The best Fish Supper I ever hud in ma life

Last Friday, or maybe it was the one before - doesn't time fly - we arrived at Princess Lucy, now signed up for twelve months in Mercia Marina. We planned to stay for a very long weekend as on the Wednesday the electric people back at home promised us no power all day.

We got the wine chilling and unpacked the ready meals planned for an easy first night dinner. We had a Prawn and Mango Masala, a Chicken Madras, a Spinach Dhal and a Perswari Nan. Quite a feast and we were looking forward our supermarket currys. But before that excitement, we took Mr Jones for his tea time walk.

Something blew us off course as we were walking past the romantically entitled Service Block 2, when First Mate stopped, and put her nose in the air.
"Probably the Elsan disposal point," Captain suggested.
"That looks like a chip van," First Mate said.
"That looks like a chip van to me too," said the Captain.
"Is it here every Friday?" First Mate asked.

The truth was, we were in shock and we needed time to process this information, so we carried on with Jonesy's walk. On the walk we hatched a plan. If the chip van was there on the way back, we would speak to them to find out what, when, how, and maybe why.

The plan worked like clockwork, except in the excitement some of the information was lost, but the gist is that the van stops at three places in the Marina between six and seven on a Friday. The important bit for us was that it would be quite near Princess Lucy for its 6:30pm stop. And the more important point was that it was - at the time of the conversation - only 6:15pm.

Can you guess what happened next?

Yes we did. First Mate was soon checking the dates on the curries, buttering bread and warming plates as Captain was despatched to the small queue forming in anticipation of its arrival. And then it came tooting its little horn all the way around the Marina. What joy as we unpacked the fragrant parcel of freshly fried fish and chips, mushy peas and, of course, Chip Shop Curry Sauce - a truly British invention and a work of genius.


PS. I didn't take any photos at the time, the above pictures are from the TV series 'Your Cheatin' Heart' by John Byrne. The top picture shows the late Tom Watson.