WHATEVER happened to tea? No, not the drink, the meal that used to be taken between five and six in the evening.

Ah yes, I remember… dinner turned into lunch and then became the food that people started eating around seven. But tea? Sadly, those of us of a certain age are now left with only memories of sliced cucumber drowning in a vinegar sea hemmed by a cut-glass bowl, white bread and butter to be compulsorily eaten with tinned fruit salad on pain of annoying Grandma, and speared pickled onions flying across the dining table like Wellington’s round shot.

Not to mention tears before bedtime with lower lips quivering like pink blancmanges.

Plus ça change.

*MY wife says I have an addictive personality. The latest dependency is chillis… I can’t get enough of these green and red incendiaries of the plant world.

I’ve always thought that whoever named this fiery little blighter must have had a keen sense of irony.