View Full Version : lunch, dinner & tea.
Was just reminiscing about the good old days, and how our terms for meal times seem to have changed. Maybe it's that folk have got more airs and graces :)
When younger we never had lunch. we had dinner at 1 pm or thereabouts, and tea at 5 pm ish. for supper you got a kick up the arse:lol:
So, what do you all call your meals these days?
Breakfast.
Brunch.
Elevenses.
2nd breakfast.
Tiffin
Lunch
Dinner.
Although it was confusing at school, as we had dinner ladies serving our lunch.
Me: breakfast, lunch, tea
Wife & children: breakfast, lunch, dinner
It's a South vs North thing, really.
Surely you have afternoon tea?
awkwardbydesign
06-10-2015, 07:29
Surely you have afternoon tea?
That's breakfast! (I'm retired.) :ner:
my fading memory is that as children we used different terms depending on when we had our cooked meal (we generally only had one). On an evening if we had sandwiches it was tea, if we had a cooked meal it was dinner. At lunchtime if we had sandwiches it was lunch but if we had a cooked meal it was dinner (school dinners served by dinner ladies). My mum is from Yorkshire, my dad was Irish and I was brought up in Bristol so it could be a result of many influences. Our children call it breakfast lunch and dinner and they pull me up if I call a cooked meal at lunchtime dinner.
What it's basically about is that the main meal of the day, historically, was served in the middle of the day, with tea/supper in the evenings. Over the centuries, in the higher social classes, it moved later and later, so that 'dinner', which used to be served at 1pm, might not be served until 8pm. So the middle and upper classes came to call their evening meal 'dinner', whilst the lower classes stuck with 'tea'.
Then there's 'high tea', but I've never understood that.
brian2957
06-10-2015, 07:57
Never really ate breakfast when I was young . Lunch was a piece on jam ( a jam sandwich to the posher amongst us :D ) and dinner was between 5 and 6 . I have 5 brothers so if you didn't eat what was put down to you one of the others ate yours along with their own :lol: Supper was another piece on jam :)
Never really ate breakfast when I was young . Lunch was a piece on jam ( a jam sandwich to the posher amongst us :D ) and dinner was between 5 and 6 . I have 5 brothers so if you didn't eat what was put down to you one of the others ate yours along with their own :lol: Supper was another piece on jam :)
Ah, a jeely piece. reminds me of the song
I'm a sky scraper wean, I live on the ninteenth floor
But I'm no goin' oot tae play any more.
'Cause since we moved to oor new house I'm wastin' away
For I'm getting one meal less every day.
Chorus:
Oh ye canna fling pieces oot a twenty story flat
Seven hundred hungry weans will testify to that
If it's butter, cheese or jeely, if the bread is plain or pan
The odds against it reaching us is ninety-nine to one
On the first day my Maw flung oot a daud o' hovis broon
It came skitin' oot the windae and went up instead o' doon
Noo ev'ry twenty seven hours it comes back into sight
Cause my piece went intae orbit and became a satellite
On the next day my Maw flung me oot a piece again
It went up and hit a pilot in a fast, low flying plane
He scrapped it off his goggles, shouting through the intercom
The Clydeside Reds have got me wi' a breid 'n jelly bomb
On the third day my Maw tho't she would try another throw
The Salvation Army band was standin' doon below
'Onward Christian Soldiers' was the tune they should've played
But the Oompah man was playing piece 'n marmalade
We've wrote awa' to Oxfam to try an' get some aid
We all joined together and have formed the Piece Brigade
We're gonna march to London tae demand our civil rights
Like nae more hooses over piece flinging height
I drive for a private school and it seems that what I would call "Tea" is "Supper"......prob because Daddy is "in the city" until 9pm and "Mummy" likes to make a gourmet meal from scratch from all the best organically sourced components to reward Daddy after a hard day. Quite why you would want to eat at 10pm is beyond me, but then I was brunged up in da gutta of Battersea....init bruv.
Sovereign
06-10-2015, 08:45
Breakfast, lunch, dinner for me are the three stable meals of the day. Anything between or after these are called tea, supper etc depending on what time of day it is.
Yes dinner ladies serving meunch as a kid was a bit of an odd one
awkwardbydesign
06-10-2015, 09:56
Breakfast, lunch, dinner for me are the three stable meals of the day. Anything between or after these are called tea, supper etc depending on what time of day it is.
Yes dinner ladies serving meunch as a kid was a bit of an odd one
Your eating habits are your own business, of course.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQSanwrN3i9ixy6vn1O4bOvqoIkfa2y5 0u6UP67KATxvUyhuYX3
Or did you mean https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRdFYZ0oeI4SU3Ab794tYzMsd3__FVbN v_KSvNF4rg-Y7bkhWjVYA
:D
For me, it's always been breakfast, lunch and dinner, with if possible, the main meal being eaten at lunchtime, and a lighter (still hot, and always home-cooked in every case) meal taken at night. However, if we're having a dinner party, then of course that would be different :)
Certainly these days, I prefer eating my main meal during the day, usually between 12-1pm. I hate eating any later than 8pm, as it's not healthy and I don't like feeling 'bagged up' before going to bed.
The terms 'tea' and 'supper' I consider as Britishisms, and so in an Italian household, not something that one would encounter.
Marco.
Never really ate breakfast when I was young . Lunch was a piece on jam ( a jam sandwich to the posher amongst us :D ) and dinner was between 5 and 6 . I have 5 brothers so if you didn't eat what was put down to you one of the others ate yours along with their own :lol: Supper was another piece on jam :)
A piece on jam !!
I used to dream about a piece on Jam.
We were always starving when we got in from school, but jam was far too much of a luxury. We were allowed a piece with sugar sprinkled on top of the marg !!! Happy days. Nowadays my mum would be arrested for child abuse.
What were our meals called. Breakfast , dinner and tea. Its obvious, isnt it !!
brian2957
06-10-2015, 12:16
Aye , sometimes we got rhubarb and a big poke of sugar to dip it in . No wonder my teeth are bad . The good old days :lol:
Aye , sometimes we got rhubarb and a big poke of sugar to dip it in . No wonder my teeth are bad . The good old days :lol:
Oh yes...............I used to love the sugar/rhubarb treat.
We were always starving when we got in from school, but jam was far too much of a luxury. We were allowed a piece with sugar sprinkled on top of the marg !!! Happy days. Nowadays my mum would be arrested for child abuse.
!!
Jam was never rationed in our house but pretty much everything else was. One pint of milk was supposed to last 5 people for a day. There would always be a big bottle of Coca Cola in the fridge but that was for my dad, we wern't allowed to drink from it. Tea - and it was always tea and not 'dinner' - dinner was what you had in the daytime at school - would be something like 2 fish fingers, half a dozen chips and a tomato cut in half.
If it wasn't tea-time and you were hungry or thirsty the response would be: 'there's plenty of corporation pop in the tap and plenty of bread and jam in the cupboard'.
As far as the origins of lunch and dinner - as I understand it Dinner was eaten in the middle of the day, but in early Victorian times it became fashionable for the wealthy to eat later and later, so the name stayed the same but the time got pushed back to seven or eight pm. Consequently 'tea' was taken about 4pm ish, served with cake, biscuits and or sandwiches, to keep you going until the main meal.
Poor people carried on eating their dinner in the middle of the day and called their later meal 'tea' as they would eat it about 5pm. They couldn't eat later like the rich since they had an early start the next day,(work) six days a week.,
'Supper' is very middle-class/Southern. I've no idea where 'lunch' originated - possibly America?
The Black Adder
06-10-2015, 13:24
I used to enjoy pickled beet root dipped in sugar... and I'm still partial to have Brown Sauce on toast. lol
One pint of milk was supposed to last 5 people for a day.
LOL
I cant remember the "milk " rules, but at one point I read that lots of milk was good for wee boys who wanted to grow big, so I started to go for it. gallons of the stuff.
then mum realised that she was spending far too much on milk so started hiding it around the house.... yes, hiding it from her son.
Bad mum.
Anyway I soon discovered the hiding places and renewed my milk diet.
Eventually we had stricter rules, which usually involved her hands coming into contact with the back of my legs. End of my new liquid diet.
This hiding of the milk has always been something her and I have laughed about and I recently got my revenge when she was down visiting. My daughter hid the milk.... granny asks " wheres the milk" .... daughter says ' sorry gran , youre drinking too much milk, so we've hidden it."
Poor mum, she got the joke straight away, and I thought she was going to end herself.
if you wait long enough, a chance for revenge always appears.
brian2957
06-10-2015, 13:52
Nah mate , both now passed away some years ago . They did their best under difficult circumstances , didn't they :)
They did their best under difficult circumstances , didn't they :)
Oh yes.......
This thread is just for laughs.
My childhood was great. No money, but loads of good memories
brian2957
06-10-2015, 14:04
Yup , I've got many happy memories too mate :D
Sovereign
06-10-2015, 14:44
Your eating habits are your own business, of course.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQSanwrN3i9ixy6vn1O4bOvqoIkfa2y5 0u6UP67KATxvUyhuYX3
Or did you mean https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRdFYZ0oeI4SU3Ab794tYzMsd3__FVbN v_KSvNF4rg-Y7bkhWjVYA
:D
Very ever mate, I had to read it twice to understand what you were on about
A piece on jam !!
I used to dream about a piece on Jam.
We were always starving when we got in from school, but jam was far too much of a luxury. We were allowed a piece with sugar sprinkled on top of the marg !!! Happy days. Nowadays my mum would be arrested for child abuse.
What were our meals called. Breakfast , dinner and tea. Its obvious, isnt it !!
Luxury!
http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq61/gazjamster/22ecaeeb8ed9f5158b20a28770af4426.jpg
brian2957
06-10-2015, 15:10
Didn't they have that in South Lanarkshire mate :)
South Lanarkshire................
I used to dream about being brought up in South Lanarkshire.
Bloody Luxury!
The 4 Yorkshiremen
(Four well-dressed men sitting together at a vacation resort. 'Farewell to Thee' being played in the background on Hawaiian guitar.)
Michael Palin: Ahh.. Very passable, this, very passable.
Graham Chapman: Nothing like a good glass of Chateau de Chassilier wine, ay Gessiah?
Terry Jones: You're right there Obediah.
Eric Idle: Who'd a thought thirty years ago we'd all be sittin' here drinking Chateau de Chassilier wine?
MP: Aye. In them days, we'd a' been glad to have the price of a cup o' tea.
GC: A cup ' COLD tea.
EI: Without milk or sugar.
TJ: OR tea!
MP: In a filthy, cracked cup.
EI: We never used to have a cup. We used to have to drink out of a rolled up newspaper.
GC: The best WE could manage was to suck on a piece of damp cloth.
TJ: But you know, we were happy in those days, though we were poor.
MP: Aye. BECAUSE we were poor. My old Dad used to say to me, 'Money doesn't buy you happiness.'
EI: 'E was right. I was happier then and I had NOTHIN'. We used to live in this tiiiny old house, with greaaaaat big holes in the roof.
GC: House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
TJ: You were lucky to have a ROOM! *We* used to have to live in a corridor!
MP: Ohhhh we used to DREAM of livin' in a corridor! Woulda' been a palace to us. We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woken up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House!? Hmph.
EI: Well when I say 'house' it was only a hole in the ground covered by a piece of tarpolin, but it was a house to US.
GC: We were evicted from *our* hole in the ground; we had to go and live in a lake!
TJ: You were lucky to have a LAKE! There were a hundred and sixty of us living in a small shoebox in the middle of the road.
MP: Cardboard box?
TJ: Aye.
MP: You were lucky. We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank. We used to have to get up at six o'clock in the morning, clean the bag, eat a crust of stale bread, go to work down mill for fourteen hours a day week in-week out. When we got home, our Dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!
GC: Luxury. We used to have to get out of the lake 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!
TJ: Well we had it tough. We used to have to get up out of the shoebox at twelve o'clock at night, and LICK the road clean with our tongues. We had half a handful of freezing cold gravel, worked twenty-four hours a day at the mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our Dad would slice us in two with a bread knife.
EI: Right. I had to get up in the morning at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, (pause for laughter), drink a cup of sulphuric acid, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill, and pay mill owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our Dad and our mother would kill us, and dance about on our graves singing 'Hallelujah.'
MP: But you try and tell the young people today that... and they won't believe ya'.
ALL: Nope, nope..
Grant, thats the one.
Except in this thread I think its 4 Scots.
brian2957
06-10-2015, 16:02
South Lanarkshire................
I used to dream about being brought up in South Lanarkshire.
Bloody Luxury!
Nah mate , I didn't get where I am today by wishing I was brought up in South Lanarkshire :lol:
Nah mate , I didn't get where I am today by wishing I was brought up in South Lanarkshire :lol:
http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq61/gazjamster/tve1025-19771012-111.jpg
http://i434.photobucket.com/albums/qq61/gazjamster/tve1025-19771012-111.jpg
:lol: Twenty-two minutes late, escaped puma, Chessington North
http://www.leonardrossiter.com/reginaldperrin/11051.jpg
I've no idea where 'lunch' originated - possibly America?
Nope. OED records it from 1685 in its current meaning; earlier a 'luncheon' was a large piece of meat or cheese.
breakfast - TBC
fly - 9am
denner - 12 noon
fly - 3pm
supper - 5.30pm
above times are approx and subject to change depending on weather or tv viewings
Firebottle
25-10-2015, 07:14
Fly what? :)
brian2957
25-10-2015, 07:56
Maybe he's an airline pilot , or is involved in your hobby Alan :lol:
walpurgis
25-10-2015, 09:52
Fly paper? Fly Agaric? Fly open? Fly by wire? :)
When I was a boy it was breakfast (at breakfast time), lunch (at lunch time) and dinner (at dinner time); tea was a drink that you may have instead of coffee. Any other version is just some regional weirdness as far as I'm concerned.
mother always liked her flycup..11 am and 3pm... was fairly common name for it in parts of Scotland at least. I imagine it was named from having a quick or sneaky cuppa when no one could tell and the fly cup of tea became a flycup
My Mum was a school cleaner with shifts in the morning and afternoon so on school days breakfast was what ever I had time for - usually nowt because I always slept in and was late. I made up for it by scrounging pastry off the dinner ladies from the canteen kitchen window at morning break. Dinner was at school (too often liver and onions) and tea was bread and butter when I got home with what ever was in the larder (mostly fish paste, spam or jam but sometimes corned beef) Evenings we might have something together as a family that my mum cooked depending who was home - Fridays was nearly always a fish supper from the local chip shop. Saturdays everyone was on the hoof, my dad would be down the pub/bookies and my Mum went to the nearest proper town to do shopping. If i went with her we would have 'lunch' at Binns or M&S. Sundays was fend for yourself when you got up but we always had a proper Sunday dinner at mid day and sandwiches at tea time (around 5:00)
Powered by vBulletin® Version 4.2.3 Copyright © 2026 vBulletin Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved.