Member-only story
My Childhood, as Experienced in the Chip Shop
That’s British chips, folks…
My childhood was spent unattended in front of the television, or unattended upstairs lying on my bed reading a book, or unattended walking to school and then in school after both parents had given up any idea of having any kind of responsibility for their (eventually) five children.
We did not go on holiday.
Not once.
Not even in our own country.
Not even so much as paddling in Southsea. Definitely not Brighton. Both places were relatively close, but I didn’t visit either until my adulthood.
We did not have people round, have dinner parties, celebrate birthdays with anything other than television and shouting, or do anything whatsoever at all that my peers might have done with their families.
The absolute height of luxury for us was the chip shop.
That’s fish and chips, folks. Battered cod (in those days before overfishing made cod as expensive as caviar) and thick, crispy, well fried chips. As it annoys me to hear British people calling McDonalds’ (really rather good) fries as “chips,” it annoys me when people think British chips are equivalent to fries. They’re not. They’re fluffy inside, often nicely crispy on the outside, and — with salt…
