A Chippy Tea.

Here are some more of my memories from Blighty.

Going to the chip shop or take away is a pastime where you meet a different kind of a person.  Some people go to their takeaway for some chips.  While other go for a fight or meet their future wife.  Or then they get married they can do both together.

When I was a lad.  The highlight of every Friday was a trip to the chippy.  Your father had just been paid his weeks wages (biscuit money).  There was none of theme celery’s (salaries) in my day.  From a very early age I can remember going to the chippy for six penny worth of chips.  They would be cooked in lard and dripping in those days.  There was none of this oilseed rape-vegetable oil malarkey.  Friday tea time was chippy night.  A few hours earlier in your average northern school playground.  The conversation went something like this:

 “We're having a chippy tea tonight!” 

“So what, we are having one every night, even Sundays when they’re shut”. 

In our neck of the woods, (Lancashire) people would be seen queuing out the door and up the street.  Talking of chip shop doors.  I once remember my pal’s drunken father trying his house key in the chip shop door..

 In fairness he did live smack bang next to the chip shop, and the front door was identical apart from a sign

which said OPEN.   The chip shop door opened and my friend’s father stumbled and fumbled his key into the chip shop door. 

He was greeted with a round of applause and laughter from the packed chip shop.  When you went to the chippy, there was always some old lady chippy barging to the front of the queue and saying:

 “Here Mary keep this bowl warm on top of the range.” 

She couldn’t use newspaper like everybody else.

“.We were that poor when I was a lad.   We used to go to yonder chippy for a newspaper to read.”