well ...
tea shops have closed, nearly all of them. these were shops that would only sell tea and cake, and at one time were extremely popular. at home, tea is more common here than it is elsewhere, but still not something you'd have outside the house. generally it's made by boiling water in an electric kettle, and then using either PG Tips, Yorkshire Tea, or whatever tesco brand you have at hand, all of these are around 2p~4p per bag. 1 penny is about 1 cent, more or less. for a country with such a longstanding tradition of tea, britain sure has some of the shittiest tea i have ever tried. you'll have a hard time finding a bag of twinings anywhere, unless you go buy it yourself. Twinings is considered, overseas, as a very important brand of tea, and as such i used to buy it my first couple years here, but i've had locals turn it down in favour of the cheap crap they use every day.
You still see people getting a cup of tea from the office machine, every now and then. I'd say my office at the bank had anything between 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 people being tea drinkers, the rest coffee (excluding people who drank juices or other cold drinks).
tea was a really big thing here, up to the 80s, i reckon. maybe the 70s.
brits used to have very different rhythms than elsewhere in europe - up at 6am, lunch at 11, tea at 5, and a very light supper at 7 or 8pm, then off to bed around 10~11 if not earlier; this is mostly due to the horrid weather, and the fact that their houses in general aren't very comfortable, with the heating in particular being very dodgy. on top of that, in the wintertime you get very little light, so you gotta be active during those few hours of daytime.
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