EATING CHIPS BY THE SEA, A RHAPSODY

The gulls tell you; the gulls know. The gulls have ancient chip-knowledge. Their sharp beaks; their silhouettes, altered by the jut of a chip. This street, reflecting the sealight and the skylight, is filled with chip shops. Fish and chip shops from fishing ships. The gulls know because here they wheel, here they come wheeling. There they disperse, there they show no interest at all; they are like bored teenagers at a relative’s artexed bungalow that has no Wi-Fi. I have heard (I’m whispering now, and your ear is close, so close that you can hear the sea) that some people go into these coastal chip shops and order sausage. Yes, and they order pie. The gulls know.

Perhaps you ignore the gulls and want to make your own decisions. How, then, do you choose a chip shop? Is it the one you’ve been in so many times before that there are spaces on the lino where your sandy feet go and if you asked hard enough they could remember you as a little boy? Is it the one you used to go in that slithered downhill until you didn’t want to go in any more but now it’s changed hands so it might be better? Is it that one with the big queue or that one with the small queue? That one with the flock of gulls or that one with the feathered loner? If you’re here by the sea for the day, the choice is more crucial; if you’re on holiday for a week then you pick and choose. If you live here then you know; follow the ones who live here. They’re the ones without sunburn sunsets on their necks, the ones in suits who’ve come straight from work. Follow them. The gulls will. There are vinegar stains on that man’s jacket. Follow him.

Now the chip shop is chosen. The momentous moment. The queue is long but moving. You can hear, even from this distance, the sizzle of the fryer. Your eyes can detect that it’s a Stott’s Of Oldham, one of the best, a workhorse of frying that has pleasing modernist lines. An extra loud sizzle as a bucket of pale chips is poured in.

A sudden childhood memory: in an alley behind a chip shop at the seaside because we’ve got lost. The alley is lit by an evening’s glow. The alley is narrow and my mam and dad and my brother and me are almost squeezed by its walls. At the end of the alley, a figure dressed all in white. Even the wellies are white, like ghost wellies. The figure is sitting on a wooden stool that seems older than time. The figure is wielding a knife that glints in the aforementioned evening’s glow. We hesitate for a moment but then we see the potato in the non-knife hand. We see the pile of unpeeled potatoes. We see the sack with more unpeeled potatoes in. We squeeze past the potato peeler. My dad says ‘Hello’ to the potato peeler because he says hello to everybody whether he knows them or not, whether they’re holding a knife and a potato or not. In my memory the potato peeler has at least one finger missing but I must be making that up because at the time of the alley encounter I was going through my Pan Book of Horror Stories phase.

You are in the queue behind a man whose vest fitted him at the start of his holiday a few days ago. Now he bulges a long way out of it and it tries to hold his breath. His neck is redder than spilled ketchup. His bald head is a shiny balloon of sweat. Maybe when he gets to the counter he will say ‘The usual’ and that will explain a lot. Someone comes in and shouts, in a voice that sounds like it hurts, ‘Can you put me a tail in?’, which is a phrase I haven’t heard for years. As you inch closer to the Stott’s the shop gets hotter and louder, almost drowning out the gulls outside. I have a brief fantasy about a gull getting dressed up as a holidaymaker to get closer to the centre, closer to the motherchip.

I’m at the front of the queue. I’m disappointed that the vestee didn’t, in fact, say ‘The usual’. In the Barnsley way, I just say ‘Twice open, please’ and the person behind the counter knows what I mean. I put some vinegar on but no salt because I’m a man in his mid-sixties and then I go outside into the seaside sun. Gulls form a guard of honour and I bravely stride past them. Already, because the tide is coming in, the fish and chips smell better than any fish or chips have ever smelled in the history of the world. Somehow it’s as though the fish has carried the essence of the sea with it; somehow the batter is like a precious material. Somehow the chips are both crinkly and soft at the same time. Somehow, even though I asked for a small portion, there are more chips here than I could ever eat.

I make a silly error because I am drunk on vinegar and sunshine. I throw a chip in the air and a gull catches it. Then (I’m guessing here, but I’m not too far off) three million gulls arrive in the hope of a slam-dunked chip. The noise is tremendous and I walk towards the sea looking like a tractor in a field followed by shrieking gulls. There is a breeze in the air. There is the smell of sunblock and the whiff of yesterday’s ale from the open door of a pub. I eat my chips and this is a kind of communion. I’m participating in a holy act. A pigeon poos on my shoulder but I don’t care. I think I’ll go back tomorrow and get more. With mushy peas this time; try and pinch them, gull-bullies!