Is "having my tea" a northern thing?

[Queenoftheblitz]

I'm a working class southerner. The only tea I have is in a cup with milk and sugar.
On mn a lot of posts talk about their evening meal as"tea", "what shall i make for tea" etc.
Do any southeners call it tea?

East Midlands and when I was young, in the 60s/70s it was always breakfast dinner and tea, but nowadays I always call it breakfast, lunch and dinner or people don't know what hell I am on about.

High tea, I would say was about 5 or 6 pm.
Sort of stuff you would get at a buffet, mixed with afternoon tea.
You would definitely not need dinner after a high tea

I do lunch and tea too (mixed heritage) although I use 'dinner' and 'tea' interchangeably. But lunch is never dinner unless I am referring to my Mother's meals (where lunch really is dinner - the main meal).

Dinner and tea in the Black Country too. But now I live darn sarf, so it's lunch and dinner.

@x2boys Yes supper was almost a breakfast meal... crumpets or cereal. My dad was from Bolton and both my parents had a very traditional northern diet. I don’t think either of them had a curry or Chinese meal their entire lives! 😂

Tea: an afternoon meal at which the drink is served

Add that to it being more of a class divide than a geographical one, only posher people ate later in the evening as they could afford candles/lights.

Tea is/was also an upper class meal, eaten with a cup of tea, in the middle of the afternoon, to stave off hunger pangs until dinner time, usually 9pm ish!

And lots of other possibilities

Isn't supper the cheese and crackers before bed with cocoa? Wallace and Grommit

@EllenJanethickerknickers

That’s hilarious! I was watching an episode of kitchen nightmares and Gordon had a rant about the job description ‘kitchen hygiene technician’. The guy who did the washing up.

I say dinner or tea. Never really thought about it before!

Afternoon tea is cakey bunny things and a sandwich with tea to drink.
High tea is cooked but less formal than dinner.
I grew up in NE and dinner was midday tea was early evening.

North West Cumbria here and it’s always been breakfast lunch and dinner

I say pudding, not dessert. And if anyone calls it a "sweet" my mouth purses up like a cat's bum.

As a northerner we always had breakfast, dinner and tea, and supper was a before bed snack.

I live in the south now though and we have breakfast, lunch and dinner and I don't know anyone (inc me) who has supper anymore. But then we have dinner much later than we would have tea up north.

I've heard of a high tea. How do they differ?

Low tea is like afternoon tea, usually eaten on armchairs. High tea is had at the table, and is proper food

Pudding is what you fry for breakfast. It's definitely dessert in our house! My parents have dinner at midday and tea in the evening. Although this is what I grew up with we have lunch and dinner. Prob because we both work so the main meal has to be in the evening.

Forgot to say, we're in Ireland.

I am from Norfolk but live in London and I still call it tea... lunch is middle of the day and supper is a snack in the evening - I have no idea when dinner should be as I am sure we had dinner ladies at school but other people call evening meal dinner...🤔
Oh and I always call it pudding....

I call it tea. I'm from Oxfordshire but live in London now. I did some after school babysitting for a friends children (age 4 & 5) and for the first few days they didn't eat much. It turned out because I was saying things like 'let me know when you want your tea' they didn't realise what I meant!!

I'm far South East very working class.
It's always been dinner & tea to me & my friends growing up locally.
As we've had more people move here it's lessened. & at work people call it lunch & dinner but I don't work locally to where I live. Both my parents were SE working class & always called in dinner & tea as well. So I don't think it's just a northern thing?

I'm from Kent and say lunch and dinner

Also what the hell is supper??

Tea, supper and dinner are used interchangeably in our house (Glasgow), as in the interminable question "What's for tea/supper/dinner?" - although at weekends, it would always be dinner, as it's slightly more formal organised.

Breakfast and lunch for the two other meals.

What were school mid-day supervision assistants called before the world went pc? DINNER ladies! Case closed

Ironically it is also a southern hemisphere thing - well it was when I grew up in Australia!

Hate seeing it called tea. Lunch is lunch and dinner is dinner
Except when its dinner and tea in that order

Evening meal is tea, although if we were going out somewhere posh it would be dinner.
Pudding is cake and custard, pie, that sort of thing. Dessert would be fancy.

Supper is toast before bed.

West Midlands here