tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post4211475131183789954..comments2024-03-18T10:29:46.055+00:00Comments on Ken Armstrong Writing Stuff: The Half-Life of ChipsKen Armstronghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07775956557261111127noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6496460488742488789.post-39509009241886776312019-03-24T03:30:39.513+00:002019-03-24T03:30:39.513+00:00We don't have a chip shop within walking dista...We don't have a chip shop within walking distance of our flat but we do have a chip van which faithfully parks outside the Co-Op most nights. In the somewhere-around-fifteen years we've lived here I doubt I've succumbed to temptation more than ten times and I cannot recall a single occasion where I was disappointed in their offering. (My lack of self-control, yes.) I really didn't need to read more than a line or two of your post to get it. I get it. I have a phrase I use every now and then and it might've even wheedled its way into a novel or a short story but I'm not going to check: That's not chippy chips. Chippy chips, the gold standard. Never in my life, and I include my childhood where health concerns were far less of an issue, has anyone been able to replicate the chip shop chip. Not even my mum although her suet dumplings have only ever once been matched (although not bettered) in a café by the bus terminus in Newcastle and I'm only telling you that now because she's dead and there's no way of it getting back to her. <br /><br />As a child it was not unusual for me to be handed a ten bob note and being told to cycle down to the chip shop. I never needed to be told twice. Of course I'm looking back with pink-tinted specs on but there was some point in my life when something insidious happened. Maybe it was when they stopped wrapping chips in yesterday's newspapers. I don't know. But they changed. Now don't get me wrong, they were still good, very good but they weren't perfect. So I'm pleased for you, dead pleased, that somewhere on the Emerald Isle the magic lives on. And jealous as hell.Jim Murdochhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12786388638146471193noreply@blogger.com