to think that "eating fish and chips" is just lunch/dinner, not a holiday activity?!

[PyongyangKipperbang]

Seen this on a few threads lately, and when I asked a couple of years ago about ideas of what to do in the evening on hols in the UK, this was the line trotted out most! "Walk along the promenade eating fish and chips". For a start I hate eating when walking, its messy and inconvenient and secondly, what about the other 6 evenings in a week or are we meant to do it every single night?

In most places these days you can't "eat fish and chips on the front" anyway because you get mugged by fucking sea gulls!

Haha! Sorry! Just had a wee google and it suggest that in NI it is a supper but not in Ireland, my GGrandmother was from Donegal and her husband from Galway....so who the fuck knows?!

But given I am apparently anti British as I dont want chips on the beach for my dinner, perhaps my family are just weird!

I haven't eaten a fish and chips supper for myself for years, but take summer visitors to the excellent Cerberus Beach House on Half Moon Bay to eat chips facing the sea, watching the young 'uns jumping off the jetty. Definitely not walking along, though.

I am in Ireland, down south part not NI like and where I am one or two of the local chineses do a 'supper' which is a tray basically with chips, either gravy or curry sauce, onions and your choice of sausages, fish or chicken'. In the CHINESE!!! I need to google my local chippers and see if they do anything similar now but a 'supper' to me is your last meal of the night so essentially if you are falling out of the pub to pop to the chinese you would order a supper I guess but I have not tried this. Actually may not even be on the menu anymore but my ex husband the odd time would have ordered it. Hes a weirdo that would order omelette and chips in the bloody chinese too so he is not of the most discerning of palettes.

Donegal and Galway are Ireland not NI anyway and I am not 'anti brit' just anti england when it comes to footie so I will take one for the team and whip a teenager down to the beach and make them sit and eat chips with me on Monday night just for the craic. I will do it in the breeziest part of the village too and let the waft of vinegar go all over so others may follow suit.

Eye opener here that we in Ireland are certainly being ripped off is I just found a local chipper that sells a chip butty for 5.40. Chips on bread for over 5 euro...scandalous.

It's just an easy tea/dinner where I live...but in Fife you're never far from the sea.

YANBU, and chippies aren't better by the sea anyway. You're just more likely to be attacked by a herring gull while eating them.

I know where they are, thats the point I was making. My paternal family are from Ireland but a google suggests that saying "fish supper" is mainly NI, so I am confused where us (as a family) calling it a fish supper came from.

And I was saying that some posters have suggested that me not like a "supper" on the beach must mean I was brought up outside of the UK, or just hate being a brit.

I wouldn't say it's an activity, but it's a treat and a novelty if you don't visit the sea often.

(Well, it would be a treat if the gulls didn't try to divebomb)

I suppose expressions that are used in NI would often be used in Donegal too as it’s also in the north of the island.

I’m at the other end of the country from Donegal and would never use the term fish supper. I use the term supper as a general term for the evening meal if it’s a lighter one (that is, I have breakfast, dinner and supper or breakfast, lunch and dinner depending on the day).

Supper definitely doesn’t mean ‘with chips’ here though as it seems to do some places.

I wouldn’t see eating fish and chips on a promenade as a treat either OP 😁

I love so many people’s point being just ‘it’s by the sea’. I agree. Lovely thing to do by the sea😍

It might be to some people who don’t live by the sea or never go to the coast.
Many people don’t have the means or money to go there so for them it’s an experience.

One of my favourite things to do when we go to the sea, but I live a 2 hr drive from the nearest seaside so it’s a novelty. We’ll get a cone of chips with plenty of salt and vinegar and the little wooden fork and then sit on the beach to eat them. Then wander down the beach to an ice cream van and get a Mr Whippy with flake and Raspberry sauce for pudding. The combination of the smell of malt vinegar, hot chips and the sea just says ‘holiday’ for me.

Bang! But don't you think that having fewer expectations out of life made people happy. For example I am a big fan of Radio and Radio 4 has a consumer programme called you and yours. It has a weekly phone in and one week it was about debt. This bloke rang in to say he was £30k in debt on benefits as he was disabled and it was the banks fault as it was easy to lie to them. When asked why he was in debt he replied "my children deserve holidays". In my mind no one deserves a holiday. You deserve water, food, shelter, warmth and freedom from oppression not a bloody trip to Benadorm.

It was either Stranraer or somewhere a bit further down the Rhins, can't remember now, so the opposite corner. If we go again, I think we'll have to order both!

Scottish parents, it was a fish supper for us, it’s just fish and chips (no mushy peas didn’t have those till I moved to the north west).

Fish and chips can be supper.
But by the sea it can be very much part of visiting the seaside.
I love both. And long may doing so continue.
I love the sound and smell of the sea. The breeze that goes with it.
And I even love the sound of seagulls.

You sound so angry. It’s bizarre. If you don’t want to eat fish and chips while walking by the sea then don’t! But don’t be a dick about it.

Why do you find it so difficult to understand that people take pleasure in different things to you. Sometimes the understated activities are what people remember.

I just asked DS what his favourite part of our holiday was and without thinking he said going crabbing and playing in the sea. He’s 12 almost 13.
Didn’t mention the water park or the more ‘high octane’ activities. So yeah, some people do remember the donkey ride over the rollercoaster.

Xbox is my idea of a truly dire evening.

We're all different.

Idk it's a bit like saying getting ice cream isn't a holiday activity.

I love fish and chips by the sea and it's not something we have often especially now mine has to be GF

DH once bought a burger on Brighton pier trun round to me and a seagull swooped down immediate and took everything but bottom bun.

He had to buy another - and we wondered if the buger stall had trained attack seagulls to boost sales.

Not had that most other beaches seagulls tend to be more like pigeons waiting

Fish and chips outside isn't compulsory but most UK seasside towns tend to be quieter - there may be arcades, restaurants or cinerma and in past shows on piers possibly fun fares - probably best to google what in local area - but we are usually doing walks and food in some fashion rather than something more dynamic.

You do all those things in the evening when you are on holiday? That's what the question was about but I don't think you really go for lunch with your sister then or any of the other things you've listed.
People eating fish and chips at the seaside is a tradition. Many, many people enjoy doing it. Who are you to say they shouldn't because it's not special enough for you? They want to do it; you don't have to do it. What's wrong with that?

Mary Jane's is good but I think No 1 edges it. And you don't sit on the pier, you sit on the stones and watch the crabs. Last time we went, the crabs were fighting. It was like dinner and a show.

I don't get the division between 'just lunch/dinner' and 'an activity' in the OP. I think that a meal is very often an activity, particularly when you're on holiday - a picnic, a meal in a restaurant, going to a food market. Getting fish and chips and eating them on or by the beach is in that category to me. Getting fish and chips and taking them back to where we're staying wouldn't be.

And obviously saying you could get fish and chips as a holiday activity isn't suggesting you'd do it for seven nights in a row, any more than if I suggested you might go to the colosseum as an activity in Rome would I mean that you'd just go there for every day of the holiday...

I agree a meal is an activity, ypu can easily go out to dinner and spend 2 hours or more over your meal.

eating fish and chips from some paper either when walking or sitting and spending a whole ten mins doing it, is not in that category for me at all.

technically yes it’s an activity. But it’s a very quick one and I certainly don’t see any evenings activity as something that takes me ten mins.