The two meanings of 'tea'

Example number [too many] of a cultural misunderstanding:

After receiving a very kind invitation from our Welsh/French friends, Dafydd and Patricia for tea on Sunday evening, my first thought was, 'that's very nice of them to invite us around for a meal', while my second thought was more along the lines of, 'but dinner out on a Sunday night is kind of unusual, however as we really like them, we will of course go but we won't stay too long because the children have school the next day'.

I went a little later than the others (lovely husband, Olivia and Edward) as I had to wait for the children's tutor to arrive to help Matthew with his school work preparation for the coming week. So I arrived at Dafydd and Patricia's to find tea being poured from a family sized tea pot, and a lovely coffee tiramisu and a sultana cake half devoured. Delicious! But it seemed kind of strange to start with dessert first. My friend Marijo does that with her children sometimes when her husband is away. She has a back-to-front meal where they start with dessert and finish with a salad and the children love it! And why not?

At one point Patricia and I hopped up to talk about the house renovation plans they have. Hmmmm, I thought, no food preparations in the kitchen, nothing scattered around on the kitchen bench, no French cooking smells wafting from the oven, no French bread sticking angularly out of the flower pot. This could only mean one thing, I thought as the light flickered on achingly slowly in my brain: this was an invitation to AFTERNOON TEA, NOT TO DINNER!

We hadn't even got the hint when Dafydd and Patricia excitedly told us that their daughter was skype-ing from South America in half an hour and that they would be having a lovely long chat with her to plan their holidays together. It didn't even occur to us that we might be a just a little 'spare'. We watched Madagascar 2 with the kids instead.

Ahem. After a small blushing confession that we were in fact a little confused and that in our country an invitation in the late afternoon to 'tea' meant an invitation to 'dinner' (or at least it did for me!), we decided that we would eat whatever was in the house and pretend that the invitation was for dinner after all. 'There's ALWAYS something to eat here!' cried Patricia confidently, 'and I would be offended now if you left!' In fact we all got rather jolly with the kir royale (champagne with creme de cassis - blackberry syrup), and little nibbly goodies that magically appeared. Luckily I had made a French leek and tomato tart for the starter that we were going to have with our 'dinner'. Ahem, again.

Next time we will be sure to request a clarification as to the exact nature of any invitation we might receive (hoping there's a next time, anyway, for the 'crazy New Zealanders who just won't go home').