I haven't heard anyone talk about elevenses for quite a while, some decades; but the expression was at one time used almost daily.
As far back as I remember in the 1960s, and continuing into the 80s; there was a mid-morning break situated roughly half-way between breakfast and lunch - during which people would also eat a snack. That snack was almost always biscuits.
This applied whether at work - when it was either formally timed programmed in mass employment situations. Or informally a matter of convention in professional situations (such as laboratories). There was a mid-morning break for drinking tea or coffee, eating a biscuit or two - and conversation.
A treasured memory of my mid-childhood and early teens was attending elevenses at the Bristol Dental School with my father; mainly on those Saturday mornings when I accompanied him to work to visit the nearby public library or bookshops. The event had a delightful atmosphere.
Among my mother's circle there were "coffee mornings" for women neighbours, especially those with housewives with children, which went from house to house in an approximate rotation. As a pre-schooler, or duing school holidays; I was taken-along to these - but found them terribly boring, except for the biscuits (I was always hungry, and could never eat enough biscuits to satify this!). But for the housewives, coffee mornings were the main frequent form of social interaction.
In those days in England; coffee was consumed almost entirely in people's homes - either instant coffee at elevenses, or ground coffee (invariably in tiny cups) after dinner in the late evening. The rest of the time, multiple cups of tea were normal.
But coffee incrementally displaced, and sometimes replaced, tea; and was consumed more often in cafes; rather than at home or in "works" canteens.
Later still, ground coffee replaced instant; and espresso displaced all other methods of brewing.
During my working years, this practice of elevenses began as universal and much-valued, but diminished greatly - indeed it had altogether disappeared by the time of retirement.
This decline went hand-in-hand with reduced biscuit consumption; and a feeling that it was weak or wrong to eat anything - but especially anything sweet - between breakfast and lunch.
The managerial-bureaucratic takeover also suppressed elevenses at work, when it suddenly and somehow became too expensive and/or inefficient to set aside a room for communal drinking and eating.
2 comments:
Fascinating post!
In Ireland nobody ever used the term elevenses, in my experience, unless it was in a jocular way-- I think perhaps this occasionally happened.
I work in the public sector where tea-breaks are a sacred institution. I've been in the same job since 2001 and the morning tea-break has always been 10:30 to 11:00. When I started a lot of people (not necessarily friends) would go on tea-break together to a nearby campus restaurant, which was canteen-like. The breaks remain but they seem to have mostly lost their communal nature, apart from occasionally. I miss this in a way, but breaks are also precious reading time, so I don't miss it too much-- and if the tradition was revived, I would mostly read instead.
The very word "elevenses" is delightful and so quintessentially Albionesque!
I often have a treat on my elevenses.
I'm saddened to hear that elevenses had declined by the time you retired. I always look askance on colleagues who don't take their full complement of tea-breaks, unless it's a one-off situation. I had one colleague (now retired) who didn't take tea-breaks because he felt too much of a temptation to smoke during them. This led to other people, in his tiny department, feeling awkward about taking their own. This is how it goes! Elevenses forever!
@Mal - I would try to distinguish taking a break off-work mid-morning, from the essentially social activity of elevenses.
From my masculine POV there is also a difference between elevenses for gossip and "purely" social activity; and the kind of informal "shop talk" I enjoyed so much as a junior doctor, a scientist or academic.
But "shop talk" itself changed as work became more and more bureaucratic. I do Not relish discussing managerial initiatives and office politics, and would prefer to drink my coffee alone than engage in that sort of thing.
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