July 20, 2009

Chip Chopped!

I was reading an article in a magazine in my doctor's surgery recently and got a laugh at it. It was about a chip shop in Northampton, I think it was. Staff had been on an environmental health course and it led to the banning of an old dear in the fairly close by nursing home, from buying hot foodstuffs.

For a couple of years an old bloke of 78 had been making the journey every Friday evening for him and a bunch of his friends, for suppers as a treat. The old dear was more abled bodied than the others and quite happily made the journey on his own. It gave him a little sense of worth and the chippie staff adored him.

After the course, the rather stuffy jobsworth chippy boss said that because he was rather slow on his old legs these days, the journey that would take a fit person 3 minutes to make back home was actually taking him 10 minutes and as the suppers would therefore be colder, was a risk to health - epsecially old dears! Because the old guy always phoned ahead with the order, they knew he took about 10 mins to arrive. It's bureaucracy gone deep fried nuts! What a bloody insult to the elderly.

Now, he still makes the journey but only to buy other stuff like sauces and sweets ect. That little journey broke up part of his day. Apparently, the staff now deliver it to the nursing home personally. The old guy took it as gallantly as he could and joked about how he's learning to rollerblade! I can't understand it myself. I used to work in a chippy, many many, moons ago and know for a fact that all it takes is a few extra sheets of paper and it's insulated for at least a half hour - still even burning the gob off you at that. What I find really ironic is that most old dears wait for their food to cool down before eating it anyway. God, the amount of times my old dad used to eat cold meals if there was anything distracting on the telly. I can just hear him coming out with his favourite sentence when faced with pettiness such as this:

"Whit? A load of b*****d's nonesense!"

With loads of condiments on top, too!

1 comment:

menopausaloldbag (MOB) said...

Oh I can well believe it was so in Northampton given that I live in south Northants! How utterly thick and ridiculous. These brain dead numpties that go on courses then don't have the sense to interpret the guidelines correctly make me furious. Shit for brains eejits!