Children of a different social class

[Moonraker]

Is it someone who sells something like fruit from a barrow in a market (ie, like Desmond in the Beatles song)?

So what class would Molly (a singer in a band) be?

[Rob Houghton]

Is it someone who sells something like fruit from a barrow in a market (ie, like Desmond in the Beatles song)?

So what class would Molly (a singer in a band) be?

To go off topic slightly, I've always wondered why at the end of the song the Beatles sing different words, and tell us 'Desmond stays at home and does his pretty face and in the evening he's a singer with a band'?!


Was this a deliberate 'mistake', a joke, or what? I've always wanted to know!

Answers on a postcard please!!

[Moonraker]

Seemingly a mistake.

"Paul did indeed make an error at the end, and the other three Beatles liked it enough that the kept it in. The phrase Ob-la-di Ob-la-da means "life goes on". Also, Paul actually heard the phrase from a Nigerian congo player in a group called Bad Manners named Jimmy Anonmuogharan Scott Emuakpor. Jimmy actually tried to sue him for using that phrase, a lot of events followed, and Jimmy dropped the case after Paul payed the support money that Jimmy owed his ex-wife and they both became close friends afterward."

[Wolfgang]

When I was at college, we were 'made' to do a short race-relations course. The black woman taking it obviously had a chip on her shoulder and considered all of the white students (about half the group) to be racist. She told us about the dangers of using expressions that were anti-black, such as blackboard, black clouds, black eyes, giving each other 'black looks' etc. she told us that all things that had the word 'black' in them had bad connotations, and were negative rather than positive images, and it seemed that she was attributing these sayings to her skin colour (which until then I had never even thought of!!) rather than to the colour black, which is often accociated with witches, death, etc.

I don't think I've ever come across anyone more racist as that race-relations teacher!! Sometimes too much knowledge is a dangerous thing!

Do you think she had an encounter with a Black Hole?

[Tony Summerfield]

Perhaps that should read, 'white hole', Wolfgang!

[Wolfgang]

So you think she emerged from a white hole then?

[MARKTAYLORUK]

All stereotypes are founded in reality. I am totally against censorship, Political Correctness and these modern day Bowdlers.

[MARKTAYLORUK]

Mrs Carlton sounds like a stuckup.....

[MARKTAYLORUK]

I wish they'd given Claudine a surname. As Head Girl - I suppose the twins' being rather dull and colourless was a kind of qualification!

[MARKTAYLORUK]

I admit to preferring labradors to people! Doris "couldn't roll her Rs in the French way " - she wasn't applying to be a tour guide!

[Irene Malory Towers]

This was one thread i had never looked at before so I went through all the messages and I enjoyed the discussion very much, even though it was very heated at times. I never had a problem with the way Enid treated people pf a different social class" like Ern, Tassie etc and I realised even as a child that this was accepted in those times Ansd as I am in my 50's some of these attitudes were definitely prevalent in my day. I went to a snobbish all girls school and there was definitely a feeling of superiority of those girls whose dads were lawyers, accountants over those dads who were plumbers etc. We even had a girl from the carnival and it was accepted that she wasn't one of us, although there was no obvious bullying towards her. I am just relieved that in today's schools the class distinctions seem to have more or less disappeared, even though they have other problems. I don't think Enid Blyton was a snob, she just reflected the times that she lived in. It is interesting to read the posts on the political correctness seminar and how ridiculous some of the changes are - eg replacing blackboard with chalkboard. However, it is true that the word dark is often associated with bad or sad - eg dark looks, dark mood, blackmail, etc etc. The origins may be derived from an association with daylight and nighttime rather than dark skinned people. I don't know. Etymology is a fascinating subject. Common sense needs to be used before banning or changing certain words. Of course words like nigger are frankly insulting but to replace blackboards with chalkboard is just ridiculous.

[Moonraker]

Black magic (bad) and white magic (good) are further examples. It is nonsense to think it refers to race - anymore than a black hole does.

[Boatbuilder]

.... but to replace blackboards with chalkboard is just ridiculous.

I fully agree with what you are saying. After all, the boards that they use magic markers on are known as whiteboards, but do white people claim that is anything to do with racism directed at them?

[Jack400]

In, I think, the mid 1970s blackboards were increasingly being replaced with green coloured boards, frequently of a kind that was able to be rolled up/down so that more prepared writing could be revealed as the students caught up. The logic of calling them"chalkboards" would seem uncontroversial in that context, although it came about as virtually everything seemed to have racial connertations ,in some minds at least.

[Boatbuilder]

We had those roller 'black' boards in some of the classrooms in my school in the late 1950s early 1960s, Jack, so apart from maybe a colour change they were nothing new in the '70s. I can't understand why racial prejudice seems to relate to just black people. There are other races that are yellow skinned but if that colour is used as a descriptor for something, it's not taken as racial. So why just black?