Chip Shop

The smell of chips permeates the air, rushing down streets assaulting the noses of everyone it meets, the fish and chip shop deposits it’s message everywhere, in alleyways and streets. The smell that makes your hunger swell, that draws you in to that hot pungent food cell. Battered cod and haddock and rock, cooked perfectly to the clock. Hot chips sit in the warmer, as others crackle and spit in vegetable fat.

Steaming hot, wrapped in paper, open or not, blow them softly as they are very hot. The salt and vinegar locks into the chips finishing off that divine taste, that will put calories on your waist for time in memorial. Jumbo and battered Sausage and Saveloy, Pineapple fritter; my favourite when I was a boy. Pies and pasties and onions too, pickled eggs and gherkins and onions in big jars on the counter, waiting for their chip shop encounter.

Fizzy pop in cans or bottles, sit on the shelves in the fridge, waiting to wash down those glorious tastes, that are eaten slowly and savored every minute as though not to waste. Queues of people young and old snaking from the shop and into the cold, warming their hands on their precious gold, which, in their mouths they behold.

© All Rights Reserved Mark Symmonds 2017