Meals

Snowlite left a comment on a previous post querying my use of potato and tea. I explained that over the years as I moved around Scotland and England I heard the evening meal called by any one of these names and I tended to follow suit. I added that most of the people here had their main meal in the middle of the day, and so called their evening meal "tea"

This afternoon I went to the residents' lounge for a cup of tea (and a biscuit) with a small number of ladies, and asked them what they called their evening meal. Amazingly (to me) most of them called it "dinner". I remarked that when I was a child I had "school dinners" in the middle of the day and came home to a "tea".

Then mention of school dinners caused everyone to talk at once, mostly along the lines of "don't get me started on school dinners".

My school comprised two adjacent buildings with storeys at different levels. We had dinner tickets (paid for) and I have a vivid memory of going up the "gangway" between buildings to the refectory clutching my dinner ticket. Dinner was served onto a plate which you carried to your table (a long table with long benches on either side and a chair at the end). I don't remember how many tables their were, but quite a number. The seat at the end was occupied by a senior pupil as monitor. You learned to eat with your elbows tucked in, as there was no room to do otherwise. You also had to sit up straight. Once everyone at your table had finished, you then all went up to get your pudding and return to the same place at the same table to eat it.

My memories of the food are mostly vague, which means they must have been reasonably tasty. However I do remember one pudding which was a fruit fool, ie a mixture of the cooked fruit and custard that I was served only once and that I could not eat as I kept feeling sick. I just had to sit there until I finished, much to the annoyance of the others at the table as they were waiting to go upstairs to play.

At the end of the day, I don't think I did finish it.

And to this day I will not have a fruit fool!