I've Been To Paradise But I've Never Been To Binley Mega Chippy

I've been to some posh places in my time. Poked my nose around some hi-falutin' gaffs.

The National Statuary Hall in Washington D.C. The Boboli Gardens in Florence. Abu Simbel in Southern Egypt.

But last Saturday, on a drive back from Coombe Abbey, I passed a building whose sheer majesty and triumphal ambience put all these other places to shame. A palace of ruby and gold wherein must surely reside ancient gods of high renown. It sent shivers down my spine as if a strange wind had blown across my face. Indeed the air seemed to thicken as if with the odour of some hot exotic oil.

Binley Mega Chippy.

42 years living in the Midlands and I never knew that such a thing existed on my doorstep.

I've frequented all kinds of chip shops in my time. High street chippys. Drive-thru burger and fry joints. Hell, we've even got a Pete's Plaice just up the road from my house - a chip shop seller who understands the importance of a well placed pun.

But I have never in my life been to a mega chippy.

As we drove past my hands scrubbed at the car window and I drooled in a manner reminiscent of that famous scene from Midnight Express when Billy tries insanely to paw at the breasts of his girlfriend, Susan, through a sheet of bullet-proof glass. Well. I don't actually know if it was bullet-proof but it was certainly pokey-proof despite Susan's best attempt to punch a couple of ten pence sized holes through the glass.

A mega chippy!

I'll say that again just in case the significance has past you by.

A mega chippy!

Surely the counter and the friers would be made of solid gold! Exotic fish would feature on the extensive menu - dolphin, killer whale, Daryl Hannah - all battered and served with a choice of Bar-B-Q or curry sauce! The chips would be the size of articulated lorries and gloriously cripsy on the outside whilst remaining soft and fluffy on the inside! The countertops would overspill with jars of pickled ostrich eggs and vats of mushy peas so green they must surely have melted emeralds into the mix! And the serving girls! The serving girls would be bouyant Atlantians replete with clamshell bras and silver tridents and voices that could drive a man to dash himself to death on the kebab grills!

Alas I will never know for sure.

We were in the middle lane in heavy traffic and my wife had no intention of stopping, cold hearted harridan that she is!

So we continued on our way along the Brandon Road, my wife ignoring my stangulated cries of new love lost, and Binley Mega Chippy seemed to shrink before my eyes until it was nothing more than a faint pinkish blush on the horizon.

But I know where it is now. Google has furnished me with the map reference. X marks the spot. By accident I have stumbled upon a town that Kings and Queens would give their eye teeth to live in. A place of class and culture. A place where important people live. Big people. People who have "made it" big and like to have it large.

All hail Binley Mega Chippy!

The Olympian chip shop of the gods!

Manners Maketh

None of you will be aware of this because I haven’t seen fit to tell you (don’t be offended, we all have our little secrets) but I started a British Sign Language course four weeks ago. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and, to cut a long story short, I’m doing it now because (by a weird confluence of events) my current novel features a Deaf character and my employers thought it would be jolly useful to have a member of staff trained in sign language and are thus paying for me to do it.

None of this is important (well, it is and I may blog about it all separately later). What is important is that the class runs from 7 – 9pm on a Tuesday. I simply don’t have time to eat a meal before the class so I’m usually famished when I come out.

And this is why, on the long walk home, I find myself frequenting the type of fast food establishment that normally in the cold light of day I wouldn’t touch with an 8ft baguette.

We’re talking greasy joes, truck driver cafes and kebaberies whose window lit meat racks seem to house the carcasses of household pets and the odd horse nicked from a Home County show ground.

I am ill at ease in these places. I’m used to fine wining and dining. Or at least a free plastic toy with my meal.

Take last Tuesday. It was a cold night and I felt like a short sharp unhealthy hit of cholesterol. So I nipped into one of Leamington’s more infamous chip-joints. The Sakarya (pronounced by the hoodies as Zachariah).

I ordered something suitable “street” and “down with the kids”. Cheesy chips.

Yes, I know. Not exactly overflowing with Nigella-esque nutrition or red blooded Gordon Ramsay protein. But, you know, it’s fuel for the fire. A naughty treat.

I order and I wait. The Turkish looking guy behind the counter is monosyllabic and seems to singularize absolutely everything. Cheesy chips becomes cheesy chip. This amuses me greatly but I don’t let this show on my face as his Turkish colleague, shaving great strips of flesh off the kebab spit, is giving me the evil eye. Actually, I say Turkish looking merely because of the kebab. In actual fact I could have easily said Greek looking, Portuguese looking or Eastern bloc looking. The typical unthinking Englishman’s casual racism. I haven’t a clue where they were from.

Could have been Peckham for all I know.

The guy who got served before me has his burger carton open on the counter in front of him and is troughing down his food with one hand and waving the other around as he demands more mayonnaise. Demands, mind, not asks. He makes to hold the mayonnaise bottle himself but the burly Turk / Greek / Yorkshire man behind the counter refuses to relinquish it. He squeezes the mayonnaise out until the chomping pig tells him to stop. “That’s enough, mate.” And off he trots into the cold night air.

When it’s my turn to get served I get offered all the usual relishes – salt, vinegar, ketchup and the ubiquitous mayonnaise. I answer to each “yes, please” or “no, thanks” as I see fit. Stavros hands my food over. I take it and offer one last thank you to the grease filled air.

Both Mr Turk and henchman Turk give me long evil stares.

I leave the building and continue walking home wondering what the hell I’ve done to offend them.

And then it hits me. I was polite. I was quite possibly too polite. In an industry where these guys must see the worst scum of the earth pass through their doors at all hours of the night in various states of advanced inebriation, to have someone – out of the blue and with no apparent reason – say please and thank you must seem like the biggest piss-take the world has ever seen.

They thought I was being sarcastic. They thought I was being patronizing. They thought I was taking the Michael.

Good grief. Is this what the world is coming too?

Well it was either that or the fact I told them that their fathers like to do goats up the arse in sign language... but I doubt it.

Ello Darlin’, Fancy A Portion?

I used to have a quick scout around town in my lunchbreak. Check out a few shops. See what was new on the book / DVD scene. It was an unwise pastime that inevitably led to me spending money that I didn’t have. So I knocked it on the head and started going home instead. Half an hour on my own, in the comfort of my own home, watching a bit of telly and drinking tea made from quality teabags instead of the weak, blue stripe shite that gets served up at work.

It’s great. A little island of sanity in the middle of the working day.

My journey home each day takes me past a chippy. I won’t name it except to say it’s on Clemens Street (for those of you that know Leamington) and each time I go by I can guarantee that the guy behind the counter will inevitably be hunched over it, resting on his elbows, straining his neck to watch all the local ladies walking by outside. The place is always empty which is just as well really as he leans so far over the counter his gonads must surely be dipping themselves into the deep fat fryer – so I can only assume that it isn’t actually on.

Should he spy a scantily clad woman of the opposite sex sashaying by he will whistle. Loudly and constantly from inside the shop. An endless, tuneless fluting irritant of sound that neither functions as a catcall or a wolf whistle. And given the reflections on the glass, nobody can really pinpoint where exactly the whistle is coming from (unless, like me, you’re checking the price of cod and chips on the menu pinned to the window and actually see his overly fleshy lips moving). It is a disembodied sound that is plainly laddish and sexist and a bit “porkpie and whippet” trad but the ladies targeted by it can’t see the little berk to give him the inevitable finger.

I’ve worked out – and this shows how frequently he does this – that he favours blondes in tight fitting tops that accentuate “pokie action”, short skirts accompanied by knee-length boots and overly made-up girls the wrong side of the jail-bait divide. He’s plainly gagging for any action he can get and wants to sew his wild roe upstream of as many rivers as he can speedily navigate.

I’ve given him a few “I can’t believe you’ve done that” stares as I’ve walked by but he’s merely blanked me in favour of the goth brunette jiggling on the other side of the road. Plainly the man has no shame.

And plainly no girlfriend (or at least one would hope).

And definitely, definitely no customers.

And that isn’t going to change because, I don’t know about you, but I for one would not want to eat any chips that have been fried in gonad flavoured oil.

I want my fish to taste of the sea... not, you know, semen.

Sorry. But given the nature of this post there was only one way it could have reached its climax.

Anyone else for a portion? ;-)