Lunch, Dinner, Tea, Supper?

Lancashire lass here, but have lived down south and now in the midlands. Always breakfast, dinner, tea, supper. Although it’s now dinner in the evenings if we go out, or invite people in. The dog has tea.

When I was 5 and living outside Manchester I was very confused one morning when playing with a family who had moved from London. I was told it was time for me to go home because they were going to have their lunch - and steaming plates were put on the table. Lunch for us locals was the snack you had (with your bottle of milk) at playtime. Anyone else remember that?

When I was a child 'dinner at night' was posh and we made mild jokes about it.. We were not a posh family and ate our dinners in the middle of the day.

'Lunch ' was not even mentioned. My parents made jokes about new posh ideas such as 'the lounge' instead of the drawing room. The joke about the telephone that hung on the wall in the hall was that was the lounge as everybody lounged against the wall beside the phone.

I grew up in the kind of household (in north-west England) where my dad had his main meal of the day in the works canteen and my sister and I had it at school. That meal was called dinner. We all came together in the early evening when dad got home for a lighter, but still substantial meal – egg and chips maybe, or leftover Sunday roast with mash, followed by bread and jam, cake and of course tea, which was tea. Supper might have been cocoa with a biscuit or two.

It's been a while since I worked anywhere with a canteen, although the major American bank I worked for in the 1980s had one that was well-used. I don't often have more than a bowl of soup in the middle of the day so that's my lunch. I think dinner at midday died out with works canteens.

My evening meal is still my tea. Long habit I suppose. These days I'd say dinner was an evening meal I went out for.