I'm not a coffeeholic. I do remember once suffering from coffee poisoning. It was in my early days of working for Norfolk Police. In our department we had a young lady doing work experience. She took it upon herself to continually make everyone coffee.
So if you went out of the office, even just to have a wee, when you came back you had a fresh cup of coffee on the desk. Even if you were sitting at your desk it kept coming. Nobody ever seemed to refuse it. I became what I would be called coffeelogged. At times I just couldn't face another cup but I still drank it. I have no idea how many cups I drank in a single day but it could have been as many as 10.
I knew somebody once who had over 20 cups of tea a day. Taking into account this person was a teacher who couldn't drink a brew whilst they were teaching, you can see that they had those 20 cups in about six hours. That basically is chain drinking if there is such a word.
Today I will have just two or three cups of coffee a day - one just after breakfast, one just after lunch and one just after tea.
Coffee bars/houses seem to be returning to their original purpose. You can see people working with laptops and the writers' group I'm now a member of meets sometimes in a cafe/tea rooms. Apparently J. K. Rowling started writing her Harry Potter books in a coffee shop.
Centuries ago, coffee shops were the hangouts for literary and political characters. It was usually men from different social classes meeting to debate politics and philosophy and discuss the news of the day. Merchants and craftsmen soon realised the advantage of inviting clients to such places to discuss business. Women were by and large barred from the coffee shops. The first one recorded in Norwich was 1680.
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I wrote above about breakfast, lunch and tea although these terms can be confusing. Some people in some parts of the country refer to breakfast, dinner and tea while others speak about breakfast, lunch and dinner. So dinner can refer to something you eat around 1 pm or equally something that is eaten at 7 pm.
In Norfolk dinner was something eaten at midday and tea was something eaten around 6 pm. It's a bit like Yorkshire Pudding. In Norfolk we had it as a separate starter and not as part of a main course. I once had Yorkshires as all three courses. Course one - Yorkshire with onion gravy on its own, course two - Yorkshires with a roast. Course three - Yorkshire as a dessert with apple sauce or jam or treacle. I'm sure some of you will have enjoyed this.
I read somewhere how somebody hated bread and dripping. I love the stuff. I remember it from growing up. There are other things I remember from my boyhood. I remember when scampi was posh and expensive. Now its cheaper than fish and chips. I remember Jellied Eels on Great Yarmouth Market and how about those potato fritters my mother used to make late at night? Not really the thing to go to bed on. No wonder at times I had to have Milk of Magnesia to dull the stomach pain. It seemed to magically sort things out.
Those fritters were large wedges of potato covered in batter and then fried and served with salt and vinegar. Yummy in extremis.