5am posts...

[Dod101]

Well that is not my understanding. 'Taking tea' is to me literally, preparing and drinking a cup of tea. High tea is something else altogether. It is a form of meal consisting of a cooked dish, probably the traditional meat and two veg or in the summer some form of salad. It is taken with bread and butter and maybe something sweet after it, like homebaked scones or something. Tea would usually accompany it.

High Tea is part of the diet where the main meal is taken at what we now call lunchtime but in working class families would be known as dinnertime, ie 12 noon to 12.30 pm.

Dod

[Loup321]

When I was small, I had a telling the time book. I think the entries went a bit like this.

8.00 Breakfast
11.00 Elevenses
1.00 Lunch
4.00 Afternoon tea
6.00 High tea
8.00 Dinner
10.00 Supper

Different people were pictured at each meal, selected from the family. The children had lunch; the mother and her friends had afternoon tea; the children had high tea after school; the parents had dinner. I still think they ate rather a lot though!

[DiamondEcho]

...
8.00 Breakfast
11.00 Elevenses
1.00 Lunch
4.00 Afternoon tea
6.00 High tea
8.00 Dinner
10.00 Supper ...

When we lived in Singapore, dinner was the main evening meal. 'Supper' was what you had after a night out, maybe 11.30pm-12.30am before going home. Whereas in the UK 'supper' seems like an informal evening meal, often served earlier than a more formal evening dinner.

But like so much in Singapore, a lot of the culture has been absorbed from abroad, and remains 'preserved in aspic' whereas it's been lost in the source culture. Ie it wouldn't suprise me at all the fund that historically in the UK supper was a meal hours later than dinner.

[Loup321]

...
8.00 Breakfast
11.00 Elevenses
1.00 Lunch
4.00 Afternoon tea
6.00 High tea
8.00 Dinner
10.00 Supper ...

When we lived in Singapore, dinner was the main evening meal. 'Supper' was what you had after a night out, maybe 11.30pm-12.30am before going home. Whereas in the UK 'supper' seems like an informal evening meal, often served earlier than a more formal evening dinner.

But like so much in Singapore, a lot of the culture has been absorbed from abroad, and remains 'preserved in aspic' whereas it's been lost in the source culture. Ie it wouldn't suprise me at all the fund that historically in the UK supper was a meal hours later than dinner.

I think you need to be wearing pyjamas to eat supper, and rarely sit at a table. My image in my mind is of the family in their pyjamas eating cheese on toast, with the children sitting on the kitchen worktops and the parents standing up. In my mind, if you'd had a night out and grabbed something out of your fridge when you got in, that would be supper, but I'm not sure about eating supper out of the house. Maybe we need a whole new word for the takeaway on the way home from the pub!

Your perception of supper (in the UK) and mine differ so much we could start a whole new discussion! But maybe you're correct that the rest of the UK has moved on and I'm still stuck in my childhood book and along with the people of Singapore.