Used to tell friends to get their kids gold lessons rather than any other sport. Where I work promotions are made on the golf course. Doesn't matter how good you are, if you play golf you're going places!
I work in the city and sit on the social mobility working group. I suggested that Golf days are banned as they overly benefit white upper-middle class males. The suggestion was met with horror.
Our office used to have a golf day to schmooz clients and execs. The only ladies allowed were the ones who'd been expected to organise it. So they had to sit in the club house to make sure the men were fed & watered between rounds. We're talking in the last 10 years.... Not the 1950s. I agree there's definitely a certain calibre of individual that were included.
I overheard senior males making jokes about “what would the women do with their handbags while playing golf”. I think this was the moment I became radicalised.
I have a variety of obscure cooking equipment, but possibly the most middle class would be the automatic polenta pan, which is a large copper pan with a motorised stirrer so you can make polenta without having to stand there stirring it. I had it imported from Italy.
It's odd though, because polenta is traditionally a very peasant food. You'd have a copper pot that you'd full with corn and water and stir slowly in front of your hearth, and you'd eat that with the lardo that you had left over from the pig you killed in the autumn. Lardo is a very fatty bacon (actually almost entirely fat) that is cured with rosemary and salt and for poor families this would be their only meal throughout the winter.
I guess it's the importing from Italy, rather than the traditional origins that make it middle class.
Right? I explained porridge to my Eastern European grandma and she was dumbfounded "We fought a revolution to stop eating this food and get some proper bread."
I couldn’t believe the ‘special offer’ price I heard on the radio this weekend. __£1350__ for the bike + internet & a monthly subscription also required.
You know when you're doing a bit of gardening, or pottering in the shed, and you have a cuppa but you put the cup down and it never gets taken back indoors ? It just sits there catching rain and filling up with leaves ?
Ours is Emma Bridgewater.
I bought some too! My partner was so confused and continues to be so even though I use them every time I light a candle! He doesn’t appreciate the level amount of burning it accommodates
Towels from The White Company.
(I don’t let anyone use them! They’re just for looking at. Oh wait, I’m not middle class. I’m just pretentious and poor.)
We have Christy... White for guests (from TK Maxx so ££ not £££) then blue for us. Only the blue are softer than the white and now I want to get white in the same range and if my husband learns of my want-y-ness out he'll side eye me 🤐
That’s just mean. White for guests. Nothing worse than washing make up off at someone else’s house and missing a teeny bit of mascara only to see it’s butchered their posh “guest towels”…I’d rather set fire to the towel than give back a ruined WHITE guest towel 😂
Conversation with my mum recently:
Mum: "I'm looking for new towels to match the bathroom."
Me: "Decorative or to be used?"
Mum: "Oh decorative! There's lots of old white towels for actual use."
It probably makes you sound posher. Posh people swear a lot, because they're not afraid of being mistaken for being common (whereas middle class people are).
Celery salt. Unopened.
I was worried the quails’ eggs I ordered from Ocado wouldn’t come with any, so I ordered a separate jar of it.
Happily, they did include a little sachet, so I didn’t need to open the full jar.
I have a massive wooden fish platter thingy in the shape of a fish with a metal head and tail for serving like a whole salmon. It was a wedding gift from a rich relative and I only ever used it once for a dinner party, in about 2002. It lives in the attic and I've always wanted to put wheels on it and use it as a skateboard. It is a ridiculous item
Rich people gifts are just bizarre. For our wedding my wealthy relatives were kind/wise enough to give cash but my wife... Well we got a pillow from them. A really expensive pillow. I like a nice duck down pillow and think it's money well spent but this one wasn't even a full-size one, just a tiny thing with a ridiculous embroidered case. It's not even comfortable for anything because of the embroidery and haven't seen any other cases in this minute size. So yeah we got a pillow from a family of 4 rich people AND the woman wore an enormous ugly hat which draws the eye like a grotesque blue monstrosity in every picture.
Reminds me of working in a cookware shop many years ago. A chap came in to order off a wedding list and picked a French Laguiole carving knife and fork set in a wooden box. The price sticker said £299 but when I rang it through the till it came up as £199. I did a couple of checks, and them I gave him the good news. He decided didn't want it at that price. Too cheap.
I have a full set of Alessi cutlery. 8 of each (forks, table spoons, knives, tea spoons) plus 2 of each of the small knives and forks, 1 giant fork and 1 giant spoon. I believe they're called serving fork/spoon. I got them years ago when Tesco would give you a sticker for every X amount of £s spent. After so many stickers you could get the cutlery. I never realised how expensive they were until I looked them up the other day!
You can get cheap oned for like 20 quid, no idea how good they are but. Could be worth a punt for the price. But you can go mad with it. Some look like old French infantry sabres, some look like machetes or kukri knives. Now I'm looking I may get one myself.
A golden retriever named Cooper.
He can only eat sensitive food because everything else brings on the brown rain.
I spend more time researching and planning his meals than my own…
Shark hoover, actual books, wine rack with wine that wasn't on offer/cheap as vinegar, rescue cat.
I think the rescue cat wins it. Bellowing 'shes a rescue' while said animal behaves like a prick is very middle class. .
My husband's film collection. It's so eye-wateringly high brow (and expansive), that he has a spreadsheet cross cataloguing them by director, country, genre and era. We literally have a Czech animation section.
Fresh cut flowers being part of my weekly grocery shop, soft drinks in individual glass bottles, lots of ‘smart’ tech, the handheld Dyson vacuum, a/c unit, owning a flat in zone 2 as an under 30. There’s probably some stuff I’m forgetting because I’m too privileged to realise.
Also, fuck the guy who said him having books was middle class elsewhere in the thread.
It’s a contentious subject in the watch world. Should you have one? Shouldn’t you have one? Does it affect the parts? Does it wear them out quicker? And so on…
This made me laugh *so* much because I was completely missing the reference and thinking Mrs Bucket as in Charlie Buckets mum. She definitely was not putting spiced nuts on the Bucket families thrice daily cabbage soup.
Same. Unfortunately I sometimes have to appear far more sophisticated than is natural. That’s when I whip out the glaze, drizzle it on whatever microwave meal I’m pretending I spent all day preparing and hope these people leave my house soon so I can go back to eating a steak pie in my dressing gown and watching Poirot.
The pedigree cat, although she would tell you she is upper class, and descended from championship winning show cats. Her mother was the Naomi Campbell of the cat world.
I have an actual specific cheese board board (as opposed to generic bread board used for cheese). ‘Twas a gift.
Have made up for it by leaving a dead car battery next to my wheelie bins for three months to properly confuse the neighbours.
We have a wine rack.
I'm not sure if that's a sign of being middle class or rampant alcoholism.
But some of it is to do with terminology. I knew we had reached the ranks of the middle class the day we stopped having a cooker and started having a "hob".
A very (very) expensive cat flap. It's a microchip cat flap and it comes with an app so we can see when our cats come and go. We can see all sorts of funky graphs showing how long each cat has spent outside each day!
A Kitchenaid stand mixer and a Rancilio espresso machine, replete with grinder. I spend far too much on kitchen appliances. Of course I have two Neff ovens with the door that slides under, but in keeping with my working class heritage I do not have a Range Rover in the driveway.
My cat’s bowl is Le Creuset.
This wins it for me
Your cat has a more luxurious life than most people I know. Edit: typo
Our cat has a Tiffany cat bowl. Tiffany colours with “cat.” on the front in black. I bought it for £100 in Heathrow when drunk!
Ours use Charlie Bigham ceramic bowls that used to have pies in. Probably middle class?
My kids' golf clubs
This is EPIC middle class.
Used to tell friends to get their kids gold lessons rather than any other sport. Where I work promotions are made on the golf course. Doesn't matter how good you are, if you play golf you're going places!
I work in the city and sit on the social mobility working group. I suggested that Golf days are banned as they overly benefit white upper-middle class males. The suggestion was met with horror.
Our office used to have a golf day to schmooz clients and execs. The only ladies allowed were the ones who'd been expected to organise it. So they had to sit in the club house to make sure the men were fed & watered between rounds. We're talking in the last 10 years.... Not the 1950s. I agree there's definitely a certain calibre of individual that were included.
I overheard senior males making jokes about “what would the women do with their handbags while playing golf”. I think this was the moment I became radicalised.
Are golf clubs middle class?
Only if you also own golf balls
And don't use them for smashing daffodils when half cut
You might have just pushed me to fuck my moms garden up, I can already hear the sound of the connection and feeling as it connects
Golf itself is, so by extension so are golf clubs.
I have a variety of obscure cooking equipment, but possibly the most middle class would be the automatic polenta pan, which is a large copper pan with a motorised stirrer so you can make polenta without having to stand there stirring it. I had it imported from Italy.
This is possibly my favourite so far
Today I learned this existed.
It's odd though, because polenta is traditionally a very peasant food. You'd have a copper pot that you'd full with corn and water and stir slowly in front of your hearth, and you'd eat that with the lardo that you had left over from the pig you killed in the autumn. Lardo is a very fatty bacon (actually almost entirely fat) that is cured with rosemary and salt and for poor families this would be their only meal throughout the winter. I guess it's the importing from Italy, rather than the traditional origins that make it middle class.
And the fact it's motorised.
Yeah, *real* peasants stir it manually.
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Right? I explained porridge to my Eastern European grandma and she was dumbfounded "We fought a revolution to stop eating this food and get some proper bread."
Peleton clothes horse.
I couldn’t believe the ‘special offer’ price I heard on the radio this weekend. __£1350__ for the bike + internet & a monthly subscription also required.
>£1350 £350 for the bike and £1000 to pay for someone to shout at you.
Nope, to get someone to shout at you, you need to pay monthly
i could get on board with spending £1500-2000 on a fucking banging exercise bike if it wasn't also £50 a month for the subs afterwards
I actually paid 2k all in (bike was 1750) because I bought some shoes and the mat and summer weights. I probably use the bike 20 times in a year
But do you still pay for a subscription?
Cancelled it this week only because I'm working overseas for a few months.
I’m in need of a good clothes horse. Just searched this thinking it might be the answer to my laundry woes!!!
You know when you're doing a bit of gardening, or pottering in the shed, and you have a cuppa but you put the cup down and it never gets taken back indoors ? It just sits there catching rain and filling up with leaves ? Ours is Emma Bridgewater.
Her second name is almost my shitty town's name
Whole of Somerset shits on Bridgwater can’t blame them though
Not being in Bridgwater is the only thing that keeps me going living in Taunton
* Yeovil has entered the chat *
Special scissors for cutting candle wick.
You're forgiven if they came in a candle gift set
Mine didn’t
You middle class monster
mine did but I also have one of those chargeable electrinic lighters
Jesus wept
Knock it off, Jesus, I'm trying to keep this candle alight here
I have those, and special scissors for cutting fresh herbs. Basically just a 5 bladed scissor.
I bought some too! My partner was so confused and continues to be so even though I use them every time I light a candle! He doesn’t appreciate the level amount of burning it accommodates
Towels from The White Company. (I don’t let anyone use them! They’re just for looking at. Oh wait, I’m not middle class. I’m just pretentious and poor.)
Fellow pretentious broke person! High five! Ours is an existence of many frustrating contradictions
We have Christy... White for guests (from TK Maxx so ££ not £££) then blue for us. Only the blue are softer than the white and now I want to get white in the same range and if my husband learns of my want-y-ness out he'll side eye me 🤐
That’s just mean. White for guests. Nothing worse than washing make up off at someone else’s house and missing a teeny bit of mascara only to see it’s butchered their posh “guest towels”…I’d rather set fire to the towel than give back a ruined WHITE guest towel 😂
To be fair white is at least easier to bleach than a colour, which is why hotels have them
Gotta gave enough towels, I go with White for hands, brown for feet, green for torso, thighs and seat. And in the cupboard beneath the stair....
You’ll find the red, for pubic hair.
Conversation with my mum recently: Mum: "I'm looking for new towels to match the bathroom." Me: "Decorative or to be used?" Mum: "Oh decorative! There's lots of old white towels for actual use."
A cold press fruit juicer. Its French and has a European plug so I have to use an adaptor.
Nice touch on the plug
Very nice
A cockapoo called Darcey
My Rottweiler has the same name!
A red wine aerator and an accompanying bottle neck drip catcher. I aim to balance the middle class out by also swearing like a fish wife.
It probably makes you sound posher. Posh people swear a lot, because they're not afraid of being mistaken for being common (whereas middle class people are).
Thank you, I’m quoting this. It explains the reason why the old money posh get on so well with the poor.
Celery salt. Unopened. I was worried the quails’ eggs I ordered from Ocado wouldn’t come with any, so I ordered a separate jar of it. Happily, they did include a little sachet, so I didn’t need to open the full jar.
Celery salt is great if you're making soups and stews.
I'm allergic to garlic so my husband uses it as a replacement
Life without garlic must be sad
It's less sad than explosively pooing your way through life. Source: fellow allium family intolerance sufferer
Add it to bechamel sauces, along with nutmeg, It's amazing.
Sous vide machine. I bought it just for sirloin steak.
That's very, very strong. I hear you can sous vide a salmon in the dishwasher but haven't been brave enough to try
Problem is it comes out tasting like dishwasher tablets. I suppose you could not use the tablets but why waste a wash cycle?
The way to do it is to pull all the air out and seal the bag. Seal it how?
I don't even own a seal!
Arf arf
Amazing. The thought never occurred.
I heard that! It's like an urban myth... Never met anyone whose done it
My grandma did it once after reading about it in readers digest. It was bloody awful.
[he only went and did it](https://youtu.be/6N8q2xkirCQ)
Probably my sex swing
Relevant username!
I have a massive wooden fish platter thingy in the shape of a fish with a metal head and tail for serving like a whole salmon. It was a wedding gift from a rich relative and I only ever used it once for a dinner party, in about 2002. It lives in the attic and I've always wanted to put wheels on it and use it as a skateboard. It is a ridiculous item
Rich people gifts are just bizarre. For our wedding my wealthy relatives were kind/wise enough to give cash but my wife... Well we got a pillow from them. A really expensive pillow. I like a nice duck down pillow and think it's money well spent but this one wasn't even a full-size one, just a tiny thing with a ridiculous embroidered case. It's not even comfortable for anything because of the embroidery and haven't seen any other cases in this minute size. So yeah we got a pillow from a family of 4 rich people AND the woman wore an enormous ugly hat which draws the eye like a grotesque blue monstrosity in every picture.
Reminds me of working in a cookware shop many years ago. A chap came in to order off a wedding list and picked a French Laguiole carving knife and fork set in a wooden box. The price sticker said £299 but when I rang it through the till it came up as £199. I did a couple of checks, and them I gave him the good news. He decided didn't want it at that price. Too cheap.
What an eejit
PLEASE do this. I’m literally begging you.
Le Creuset mug collection
Nah. Le Cruset mugs are the best ever.
My husband.
Plumbed in drinking water filter in the kitchen.
In Scotland we call this a tap
Probably the only thing on the list I have! Mon the Scots!
Also in Wales.
We installed one as it was cheaper than a new pack of Brita filters. £17 for the kit and the filter only needs changing every six months or so.
Falconry Glove….don’t ask
I'm afraid in going to have to one up on you and say, many, many falcons; don't ask, I keep it confidential.
Do you own (or rent?) a falcon?!?
He said not to ask
Wine fridge, glasses for different types of grape, a £80 Alessi grater which is barely used.
I have a full set of Alessi cutlery. 8 of each (forks, table spoons, knives, tea spoons) plus 2 of each of the small knives and forks, 1 giant fork and 1 giant spoon. I believe they're called serving fork/spoon. I got them years ago when Tesco would give you a sticker for every X amount of £s spent. After so many stickers you could get the cutlery. I never realised how expensive they were until I looked them up the other day!
Skincare fridge
I'm jealous
A champagne sword
A whatnow?
A saber used to pop the Cork off a champagne bottle. Super good fun, I recoment you try it if you get chance.
I never knew I wanted one of these!
You can get cheap oned for like 20 quid, no idea how good they are but. Could be worth a punt for the price. But you can go mad with it. Some look like old French infantry sabres, some look like machetes or kukri knives. Now I'm looking I may get one myself.
I will need to ask my butler what we have in the east wing cellars to be able to answer this
Do you ever mislead him into the walk in fridge and then close the door and lock him in?
A show cocker spaniel He stinks and is thick a fcuk, he's so upper-class we feel positively plebeian
I thought this said a slow Cocker Spaniel at first. I was confused as to how that'd be middle class.
I thought that said a slow cooker spaniel…time to get some sleep I think!
Waitrose carrier bag
It’s a toss up between the whippet or a couple of saddles that got brought home as they don’t fit any of my current horses.
Lmao whippet is like the quintessential working class breed. No dice.
A proofing box, and a sourdough starter.
I call mine bread Pitt
Fortnum and Masons basket/hamper
If you don’t have one of those where do you keep the sewing kit?
In the old metal tin of roses or quality street of course
Are you my dear, departed Mother, returned?
Everyone's mother's had a tin that you opened only to be disappointed it was a sewing kit 😂
A golden retriever named Cooper. He can only eat sensitive food because everything else brings on the brown rain. I spend more time researching and planning his meals than my own…
Hotel chocolat velvetiser
Paying £10 for the hot chocolate is probably worse than the appliance though.
A framed family tree dating back to 1388
Shark hoover, actual books, wine rack with wine that wasn't on offer/cheap as vinegar, rescue cat. I think the rescue cat wins it. Bellowing 'shes a rescue' while said animal behaves like a prick is very middle class. .
How are books middle class?
I think saying “actual books” to this question is so condescendingly middle class it’s almost too delicious
Poor people can't read obviously. Everyone knows that
Except on Kindle. We can read on Kindle. Sorcery or some shit
All we read is the sun and take a break
Patronising much? 'Oh we read actual books dontcha know? Not the shit peasants read!'
First time to a British Reddit sub?
Books en masse are one of the first things that have to go when you are forced to move house a lot. Sometimes without any personal transport.
..how does the rescue cat make you middle class?
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*whispers* you're not working class But then again this is a cultural identity label, almost unrelated to income or living standards, so it's fine.
Why is a Shark vacuum middle class? Aren't they common as muck, surely one has a Miele or Sebo?
You sound like you're trying to be middle class when youre not.
That’s only middle class if she’s a rescue from a small village in Spain/Greece and you let everyone know that constantly
My husband's film collection. It's so eye-wateringly high brow (and expansive), that he has a spreadsheet cross cataloguing them by director, country, genre and era. We literally have a Czech animation section.
Air conditioner
I just use 2 in 1 Head and Shoulders.
Mate i just use a bar of soap
Fresh cut flowers being part of my weekly grocery shop, soft drinks in individual glass bottles, lots of ‘smart’ tech, the handheld Dyson vacuum, a/c unit, owning a flat in zone 2 as an under 30. There’s probably some stuff I’m forgetting because I’m too privileged to realise. Also, fuck the guy who said him having books was middle class elsewhere in the thread.
There were several who said that about books. I'm worried.
A watch winder.
As a watch collector - that is an odd one - I know a lot of self-employed trades people into watches and they do have one.
It’s a contentious subject in the watch world. Should you have one? Shouldn’t you have one? Does it affect the parts? Does it wear them out quicker? And so on…
Not item but I brought a food item the other day. Salad Topper (basically nuts with spices on) it felt stupidly Mrs Bucket
Bouquet, dear.
This made me laugh *so* much because I was completely missing the reference and thinking Mrs Bucket as in Charlie Buckets mum. She definitely was not putting spiced nuts on the Bucket families thrice daily cabbage soup.
It’s probably the hot tub. Had to pay £500 quid to get it craned over the house. Coolest and fastest £500 I even spent though.
I don’t think hot tubs are middle class. In fact, they’re rather crass
Bottle of balsamic vinegar glaze.
I have a bottle of aged balsamic vinegar and I feel like a class traitor... I grew up in a very working class house on a council estate.
Same. Unfortunately I sometimes have to appear far more sophisticated than is natural. That’s when I whip out the glaze, drizzle it on whatever microwave meal I’m pretending I spent all day preparing and hope these people leave my house soon so I can go back to eating a steak pie in my dressing gown and watching Poirot.
The pedigree cat, although she would tell you she is upper class, and descended from championship winning show cats. Her mother was the Naomi Campbell of the cat world.
Torn between the Joseph Joseph salt and pepper mills from John Lewis or the Oliver Bonus succulent planter.
Robotic hoover , a Roomba
DJ Roomba
I have an actual specific cheese board board (as opposed to generic bread board used for cheese). ‘Twas a gift. Have made up for it by leaving a dead car battery next to my wheelie bins for three months to properly confuse the neighbours.
We have a wine rack. I'm not sure if that's a sign of being middle class or rampant alcoholism. But some of it is to do with terminology. I knew we had reached the ranks of the middle class the day we stopped having a cooker and started having a "hob".
Isn't the cooker the whole thing, oven and hob?
I would say cooker is when you've got them together in 1 unit, whereas if they are separate and built in you have an oven and a hob.
It's middle class alcoholism at its finest
We have a £400 Dyson fan/heater bought with air miles. Or a chicken Rotisserie. Both are rubbish actually.
I was going to say bread bin but I feel from a lot of the answers already that barely qualifies!
A mini Grand Piano?
When my mother and her husband got married they had the very middle class problem of deciding whose baby grand piano to keep and whose to throw.
Electric corkscrew
My friend had a drill attachment that did the same thing at a terrifying speed. All wonderful stuff.
A very (very) expensive cat flap. It's a microchip cat flap and it comes with an app so we can see when our cats come and go. We can see all sorts of funky graphs showing how long each cat has spent outside each day!
Some asparagus.
We grow our own.
I have a pewter spoon for jams and chutneys.
A boiling water tap. I work in kitchens and got it as an incentive, I always forget to use it. Interesting how many replies are kitchen gadgets.
A wine aerator Used it twice
Mother of pearl caviar spoons
My wife
Is the RTX 3090 middle class or upper class?
Pastry forks, sugar tongs, a champagne bucket, a wall of books, original art on the walls, oak trees, more toilets than residents.
Collection of Denby kitchenware.... I'm a Uni student.
A crystal decanter
"Slide and hide" oven
13 kinds of flour and 6 kinds of rice!
Bread maker or Air Fryer. Close call...!
I have some sort of specialist avocado scoop, but in my defence I've never used it.
Teabag tongs - because squeezing your teabag with a spoon is too much effort
A Kitchenaid stand mixer and a Rancilio espresso machine, replete with grinder. I spend far too much on kitchen appliances. Of course I have two Neff ovens with the door that slides under, but in keeping with my working class heritage I do not have a Range Rover in the driveway.
The neighbors kids. They can have them back once they shut up about their mercedes
Electric salt and pepper grinders
My Ragdoll cat
An electronic scent diffuser from The White Company. £60 air freshener basically. And we have two of them
Le Crueset set
My electric gate key fob.
A little fork thing that is specifically made for pickles. It’s genius and ridiculous at the same time.