September 20 tea time pic!

I nearly forgot to take my 20th of the month pics yesterday but I ‘dashed’ out while getting tea (putting salad stuff in a bowl) in my jim jams and the sun had just dropped below the horizon…

Middle

Right

Left

Speaking of tea and Margaret’s horror at the possibility that I may have been eating pasta and drinking tea (comment on ‘Keep going there’s a giveaway right at the bottom’) I feel the need to elaborate on this obviously confusing subject (although Fiona’s response did sum it up succiently).

Being working class my main meals growing up where – breakfast, dinner and tea.

If I’d been la-de-dah, or rather upper class they would have been – breakfast, lunch and dinner.

No I do vaguely remember my Mum trying to impose dinner on us at tea time – she would also have dearly loved for me not to say owt or nowt (anything and nothing) and I probably wouldn’t have said them as much as I did if this hadn’t been the case.

My meals now comprise – breakfast, lunch and tea.  On the surface this may look like I’ve staked a claim further up the class ladder but I can assure you this is not the case.  I was, am and always will be working class and I think I would keel over if I ever heard myself refer to my own evening meal as dinner, however I adopted lunch over dinner many, many years ago (about 21 actually – not that the incident scarred me at all) purely because I didn’t want to give someone the opportunity to catch me out twice.

I remember it as if it were yesterday.  I was a keen young secretary working in a property company, which was a subsidiary of the large local glass firm (well we thought of it was local but it was actually international).  One of the very big bods from Head Office, who was also a non exec director on our board, had purchased an apartment (no, not a FLAT) in a newly built coastal development in the Lake District.  He had developed a leak, not directly (although I could be wrong) but in the fla… APARTMENT.  My boss asked if I could sort out a contractor to go out and fix it ASAPASAPASAP if not sooner.  I rang Mr Big Bod’s secretary to let her know when the contractor would arrive.

ME:  ‘He’ll be with Mr Big Bod’s wife around dinner time.’

HER:  ‘And what time will that be?’

ME:  ‘Well I would have thought some time between twelve and two.’

HER:  ‘Oh, you mean lunch time!’ pause for effect ‘If I’d said dinner time to Mr Big Bod he would have expected the contractor around eight pm.’  Followed by ‘oh, I’m so witty’ laugh.

Now I’d served Mr Big Bod tea (as in a cup of – and now I see why it gets confusing and I’ve not touched on cream tea or high tea) on many occasions at Board meetings, being the junior secretary, and he seemed to all intents and purposes to be lovely – as a lot of Big Bods are – it’s the people who think they are important that look down on the juniors not the ones that really are.  Mr Big Bod also seemed completely coherent and to have his feet firmly planted on the ground unlike his secretary to whom I could have pointed out – ‘We’re dealing with a plumber here and plumbers don’t turn up at anyone’s property at eight pm other than their own!’