Tea, supper, dinner

[Kosmo]

Many years ago when travelling in Yorkshire our hotel served High Tea – we had had no lunch and were starving and I was expecting a couple of sandwiches. But no – this was with hot food incorporated into the tea – like an early supper. Does anywhere still serve a “High Tea”?

[Sarah Passingham]

Ah, Kosmo, you got to the ‘High Tea’ option before me. I lived the first few years (late fifties / early sixties) with my parents and brother in my grandparents’ house. It was a very formal Norfolk household and we had breakfast and lunch in the dining room with starched white linen and served off a sideboard – yes, I know, but it really was a sort of pre-war, stuck in amber sort of family!. Dinner was from 8.00 pm after ‘drinks’, and usually with guests (lots of dinner parties, but never restaurants that I can remember), but strictly for adults only. Us ‘littl’uns’ had High Tea in the kitchen, taken in our night clothes, and after we’d had the grime of outdoors country life scraped off us, which was hot but simple. My mother is Scottish and I think she may have called it High Tea. Proper tea was at 4.00 pm with dinky sandwiches, angel cake and the like, on the lawn in summer, and round a fire in the drawing room in the winter. When we all moved to our own family home, life a la Jane Austin stopped smartish!

[Kosmo]

Lot of Austen around this week if you have listened to the podcast – Harriet is a keen reader it seems. Having googled it appears it is more Scottish than Yorkshire and pretty rare there these days apparently. When I were a young lad on a farm we always had a proper Sunday roast and then afternoon tea with sandwiches, cakes, etc. All a long time ago and we all eat a lot less these days.

These days in this “middle class” we have breakfast, which is usually cooked on Sundays, lunch which is usually little more than a sandwich and fruit and dinner – which is just a cooked main course. But then we lead very sedentary lives these days.

[Anonymous]

I grew up in semi rural South East England with Breakfast, Lunch, and Supper. Tea is cake etc at about 4pm and only happened on special occasions. Drinks were at about 7pm during the evening Archers and Supper was at about 7:30pm. Dinner was rare and mostly involved going out. Close friends/family came for drinks and supper, or drinks followed by going out to dinner. More formal things were dinner if it was a dinner party.

Now I’m in Australia where life is a bit more straightforward (but not as classless as Aussies would have you believe) where it’s Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner. Though I call it Supper when referring to eating at home and Dinner when eating out and everyone seems to know what I mean (they’re probably being polite).

Confusingly what I’d call “Coffee” ie a quick break at about 11am is known as “Morning Tea” here. It always makes me smile.

[Author]

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