Postcard from Norfolk - Fish and chip crisis

Norfolk in May is plump and green. Such succulence is quite a change from my normal visiting time of October, when it is less crowded, rates are off season and the hedgerows are thinner. Now, everything is in leaf, pumped up and big. This includes the tractors that roam the roads, pulling trailers of badly secured root vegetables ready to bounce onto your bonnet and put a dent in your metalwork and crimp in your day alike. The tractors are like rural caravans in their ability to create a tailback occasionally slowing the journey along the A road leading to passing the time with classic car games such as I spy. After three miles at twenty miles an hour following a tractor the most popular ‘I spy’ letter is cee.

The first night in Wells-next-the Sea is also the first night of the holiday and holiday rules apply, meaning that such high level decisions as ‘what shall we have for dinner’ are not the subject of prolonged consideration, debate and risk assessment but rather come supplied with an answer prepared in anticipation of such a moment: ‘fish and chips from French’s’.

In truth, fish and chips from French’s is a good meal decision at any time and actually a fairly good solution to any decision, up to and including ‘is it time to tell this person I love them, or is there something else I should be doing?’.

Rocking up at French’s, I was met with the sight of a chap standing by the door. Cooks standing by the door of their establishment is never a good sign, unless it is at the back door of the establishment and they are smoking a fag, in which case it is situation normal.

It was not situation normal. The family ahead of me turned away at the door, dad choking back rage, kids choking back tears, mum wanting to choke back Malibu. It’s never a happy sight when a family set on chips are denied same.

‘Sorry, we’re closed.’

I choked back emotion. The chap could see that what he had on his doorstep was his worst nightmare, a bloke who was not going to explode into violence but rather burst into wracking sobs. He tried to justify this gross violation of my human rights.

‘Sorry. We’re reopening again at eight, but we’ve got one hundred and fifty schoolkids to cater for and if we don’t shut, we won’t get the order done.’

This was, I conceded, fair enough. If you had been dragged around all day in the rain on an ‘educational’ trip that began and ended with a trip in a coach with a load of other kids smelling mostly of anorak bad hygiene, it would take a harder heart than mine to begrudge the kids a fish supper.

Of course, the wait made our anticipation even keener.

Eight o’clock on the dot I was walking through that front door, no queue, straight to the counter. French’s still do the best fish and chips in the world. One hundred and fifty school kids can’t be wrong.