Posted by Peter Ceresole on February 16, 2008 at 22:02:31 from 80.176.146.133 user PeterC.
In Reply to: posted by Andrew Craig-Bennett on February 16, 2008 at 21:12:14:
This is a veritable social minefield.
Hard to think of anything in England that isn't. Of course that's true in every society, it's just that the Brits are extremely conscious of it.
Elevenses, at around 11.00 a.m. (this snack also turns up in Tolkien - predictably, the hobbits are keen on it!) This was typically a hot drink and a biscuit.
This is also a strong historical divider; in my day it was a biscuit and a special small bottle of milk, a quarter pint I think, that was government subsidised. At that time sweets were still rationed, which did us nothing but good, but free milk was an important social gesture, the bottles delivered in crates by the hundreds to all schools, every morning. Not cancelled until Mrs Thatcher, as Minister of Education, stopped the subsidy in 1971. "Thatcher, milk snatcher" she became for ever- although if you Google for that phrase, you see that it was more complicated than that. It always is.