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!

Fish Tram Chips by any chance?!

I am 53

Oh, no, you can't squeeze all of that excitement into a one week holiday!

Pier-sitting and the addition of mushy peas/curry sauce or a pickled onion, as per a PP's suggestion, are TWO-week holiday thrills. As is sitting directly on a pebble beach to eat your fish and chips, being attacked by aggressive seagulls and trying to avoid that one pebble going in places it oughtn't to.

Then you should appreciate that life once upon a time was simpler and small pleasures were not taken for granted. Especially if you came from a working class background.

I'm wondering if OP did not grow up here so has none of those warm childhood memories of seaside ism

That's the only excuse I can think of.... ?

My name is Pyongyang
I am 53 years old
I was born in the UK
Most of my holidays as a child (70's/80's) were in Blackpool

I still do not think that eating fish and chips on a beach is an "evening activity" on holiday.

And implying that anyone who doesnt think that it is a magical "making memories" must be from another country and therefore "not like us" is fucking offensive and borderline racist.

used to do this in summer 2 or 3 times, drive 30 minutes to beach, walk dog, paddle and have a chippy tea on the prom. I mean most nights we’d do everything else, but the chippy tea was a nice little extra. Sometimes with a beer from the coop. Unfortunately DH can no longer eat chippy tea, I miss it. So sometimes do it on my own…

it’s just nice.

I dont need to appreciate anything, I was bloody there, I know exactly what it was like. It was....fine for what it was. What it wasnt was the halcyon days of yore that many people my age like to paint it as.

People say "Oh we had fewer expectations" only because there was far less to hope for! A donkey ride is fine if that is all you have known, but a rollercoaster is far better!

And when I was a (working class!) kid, my parents did not think that eating my dinner on the street was an evening out, and neither do I. So shoot me.

Ah sorry, I was just replying to you saying you thought most people in the U.K. eat fish and chips, not the stuff about those random kids in another thread that I haven’t read.
I don’t like fish and chips. I’m not a big fan of white fish in general, nor batter, no breadcrumbs, nor chips. None of the things that people tend to be referring to when they say ‘fish and chips’. I could ask them to make me something different obviously, and to omit the chips, but I was talking about fish and chips as people tend to know it. My kids don’t like it either. Nor fish fingers. They love salmon though.

I do wonder about these seagull stories- the ones I meet ih the North East seem very well mannered, they never bother us for our food. We visit a few beaches each year in Whitby/ Redcar/ Sunderland/ Seaham/ South Shields etc and never had a problem, they seem timid to come over if you even drop something. Are they different species of seagulls I wonder or are they just in bad habits elsewhere? I enjoy fish and chips outside but I agree I need a table even if its just a picnic bench.

What's special to you, OP? Let's all see if we can sneer at that.

I live beside the sea and have never eaten fish and chips outside or walking along the prom or beach. I think I might actually do just that this summer one evening. Just not something we have ever thought to do and never see anyone out doing it either to be honest so despite the decades living where I am and the three chippers in close proximity it has never occured to me so you have given me an idea op. I am thinking Monday night might just be chipper night here :)

YANBU. It’s a bog standard weeknight dinner when I can’t be bothered to cook. It’s delicious, and I do live by the sea, but it is just a meal.

I do like eating fish and chips by the sea. I don’t necessarily see it as an activity in itself though.

Curry sauce with a haddock supper?
I love a jumbo haddock supper but don't get the curry sauce.
Anything with chips is called a supper in Scottish chippers.

Knock yourself out.

Here you go.

Playing a particular Xbox game with DD because I am utter crap at it and it makes us both laugh when I usually lose and I am insufferable to her when I very occasionally win (in a good natured way)

Quizzing

Reading

Going for lunch with my sister

Dont have time for much else!

YANBU. We never ate fish and chips on holiday or outside when I was growing up. We’d have them at home on the day we returned from holiday to no food in the house and of course there weren’t supermarkets open all hours, and that was pretty much the only takeaway food available. Dad would go on his bike to get them - but a pie for me because fried fish and soggy chip shop chips are rank IMO.

But we didn’t tend to go to the seaside for holidays because we lived in Clacton.
I don’t remember seeing many holidaymakers eating fish and chips outside come to think. Picnics and ice creams though - happy days!

Or a pasty - not a ‘holiday activity’ but a hot pasty on a Cornish beach is so much nicer than fried stuff.

Just remembered one fish and chip meal on holiday with my parents … visiting an aunt in Yorkshire we were taken to the original Harry Ramsden’s as though it was a great treat. Guisley is nowhere near the sea and it was a very proper sit-down tea with a pot of tea and bread and butter. But they didn’t do pies so that was probably all I ate of it.

A donkey ride is better when you’re 5 or 6; a rollercoaster is better when you’re older. But dodgems are the best when you’re a teenager

I only went on the Steel Stella on the pier once before it burned down in 1973.

A report… ah, there were proper comedians on the pier then

https://www.gazette-news.co.uk/news/18243837.nostalgia-dont-panic-everyone-just-pier-fire-/

Perhaps you can answer this, please? I always thought a fish supper was just what you asked for in a Scottish fish and chip pshop but a couple of months ago we went to one where it had both "fish and chips" and "fish supper" on the menu. So, what's the difference?

None..one and the same.😋

I wonder why they had them both on there then? They were several lines apart.

It's a strange een at no mistake.
Wonder if it's a local thing that supper includes extras.
That's a guess.
Ne Scotland ..supper is anything with chips.

Just to add to the confusion!

I was born and brought up in the Midlands by parents who were born in the Midlands with "fish supper". No Scottish roots but my Grandmother and her family were Irish, would that have anything to do with it?

ETA....even if you had pies or sausage or whatever, it was still referred to as a fish supper because you had to go to the fish and chip shop to get it. Whereas I know my Scottish friends call that a pie supper or a sausage supper.

Oh now we're into new territory with the Irish connection.
Hopefully someone with Irish roots can help.
Now watching with interest.