Chip Story

One time, when I was little, I went round to my friend Ginny's for tea, after school. I remember sitting at a small table, round the corner from the kitchen, just us two. We were having chips, and, unexpectedly, Ginny stuck two chips up her nose. I can still visualize it. I felt completely traumatized. I can't remember anything else about the visit, except the dark of the hallway and that Ginny wore skinny tight black jeans.
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Poke of Chips

You don't get 'pokes' in London. I remember them in Penicuik (but I don't remember ever eating any chips). I just remember hanging around outside Penny Chip Shop. It was newly opened, big, bright and exciting. I don't know what I was doing there; I must have been too young to be supposed to go there, on my own, hanging around on the corner. I remember talk about the Casuals; which boy was a casual, and so on.
*Pokes are a kind of cone shape of paper to put the chips in
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Regional Specialities/Variations

Penicuik: Poke
Irn Bru
Deep-fried battered Scotch Pies (mutton, round, flat, straight sides, hole in the middle)
Winchester: Pea Fritters
Bradford: Bag of Scraps - bits of batter that have fallen off (Given away free)
Fish cakes - made with thin slice of potato, little fish, another slice of potato, squashed, battered then fried
Never peas
No skin on fish

Haggerston Fish Bar

This chip shop is pristine, very clean and ‘fifties looking. It has light blue (turquoise?) Formica, trimmed in shiny metal, like a ship - with beautiful detailed embossed bits. There is a shrine-like end corner with a display of pictures and photos. On the end wall, up high, facing me as I come in, is a suave, moustachioed, dark-haired and beautiful man in a black and white framed (large) photo, loving the camera. I ask the man behind the counter ‘Who is this man?’ He replies ‘That’s the owner. But not now. Twenty years ago.’
‘He looks like a film star’ I say.
‘Actually, there are two old friends of the owner, they come here and have fish and chips in the back room together (He points through the ribbon curtain to the back room). They were all film stars.’ (I imagine the scene, the three old dudes round the table in the private room, with three portions of Cod and Chips)
‘You wouldn’t know them, but they were famous in Turkey.’