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?

I'm in Norfolk and say lunch and dinner/supper.

My MIL was born in Croydon, raised in Gravesend and says lunch and tea.

Breakfast, dinner, tea, brew

East Midlander here and it's breakfast, dinner and tea

I’m an East Midlander and it’s breakfast, lunch and dinner in my family!

Lunch in the middle of the day.
We used to have tea when I got in from school, that was a cup of tea and cake. Supper was the evening meal. We never had dinner? Do now though, and supper would be a late night snack.

Lunch and tea

Or

Lunch and dinner

Suffolk.

Midday Supervisor jobs

Btw the way what's with describing them with a full time salary when they are 7 or so hours per week!

Lunch/dinner mid day and then tea time. I’m down south

I'm a teacher and they're still dinner ladies in the schools I've taught in, even the naice private ones, the horror.

I also ask the children if they have packed lunch or if they are having dinners, just to confuse things

Icantcope I'd have imagined the naice private ones cling more to the old ways around rituals like meal times than state primaries.

I call it tea and am from east anglia, its breakfast, dinner and tea in my house. I have family from devon and north but know that alot of people i grew up used the same though not all. My dh says lunch and dinner though (from london). I do come from a more working class family. My children same as me

South West born and bred, as are all immediate family. Lunch/dinner and Tea/dinner are interchangeable to me and anyone I talk to would understand what I meant depending on context.

Lunch and tea or lunch and dinner. Live in the south west but parents are from Sussex/Brighton?

Some Australians with british roots also call it tea.

It’s a northern English thing, yes. Dinner and tea rather than the southern lunch and dinner.

Not exclusively. It is absolutely a south west thing too

Seemingly all over the UK. You call it what you call it, no one owns it.

Breakfast - whenever
Lunch - 1-2pm
High tea - 4-5pm (a rare treat)
Dinner 8pm
Supper - 10pm ish

Pudding - never dessert
Napkins - not serviettes - even when paper

Our cookery lessons included learning all about meals! According to Miss Fife it goes like this:

Midday meal is lunch if it's 2 courses and dinner if it's 3.
Afternoon tea is 4 pm - sandwiches/cakes/scones
High tea is 5 pm - 1 course meal
Supper is 6 pm or later - 1 course meal
Dinner is a 2 or 3 course meal in the evening but must be after 6 pm, otherwise you're just wrong.

So technically I should call our evening meal 'supper' as it's 1 course and after 6 pm. But Miss Fife was a naggy teacher who I didn't like because she always criticised my presentation, so I have no problem calling it tea! But a posh evening meal (at home or out) with more than 1 course, I would call dinner.

What you call a 1 course midday meal, I have no idea but it's closer to lunch than dinner! So I call it lunch (but it was dinner when I was growing up because it was a hot meal at school).

Northerner here and I haven't called a mid day meal dinner since I left school. It's always lunch but evening meal is tea if eaten early or dinner if going out or eating a larger meal with friends later.

I think it depends on when a main meal is eaten if it's at lunch tine and it's a big meal say for manual workers then it is correct to call it dinner.

To me, it's more of a class thing. I am working class and have always said dinner and tea. Have just moved to a very middle class area (still up north and not too far from my home city) and everyone says lunch and dinner. Was recently told by a neighbour "tea is a drink" in response to me saying dh and i were off out for tea.

Squirrelinatree The OP is working class though and she says "tea is a drink too".

Breakfast lunch and tea where I am in Scotland

Lunch and tea - Gloucestershire

Nope. Very middle class upbringing, Ooop North, and it was definitely dinner and tea. Why else would you call them 'school dinners'?!

I've just realised my school lunch was dinner. When i went home my mum would make another dinner from scratch. So I had two meals called "dinner" every weekday. We never had "tea".

I'm Cornish and I say tea for an evening meal. But generally if it feels quite casual, if I was going out I would strangely call it dinner.