Lesson for the unwary!

same!

yes... the slow dawning.... that's what made me go and check my pill box. I then realised I'd been flagging at work worse than usual and was stiffening up.. glad I realised before I went to bed or the morning would have been very ugly.

I have a weekly pill container - that's how I knew I'd forgotten. I couldn't believe it when I saw them sitting in there safely, untaken!

I took the risk of a bad night's sleep and took my pred dose, and my anti-depressant as soon as I realised - at around 7pm. I knew that if I left it for another 12 hours I was going to get very ill.

Then I took my 'normal' dose the next morning. I've been feeling really awful since then however. It's really mucked me about.

Might be more the antideprpessant than the pred I'd have thought.

Tea time is anytime!

Funny you should ask this Eileen as I struggled to use the right term for exactly the same reasons. I chose 'tea' because I thought most people would realise it was the evening meal. Lunch is always lunch, unless it's dinner! Tea time is dinner, unless it's afternoon tea - or you live in snobsville.

Traditionally the term 'tea' is used by the 'lower class' but we don't actually have a class system here... so some people use 'tea', some people use 'dinner.

It's eaten sometime between 5 and 9!

Personally I have dinner around 6-7pm, although most people with young children usually eat befor then, and (younger adult) singles often eat after this.

We don't do 'supper', unless you've been at the pub and you have a 'late night snack' - pizza etc.  I remember it was always 'tea' when I was growing up, but now it's usually called dinner.

"Cup of tea time" is anytime! 

I see Flip understood exactly what I meant - it's a cultural thing and I wondered if it applied in Oz!  It seems it is exactly the same as in the UK - what about Canada? You must have a similar demographic don't you? Excluding the French that is...

I grew up with a British stepmother, Irish, but she grew up in Devon.  Teatime in our home was that meal between lunch and dinner (or supper) with tea and a light snack: little sandwiches and cookies - what you call biscuits (here biscuit is the name for scone).   I do not think that my Canadian friends then or now have "teatime", just a short break called "afternoon break".  The "break" that is most important to me is the morning one, called "elevenses" by me as a small child in England, "recess" by schoolchildren here, and "morning break" by adults in the workplace.  

The Scots have "High Tea" - which was more like the evening meal we had. A hot dish of some sort with a plate of bread and butter and cake as "dessert". In England it tended to be a hot dish with a pudding for afters. I think the only time in our house that "tea time" was just tea and sandwiches was Sunday or for visitors. The rest of the week there wasn't time. Or money to be honest...

When I was about 18 I visited my uncle and his family in the north of England and was puzzled to encounter a meal (I forget what they called it) where the children, my cousins all younger than me, were given a light meal and then went to bed.  We had some of that food, too, and I was still really hungry and quite relieved when an hour or so later we "adults" all had another more substantial meal!  Later I came to understand that probably as a small child I, too, had partaken of this evening meal, "tea", and unbeknownst to me the adults had later enjoyed all sorts of goodies.  Although come to think of it, there wouldn't have been many goodies then as England was still having to ration food even in the early to mid 50s.

Yes, that sounds quite normal for reasonably well-off families then. My great aunts would have done that sort of thing. In our house there were two men who worked outside all day and often weren't back to the house at midday so they came in about 5pm and immediately needed fed with their main meal. I also came in at a similar time on the bus from grammar school and we all ate together. When my father had lived at home with his mother he would go home at midday - and she always cooked a hot meal. She'd wait to see him at the bottom of the road before putting the potatoes on to boil - so he had to wait for his dinner and then bolt down the too hot food in a hurry to get back on time. It drove him mad! When he was working away from home he had a "bait box" - a packed cold midday meal. And that has always been our pattern for eating. Here it is the other way round: a long break at midday where those who can't get home go to a Gasthaus for a set meal. Midday is the main, hot meal. Our neighbours still can't get used to the idea!

Afternoon tea and high tea have made quite a comeback here in more recent times. Lots of hotels now take bookings and many small restaurants have also cashed in! I loved afternoon tea as a child because cakes were a treat. As you have said, Eileen, it would have been Sunday or when we had visitors. We also walked a lot as children because women tended not to drive and the men would be working. Much fitter and healthier bodies and minds due to the fresh air especially in Winter. I am not suggesting they were necessarily halcyon days but as a child they were.

"women tended not to drive" - we didn't have a car at all until I was 7 or 8 at least. We lived in the back of beyond and my father had worked in a job where he was picked up and taken to the work site - when he was laid off he could only find a job in Hereford, 20-odd miles away, so he borrowed money to buy a motorbike to get to work. Hardly ideal in the winter - so he learned to drive and bought his first car, an A35 van, with no windows as that was cheaper. 

Mum and I walked or worked everything around the 10.30 bus to the next village with shops, a bit too far to walk, which gave you a bare hour to do everything. She had a bike - I was 11 before I got a hand-me-down bike from a cousin  and never did get confident on a bike. I'm still more likely to put more clothes on than turn the heating up! 

We didn't have a car until I was older but relatives and friends did and none of the women drove. We lived in the country but within walking distance of the nearest town. If I complained of sore legs I would be told to pick them up and put them in my pocket.😳 I was 12 when I got my first bike.....a present for passing my 11+. People were more careful with money in those days out of necessity. Lights and any heating were turned off if the room was not in use. Ice formed inside the bedroom windows. I loved picking it off. My grandchildren would probably be horrified if they had rooms like that. Were we hardy souls? Everyone was the same and childhood was spent playing  outdoors and we were all fit.

Just thinking - my great aunts drove. So did mum's sister and her cousin but she didn't. Some of the women in the village drove tractors - but probably not the cars!

I think a return to the concept of "if you haven't got the money you can't have it" instead of "borrow it" really wouldn't come amiss would it?

Oh dear - does that make us old? 

Not old ......just classic outer bodies with tuned and tweaked engines! I agree with your concept.

In 'OZ'  (USA) tea time to most of us means, "...it's 2pm, so now i get to stop the usual chores, sit down and have a nice cup of tea with goodies".

Thanks for more of the "reality" of what it actually can be.  I like all the possibilities of it though!

 

I do remember after our arrival in England from Kenya (1952) eating rabbit stew quite a lot.  I always wanted the heart!  Also oranges which were so sour I was given a tiny heap of precious rationed sugar in the middle of a saucer with the orange arranged neatly in rays around it to encourage me to eat it.  Another comment was, "Do you want a little bread with your butter?"  Since then and to this very day I scrape butter very thinly.

Now that I like - sort of parallels to a slightly dusty bottle with a seriously good vintage wine inside or a rather mouldy high quality cheese. It always looks promising when the cheese board is a bit dodgy looking...

No - too many years of that has led to me slicing my butter onto my bread! So the butter is still a bit hard after being in the fridge? Makes it easier to slice!

Forgot to say - ours was not a rabbit household. I will eat it, hubby won't. But altogether too many small bones...

We don't eat rabbit here.  I remembered the taste of wild rabbit and all we can get here tastes like chicken (unless you have a trapper friend).  Or at least it did when I still ate meat.  So not worth the trouble.  I think post war Britain found wild rabbit a ready and cheap source of protein when other meats were rationed. Obviously I was a rather particular 5-year-old!  I like toast or warm scones because the butter melts and hides deliciously.

I may have eaten rabbit without knowing though I doubt it! The best vehicle for butter is crumpets - the English variety of course!

In a former life I used to make my own crumpets!  Lots of holes for butter to melt into.  

I remember my father shooting rabbits out of the bedroom window! We did live in the country! I used to help my mother skin them.

I'd rather make crumpets!