Back in Time for Dinner

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"Back in Time for Dinner," is the name of a programme on BBC 2, the fourth episode of which was screened tonight. For some reason it has caught my imagination, perhaps it's the nostalgia trip as a family has spent one day for each year since 1950, living and dining as if it were actually living in that year.

Rattling through the 1980's tonight I was surprised at the role of the humble pre-packed sandwich. Along with thousands of other workers, I have certainly bought my fair share of those for lunch over my working lifetime. Whatever good intention I may have had to make and pack my own lunch, it invariably flew out of the window each morning, as I flapped around  with a tight deadline for leaving home for the office looming. Fortunately having to go out to buy the sandwich did mean that there was a reason to leave my desk at lunchtime, even if it was only for a few minutes.

As the programme indicated, since 1980 the average worker's lunchtime has decreased from 60 to less than 30 minutes, presumably aided and abetted by the availability of that packaged sandwich. I certainly recall that, when I started working, lunchtime was a social occasion where a group of us would meet and eat together, often in a local hostelry or otherwise in the office kitchen, and a full hour would indeed be taken. I even worked in one office in the early 1980's where lunchtime was a whole hour and fifteen minutes so that the gentlemen could return home to a cooked lunch prepared by their wives. So much for progress: by the time I retired it was very much the norm to mix crumbs with files and papers at your desk.

Thankfully in retirement, Mister E and I have rediscovered the joy of lunching. We have always been a family that has sat down together for a properly cooked evening meal and now we tend to do the same at lunchtime, although the meal is inevitably lighter than later in the day. We take our time over it, chat and relax, away from whatever activity has occupied our morning. Most importantly, we never have pre-packaged sandwiches!


Comments

Tracy Altieri said…
How wonderful that you are now taking proper lunches! My husband and I were both in public education. Lunchtime was not a thing of leisure. I'm sorry to say that in retirement, we still seem to do our own thing.
8 April 2015 at 02:07
Caree Risover said…
I guess it has to be whatever suits and works for you. We are fairly flexible so there are days when we each grab something on the hoof so to speak, but yes our general pattern has developed into sitting down and making lunch an event, like dinner, when we eat, talk, finish with a cup of tea and then resume our other activities. It has become a leisure break in the midst of leisure!
8 April 2015 at 22:46
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