privileged
Coffee break time, and for some reason conversation got onto how poor we all were growing up. Nothing major, as no one had a really deprived upbringing, just; no holidays/dodgy homemade xmas presents/could never afford Heinz baked beans sort of thing. Our receptionist felt she must contribute something, but all she could come up with was "we were so poor one year we almost had to sell the pony". Her face looked for sympathy, she got increduality.
(Dreadful Scathe, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 17:04, 17 replies)

Someone argued they were hard done-by because their family "could only afford the cheapest form of broadband" and "only had one car till [he] was 16".
Poor soul.

I might add this was in response to an accusation that he was acting like a spoilt little tit.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 17:14, closed)

I went to uni with someone who was nicknamed "5 ponies"
because when discussing kids tv, she mentioned she'd never had a TV when she was growing up. We assumed she'd lived in abject poverty or somesuch until she qualified the statement with "we had five ponies though..."
(Rakky (forgot her password) The muffin maverick, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 17:19, closed)

We could never afford Heinz beans either
I didn't care about the lack of foreign holidays or the free school meals; it was the cheap baked beans that blighted my childhood.
(IHateSprouts is baking a huge pie shaped like an enormous pie, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 17:29, closed)

We could never afford Heinz beans either
all our money went on foreign holidays and ponies :-/
(Kyzia was here on, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 17:31, closed)

I had a peculiar dichotomy growing up.
My parents had a house on a lake in the mountains, as Dad is a doctor, and he traded in his car every two years on a new one because he could write it off on his taxes. (He claimed it as a business vehicle.) We had a motorboat to take out on the lake, as well as a canoe and a sailboat, and that was where I spent my summers.

They drink the cheapest wine-in-a-box they can find. I wore Sears jeans until I was in my teens, and K-Mart sneakers all through high school. Dad would carry gas cans in the back of his car so he could buy gasoline in the city where it was $0.10 per gallon cheaper, and carry about 20 gallons up to the mountain house for use in the motorboat. (A savings of $2! Of course it's worth the extra effort, boy!) We heated the house with wood because it was too expensive to have any central heating, so my weekends were often spent with the sound of a chainsaw blasting my ears and the crack of the logs splitting as I hit them with the maul. Mom was an expert bargain hunter in the grocery store, so everything we ate was off-brand. Soft drinks? Why would you need that? We get water from the tap that's perfectly good to drink! Kool Aid? Sure, we can get that- but we'll just add some extra water to it, shall we? Make it last longer.

Appearances from the outside can be very misleading. My childhood was far from being posh.
( The Resident Loon Not a demographic. Do not measure., Fri 4 Mar 2011, 18:13, closed)

Massive difference
Between posh, privileged, well off and comfortable. Fairly subjective too and use different criteria: money, social breeding and or lineage etc.
( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Sat 5 Mar 2011, 13:25, closed)

Too right
I'm in line to get a baronetcy, but grew up eating Tesco value lasagne most nights and using a second-hand Acorn to do homework. It's a very odd thing, is class. And divorce.
( John Q Wagonwheel Spent, Sat 5 Mar 2011, 15:51, closed)

We used to
have to get out of the lake we lived in at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, go to work at the mill every day for tuppence a month, come home, and Dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were LUCKY!
(Falco, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 18:39, closed)

Lake? Luxury
We lived in a cesspit and re-used teabags and played with string and we had to wank the dog if we wanted milk.
(IHateSprouts is baking a huge pie shaped like an enormous pie, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 18:51, closed)

wank?
i think "wank the dog for milk" is not strictly Python, but I'm sure that it was in the first draft, and only cut for tv.:)
(Dreadful Scathe, Fri 4 Mar 2011, 22:24, closed)

Aye, but you try telling that to the kids today!

( number5 has been fighting tramps and losing., Sat 5 Mar 2011, 13:22, closed)

*chuckles*
It was only a matter of time..
(danniekavanagh did nothing constructive on, Sun 6 Mar 2011, 12:23, closed)

It's like incredulity
But twice as much.
( SteamedCleaner, Sat 5 Mar 2011, 9:17, closed)

Can't be bothered to Google who it was but
there is an Irish comic who says that when he was a kid having a pony meant you were either really posh or really poor.
(Wagane, Sat 5 Mar 2011, 9:46, closed)

Poor? We were all poor in our house...
We were all poor in our house, I was poor, the gardener was poor, the maid was poor ....

Thanks to "The Perishers" for that one.

Cartoon strip - Daily Mirror - Now ended (The Perishers, not the Mirror).
(karnuvap, Sun 6 Mar 2011, 11:51, closed)

only read it in the summer
for the eyeballs in the sky thing. that cracked me up!
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Sun 6 Mar 2011, 22:38, closed)

me too
in fact, hadn't realised it had finished. There goes a bit of the wallpaper of my life. Ah, well...
(zebideedoodah likes florence but prefers venice, Sun 6 Mar 2011, 23:50, closed)