On the Growing Reputation of the Chip.

Even today, the humble chip (French fry) is considered, well... a little unsophisticated. And yet I can honestly say that its reputation has climbed a few notches since I was a kid.

In those days, chips were strictly pleb food. I spent my childhood believing that people of taste and refinement never touched them. I suppose that was partly because every third or fourth street in the sort of places where I and my type lived had a chip shop, usually on the corner to catch trade from all directions.

‘My gran says can I have three cod ’n chips and a portion of mushy peas? Please.’

‘Salt and vinegar, Jeffrey?’

*Nods.* *Glare from Mr Tomkinson.*

‘Please.’

The good old days. Right. (This was well post-war, you understand.) Posh folks didn’t live in places like that. They lived in well-heeled suburbs, or big houses replete with cooks who knew how to cook posh food. Not chips. Besides, the chip lends itself to being picked up with the fingers. Posh people always used a knife and fork, didn’t they?

The best of it, though, was that even we confirmed dregs of the proletariat never had chips on a Sunday. Oh, no. Sunday was the one day of the week when we got to eat like posh folks. Roast meat, two veg, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, maybe even a sauce of some kind. All of which we ate properly with a knife and fork. (I was even taught not to hold my knife like a pencil, since to do so was the height of bad manners.)

The point is that eating chips on a Sunday was considered extremely bad form. Sunday was the Lord’s Day, and the Lord disapproved of chips. It was a rule to be observed most strictly in the summer when the kitchen window might be open. The smell of frying chips carries far and wide, and so the neighbours would know what you were doing.

‘Do you know, Freda, I swear the Beazleys were having chips last Sunday.’

‘Chips? On a Sunday? You don’t say!’

All of which led to the fear that eating chips on a Sunday would attract social exclusion at best, and at worst might book a one-way ticket to hell fire.

And this is why being both alienated and non-religious can be tremendously freeing. Today is Sunday. I intend to have chips with my dinner.