Ghetto Fabulous

All the more official bits about Sheffield are on the family blog. But I had some other thoughts about our time in England.

When I was at my all girls' secondary school (American friends, think junior high/high school) one of the major pastimes was getting into catty fights and hurling insults at one another. You had to be sharp to survive! The insults gots harsher and harsher, and would generally end in one of two ways. You could walk away, but that was shame upon shame, upon shame, so who was going to do that? Or you could take it to the next level and fight. None of that hair pulling stuff, that was for sissies and the weak (and for girls without afro hair and cornrows), it was full on slaps, kicks and punches.

But one of the worst cusses that you could hear was about where you got your clothes from.

( For the record, the worst possible cuss was to respond to any insult hurled at you with the two venomous deliberate words, "your mother". This always drew a collective girly gasp from the crowd, because everyone knew that to cuss out someone else's mum was an outright declaration of war. You might as well just say - let's fight, right here, right now.The attitude was - you don't cuss my mum, even if I argue with her every night. Some crazy family honour thing. Anyway, I digress, back to clothes)

It was degrading to be told that your clothes were rubbish. It was even worse to be told that your clothes came from Tesco. Just awful.

So then I get on a plane and go to England and I go to Tesco. And they always did clothes (otherwise teen insults were completely unfounded), but have you seen them lately? They are actually rather good. So good that on my last shopping opportunity I spurned the high street stores and said to my sister - in - law Raquel (well Rachel actually, but that's another story)
"Take me to Tesco!"
I love it! And if there was more time, I'd have gone to Asda, and Sainsburys too.

Has it always been this good? Now I look at my Cherokee and George items with pride (If you don't know what I am talking about you need to catch up). So now if someone said to me
"You buy your clothes from Tesco"I'd be like - Thanks Very Much, you say the nicest things!

Who knows what the change is? When we were growing up it was rubbish being skint and we all had to have addidas (actually I've not changed that much), and gold chains and nice clothes. We may have been poor, but we weren't going to look it. There was so much to prove back then.

I guess for me its not the same anymore, for the most past. Now bargains are an essential part of life, lest I give in to the "I can't be bothered" attitude that is engendered by being puked on four times a day. Now I have the best of both, Tia can burp to her heart's content.