Yesterday was a quiet news day for yours truly. With the exception of writing a blog, eating soup with crackers and watching the Ealing comedy classic The Lavender Hill Mob, Monday 20th February witnessed a paucity of activity in the existence of GJ Strachan.
If truth be told, I could have taken the excitement levels up a notch if I’d have made the effort. However, I lacked the motivation to have a wander to pick up medication from the pharmacy, depriving myself of that particular avenue of pleasure.
I normally plan my visits to the pharmacy so they coincide with lunchtime. That way I can treat myself to a bag of chips from the adjacent chippy at Austhorpe. I’m not sure what the collective noun is for a bunch of chipped potatoes; so in the absence of that detail I’m going to call it a happuth.
I realise that consuming a happuth of chips covered in salt and vinegar, probably negates the work of blood pressure medication I’d just acquired from the chemist. However, you try not succumbing to the tempting aroma emanating from The Skyliner restaurant when they’re frying.
It’s broken many a mans discipline. Hardened rugby players on strict nutritional diets have been known to risk the coaches wrath with spontaneous visits to this fast food utopia.
Their journey to the pharmacy for anti-wrinkle cream and hand sanitiser rerouted in an unscheduled stop for two happuth of chips (they’re big eaters those rugby lads) with scraps.
For the uninitiated, scraps are the bits of batter discarded from the fish during the deep frying process. Not fights in the restaurant! They are free of charge, so if you’re peckish and short of funds merely ask for a bag of scraps.
On many an afternoon, a meander along Selby Road regularly exposes a trail of carelessly shrewn scraps from an open food tray. The trail generally leading to the front door of the person who’d impulse bought the bag of chipped potatoes.
With local fish and chip restaurants predominantly utilising beef dripping in their batter, the flavoursome scraps enhance the dining experience. Be aware, though, that excessive eating of the fried batter may put you above rock star Keith Richards on the Grim Reapers shopping list.
As well as the health implications, scraps are a nightmare to eat with a wooden fork in tandem with walking. Hence the possibility of unintentional scrap loss, revealing the tell-tale trail of your dietary indiscipline.
Comments like “I see Frank at number 78 has been troughing unhealthy food again!” and “He’ll be looking like a fish cake with the amount of them he devours!” can often be heard in suburbia by the gossiping local paragons of virtue.
In his poem But Out of Frank at Number 78’s Life, odist Garfield Stratton penned the following well-meaning health advice:-
Oh Francis ensconced at number 78
Apply caution as thy stack yon plate
Seek thine redemption in arable plenty
Like Marjorie Grimes from number 20
Heed mine warning well-meaning Frank
Ignore and you’ll walk life’s short plank
Thine maker awaits with his footman reaper
Ignore that the chips are 50p cheaper
Those argue that fat infuses taste
May diminish their longevity. What a waste
Address thy consumption for happier times
Oh shit, I’ve just run down Mrs Grimes!
Well it’s 10.30 am so I’ll conclude this second blog of the day (I wrote the other in the early hours of the morning).
I was going to head for a shower, but I better ring an ambulance for Mrs Grimes first!
