h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

When I was a child I was put in institutions several times when my mother was widowed and working full time. And we formed social groups such as effers has described, except we called them cliques.

It never occurred to me to think of them as exclusionary because our clique was everybody of our age. Solitary was the equivalent of pariah status. I can only remember one girl being excluded, and that was on account of her kleptomania. She was soon removed.

I was the most privileged in the group because I actually had a parent, so maybe I didn't have a true feeling of what it meant to be in the group.

since, despite WMs best efforts, we're running with the gang thing

it's all a matter of perspective, isn't it?

my group of friends
their gang

it's about inclusion and exclusion yadda yadda

For me gang can be either, but i have to admit that when I first see the word I don't think of a fluffy friendly all-inclusive type of thing. Clique similar, but maybe with less idea of the possibility of violence - for me a clique is definitely more about exclusion than inclusion.

Strange thing, language

As for tea.
I live in the land where herb and fruit infusions are normal. "black" tea is almost frowned on as one of those coffee-like drugs and everyone seems to drink some form of Roibush.

Actually, I like the herb stuff, can't stand the fruit and drink roibush occasionally. But what the heck is "English Breakfast"? Can you get it in England at all? I drink Earl Grey when I want a strong, hot beverage.

Yes, "English Breakfast" maybe is a historical thing to explore: when tea first became available it was expensive and therefore advertised the fact the the people who drank it had a definite measure of status. There was, for a long time,also the ritual of afternoon tea. This may have been of a different type of tea from that drunk at breafast to go with the accompanying cakes/biscuits/sandwiches which were eaten at that afternoon ritual. This is all surmising, but if anyone out there in h2g2land has any hard information about tea 'culture', I'd be interested to hear about it!

Miss Brodie had a "set" didn't she? It sounds as if your group was exhillerating to be part of Effers, at a time of life when boundaries are expanding and new ideas are stimulating and fun.

I was at a boarding school similar to Sho's and loathed it for many of the same reasons; plus I was very very lonely. To this day I am ok in small groups, but nervous in large ones, and that includes online groups. I learned to be frightened by any kind of "them" and "us" thinking, by groupthink especially when it tips over into peer pressure, and by what happens when "belonging" and "contributing" and "helping" flip over into "fitting in".

Your tea shop sounds wonderful Witty.

Breakfast Tea, is usually strong black tea with milk and designed to be gulped down cool and in quantity; breakfast cups are like giants' tea-cups, large, wide and shallow.
Tea-time tea is a much more delicate or refined thing because people aren't as thirsty and are more awake.

One thing I noticed is that teas in the UK, particularly the local teas, (yorkshire, lancashire, irish, scottish) are blended and optimised for drinking with milk, while tea on the continong is finer and thinner for drinking without.

Ben

We also had many cliques. I didn't like any of them and they didn't like me. But I wasn't the only one and had a few friens , who also were not really nice to me a lot of the time.

I must admit I still feel uncomfortable if there are teenagers around. I *still* have the feeling they are making fun of me. When I'm on the train in the morning for instance.
Same with larger groups of people.


I really like fruit tea, but I'm not allowed to drink it anymore.

I had the most amazing Christmas present this year, a whole beautifully packaged selection of Whittard's Teas, all varieties from Lapsang, Gunpowder, Afternoon, Breakfast etc etc. I am now a confirmed tea drinker as each afternoon I try a different sort out.

I really need to get one of the better teapots out of storage, the one that is here is rather clumsy. I think tea drinking is partly ritual even now for me.

(as to the offtopic drift - when I was really young, there were only boys my age in the street, no girls at all, and although I played with them, mostly at being cowboys and building dens, they refused to let me become a proper member of their gang as I was a girl)

My preference is one on one.

I find groups difficult...but needs must if you are to survive at all.

And I find tea shops make me ill...my mother liked taking me to them. There was one in Cheltenham I won't forget which was about as suffocating as imaginable.

I think I got Ben exactly the same gift Lanza!

What was different about this tea shop was that the decor and atmosphere was very modern and coffeeshopy, so not suffocating at all.

My school was very cliquey, but it was all far more about character assassination than violence. There were various cliques which were all about being exclusive and failing to 'fit in' was supposedly social suicide. I was bullied there, because I was an in-town girl (not from one of the wealthy villages) who didn't have the latest stuff and was a bit chubbier (not really fat, at least now I look back at the photos) than the acceptable norm.

There were a small, loose band of us who kind of flocked together for protection, couple of goths, a few in-town girls, a few metal-heads, a brain or two, the fat girls. We were a fairly fluid group and people would join or leave depending on the level of bullying they got from the other groups. By sixth form, the common room was such an intimidating place that we cleared out the lost property space under the staircase and sat there in free periods.

Like others have said, this has coloured my whole life and even now I recognise that I am intimidated by those women who I perceive as 'posh', and find women hard to relate to. A lot of the mums at my son's village school are the girls who would have been in those village cliques and I find it hard to believe they want to be friends with us. I'm doing my best to over come this so I don't unwittingly pass it on to the boys.

I'm sure all schools are like this to an extent, but big groups of girls are particularly good at psychological warfare.

As for tea, I always used to drink it weak and black (hangover from student days of never having fresh milk) and now white and as strong as I can mash it before the tannin forms a skin.

Z - I think that is another reason why tes shops are in decline (although not yours by the sound of it), too many of them stuck to the chintzy harking back to the past that can be so off-putting! You have to be *really* good to get away with that - what is that one called in Harrogate? Is it Betty's? That has made a feature of its quaintness and that is fine but for your average high street people want something a bit less uptight-1950s and a bit more comfy-chairs and a chat.

"My school was very cliquey, but it was all far more about character assassination than violence."

Sounds dull. Ours was basically about guerrilla warfare, arson and brawling.

Especially with the Catholic school up the road, who got to finish half an hour before us for the sole reason that it'd give them a chance to hide in the ginnels we'd use for a sly post-school fag.

I've noticed there's a gang of extremely unpleasant people down at our local tea shop. They give me dirty looks if I add milk to Lapsang Souchon. This sort of unpleasant anti-social tea-shop behaviour is destroying the middle classes, dontcha know.

B

This very poncy pretencious place just opened up the road. It has a cheese counter with over priced cheeses and a fridge with over priced white wines and beer...and the tea/cofee area.

The men serving, wear poncy aprons, are very fey and don't even talk properly..all from the throat...you can hardly hear them; they daren't look you in the eye..

It is so out of character for this area to me...but all these middle class people are coming to the area as the poorer working class people can't afford to live here...I think its called 'gentrification'.

I can accept change...but this ponciness drives me crazy. It's so false. Really the men are just so fey...

Is it unusual that waiters wear aprons? Here all waiters do that, no matter if posh nor not. I find that really interesting.

Where the hell has emotional warmth gone?

Woman *centred* culture has that at its foundation in my experience.

@Z - if Ben did get the same present as me, it's great isn't it? I want to have tea parties now, and make cakes.

I did make carrot cake the other day in fact. But the last thing I made is a sort of chocolate mudslide, and much more suitable for coffee.

It's the look of them in their aprons in Peckham. It's hard to explain.

(I must do photos).

Depends on the women. You can't generalize it. My experience is that especially the younger can be really mean and make the life of others miserable.

I'm talking *woman centred*...ie not women part of a macho money culture. (Fair enough that doesn't really exist in the west...and we get bitchy)

But I have certainly encountered it in my travels.

I cannot for the life of me remember anybody being especially mean to me. A boy once pulled my pigtails...


I keep trying to think of examples - no, can't begin to remember any stuff like that happening to me from other girls or women.