To ask what time is tea time?

[customwatkins]

I'm in the north (I'm not British though) a local supplier is making a delivery to me tomorrow - she has asked if 'tea-time' suits me for delivery.

What time is tea-time please?

Answers on a postcard! (I'll be home all day due to lockdown anyway!)

Whenever you fancy tea and

I think of tea as afternoon tea - so around 3 or 4pm, and my evening meal as supper.
from the range of replies above, it sounds like the firm delivering are trying to be as vague as possible

@wink1970

Isn't High Tea when you have some coke first?

At Fortnum and Masons, High Tea is when you have a hot savoury dish instead of sandwiches. And they're open on 17 May.

We use the term tea time usually to mean between 4 and 5 pm. After 5 would be dinner.

8-9pm

7pm ish. Tea is evening meal.
Dinner is lunch time as in school dinners.

I never use the term dinner. We have lunch 12-1 and tea 5-6. Anything before bed like toast or cereal is supper.

I don’t use ‘teatime’ to describe dinner or even an afternoon tea.
This would need some inner translation.

1. They mean a meal not afternoon tea. This is northern usage.
2. They mean evening meal.
3. They don’t mean 8pm ish dinner timing.
4. They mean a more northern usage so I’ll guess 5-6 ish.

I'm green with envy at all the families where everyone is home having a meal together at 5pm! I'm still at my desk at 7.30pm.

Come to think if it though, many of my opponent lawyers are based up North in Manchester/Liverpool/Bolton and they all seem to be at their desks until late too. Now I'm imagining (it's still all WFH in this industry) their spouse bringing them a bowl of spaghetti bolognese to slurp in front of the laptop at 5pm!

Based on the question you were asked I’d say they meant 5pm.

We literally have this thread on Mumsnet twice a week!

Tea for northerners and working class people is generally the evening meal, eaten between 5-7pm.

Tea for middle class or southern people generally means cake and sandwiches between 3-5pm.

Northerners and working class people often call lunch “dinner”.

Dinner to middle class and southern people is the evening meal, eaten around 7pm ish.

The class thing comes from meals being eaten at different times to fit old working patterns. The leisured classes didn’t really work so they ate breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner and took time over it, eating later.

Working class people ate (if they were lucky) breakfast, dinner and tea earlier to fit with changeovers in shifts or eating earlier than the family if they were in service. That’s the legacy behind it all.

In our house we eat our evening meal (dinner) early at 5.15pm or so, so we can eat with DS. It’ll move later as he gets older.

Tea time is around 4-6pm.

Where i live id say a very high % eat at 5-6pm. when the quarry horn would signal the end if the day the women at home knew that the men would be home in the hour expecting tea on the table. It was called then “swper chwarel” (quarry supper), but that was the last meal of the day. Nothing after that as food and money was scarce.

So round here its ingrained in many of us that we eat 5-6.

Tea for middle class or southern people generally means cake and sandwiches between 3-5pm.

Only it doesn't. In the past, sure, for the leisured classes, but literally no one, of any social class, now stops to eat sandwiches and cake mid-afternoon, unless they're going out for afternoon tea at a hotel for a special occasion.

Won't be long before the 'meal time snobs' come on here though, telling you it's DINNER and not tea, and no-one in THEIR social circle has 'DINNER' until al least 8pm. (With a snide comment thrown in the mix like 'most middle class and above people, have it later than 7.30pm,) as a nice little dig at people.)

Insecure much?

Southerner here and I would say around 5pm.