When I went to his, we ate tea early, at 6, sometimes even at 5.30, and had proper food: fish fingers, pizzas, crinkle-cut chips.
You have to understand people ate tea leaves they were so poor.
I ate tea and grilled cheese when the rain hit the windows, and the bay and sky disappeared in a fog.
At the Litten Tree pub, 187 hotel guests evacuated from the Ramada Inn were eating tea and toast in their pyjamas.
In Alan Hollinghurst's novel The Line of Beauty, the protagonist Nick Guest observes that a date's working-class sensibilities manifest themselves in eating "tea" early.
The rolling hills of China's southern Yunnan Province are the birthplace of tea, anthropologists say, the first area where humans figured out that eating tea leaves or brewing a cup could be pleasant.
Phoolkumar, 37, guard Income: 7,129 rupees (about $130) a month Breakfast: Did not have breakfast (usually eats tea and biscuits) Lunch: Five rotis, one bowl chickpea curry, bottle gourd vegetable curry Dinner: Potato and pointed gourd vegetable curry, spinach curry and five rotis Tea: Three to four cups a day How has food expenditure or consumption changed in recent years?
Scones and boiled eggs are waiting half eaten, tea stands in dainty cups, coffee is keeping warm over a china candle stand, and in one room an aromatic bowl of punch, scattered clay pipes and an overturned chair suggest that a less genteel scene has just taken place: this room mirrors the very same Hogarth interior in the picture that hangs over the mantelpiece.
Most of us are made aware of our strategic irrelevance the first time we "run away", aged seven, and sit studiously ignored until we are effectively smoked out by the need to eat tea, during which we notice that the note that we left appears to have been unread.
But perhaps those who have been drawn by the bright lights of the city had better get used to the fast and the furious, and surrender any fondness for eating tea between innings, crafting a half century off 90 balls or even, dare I say it, batting out for a draw.
But if schools can't link the spend directly to educational outcomes – and £20 in cash so a family can eat tea this week doesn't cut it – some heads feel there is no option but to find funds from elsewhere.
