read books."

What I am opposed to, generally, is the despise-ment of other classes or the behaviour of other classes. If I want to act like an upper class person, cut my grass, spend a long time making my garden look beautiful, visit Europe in the summer, name my 1.69 children "Sarah" and "John", not allow them to watch R-rated films and not have tv in their room, have garden parties and drink wine in the summer I should be able to without anyone judging me or laughing at me because of the choices I make. I should equally be able to name my children "Summer", have summer holidays in a lake or in a city, and run barefoot through the long grass and grow potatoes in the front yard among the weeds.

When people mock "middle class values", they are imposing another class upon themselves, although they may describe it as "classless". This thread seems to be a condemnation of a whole group of people and the self-congratulatory patting-on-the-back "My grass is worse than your grass" of those who have avoided this dreadful fate of middle class horror.

It's exactly what middle class people do! You're comparing how bad your lawns are, how much you *don't* conform. You're just subscribing to the other set of values.

I apologise, but really. It's okay to cut and water your grass. It's okay to do the same things that other people do.

Doubtdispelled wrote:

Agrippina wrote:

Fallible wrote:My lawn looks like a customer of Sweeny Todd at the moment.

Mine have always looked like that. And they're usually loaded with dog poo mines. I just haul out the hose and flush them into the soil. It works as a wonderful compost and it's natural. You should see my perfect lawn friend's face when I say that I lived in a little housing complex with a minute garden and a labrador. I used to water the lawn every day. My roses grew like weeds and my lawn was always overgrown. The guys who cut the grass used to complain that I had the greenest lawn in the complex and my friend used to sniff and roll her eyes.

Aggy you just made my day. Dog poo mines! I have those. In spades. I just can't keep up with the mobile large poo producer that is my hound. They do make wonderful lawn food. Or weed food.

Funny thing, the 'Jobby Man' (motto 'NO JOBBY TOO BIG') who's business is sucking all the human poop out of the septic tank and carting it away goes bonkers if there is even the remotest chance that he will step in a doggie doo. Arrgghhhh! he cries.... I can't stand it!

Weeehhhllll, we do have a solution for all of this here in the USA. Say hello to.... http://www.petbutler.com/pbx/

I would like to write a disclaimer here, I really really do want everyone to have the most education they can afford or that they're inclined to pursue, I merely don't want being an accountant or a banker, or a stock broker to be the ultimate height of human achievement along with the 2.2 kids (how does one have .2 children) and the gas-guzzling SUV that's a new model than the Joneses. I like the idea of having a PhD in some obscure branch of science, a beat up old VW that's 30 years old and kids who watch Discovery channel at 3 am.

Maybe I am poking a little fun here but you have to agree the idea that my Tupperware collection is tidier than yours is a little funny.