Well, here is it - the back of "Ron Tozer's Fish and Chips" in Redhill (it's been under new ownership for many years now, the current people that run it smile and give you extra chips if you say "Xièxiè")...
This is where I spent some of my time working my way through college, earning pennies and coming away with countless hot fish suppers that hadn't sold by closing time.
The crew (if I remember correctly) was Ron (boss and head chef), Graham (urm, the hired muscle?) and Warren, the bosses son - during the day he was a photographer for the Surrey Mirror, helping out in the shop at night. There was a young lady who waited tables in the restaurant area out the back, and a wiry guy who did prep (peeling spuds and skinning/trimming fish fillets) but I don't recall their names as I had little call to interact with them.
The introduction to working there was simple - Arrive - Collect keys from top flat (up all those stairs), open up back door, put on whites, turn on friers and glass fronted warmers. Heat up a few pies in the microwave (both chicken and mince varieties) - taking the foil off carefully first - put saveloy sausages into pre-existing milky tepid water "never EVER eat those, I know what went into them", turn on gravy and mushy peas ("we don't do curry sauce, that's for Northern poofs") stir the cracked skin into oblivion. Use chip paper and non-brewed condiment (chip shop vinegar) to clean down all surfaces (glass and metal) - "never bother with window cleaner lad, it's a waste of money - that stuff is the business" (and it was) - pop a great big block of what looked like lard "it's nut oil lad" (hrm) into the frier if it was looking a bit low - count the contents of the till and write the total on a bit of chip paper and pop it under the tray the £20 notes go into so we can do the maths later. Sometimes there was a knock on the back door, if so go and collect all the frozen fish (in stupidly slippery cardboard boxes) from a big refrigerated van and pop it into the freezers. At some point during all of this (usually towards the end) Ron would appear, already in his whites, and ask me to do all the things I had already done.
Prep chef out the back would then appear, in checks and a natty hat, throw a bag of spuds into what basically amounted to a washing machine lined with sandpaper and then smoke a cigarette while the potatoes peeled themselves, throw them through an industrial chipper and then wheel the resultant huge great plastic trough of raw chips up to the front and park it just out of sight of the customers view, with a pale blue mop bucket on the top for us to shovel them into the hot oil. Next the fish and batter would appear in stainless steel containers and without any further ado the cooking would begin with a great big hiss and cloud of steam which always fogged up the front window regardless of the weather. Constant time checks were done, and at the appointed moment (although not until I was signalled) it would be my job to flip the open/closed sign and unlock the front door. Just occasionally I needed to welcome the members of a little queue already waiting for their food outside...
Fried food is cooked when it is floating, if Ron was busy, I would lift the cooked bits carefully up to the warmer, trying not to drip boiling oil onto any part of my body, tradition was that you knocked any long bits of crisp batter into the chip tray - some people ordering chips asked for some "extra crispy bits" - not something I was familiar with - but this was what they were after.
From there it was typically a blur of "Two cod and chips" (etc.), the occasional chicken quarter (they come frozen and pre-cooked btw) until closing time when I would be sent away with my salary in cash in my pocket, my pay slip in biro on a greasy bit of chip paper (if at all), pie and (miscellaneous) fish and heaps of heavily salted and vinegar-ed chips under my arm, steaming up the bus windows on the way home - occasionally some of the food made it back home to be shared.
Of course there were notable moments - yes, we did get *one* Northerner come in asking for curry sauce, he was told to go away by an angry Ron (who then bravely went and hid out the back leaving me to face the insulted customer) - awkward smile :S. An old lady would come in occasionally and pay for cod and chips with numerous bags of one pence pieces, I was sent into the restaurant to count them all while she waited - it was correct each time, but I still had to count. One time a frozen cod arrived with it's guts still attached and the chef out the back thought it would be clever to eat them raw - no idea how he kept them down - he definitely regretted it when the contents spewed out down his chin.
Then there was the time Ron was on the balcony and decided to throw the keys down to me to open up, one of the keys (it was a bunch larger than my clenched fist now) went straight through my hand, blood everywhere, but Ron just put a load of chip paper (the answer to everything) and quadruple wrapped blue kitchen sticking plaster round it and I worked the shift (feeling slightly faint) - I still have nerves catching things thrown at me to this day - apologies to anyone with anything extra dripped onto their dinner that night. Oh and how could I forget the night there was a fight outside the McDonalds opposite, a hoodie kid got quite badly beaten by a gang, when they ran off he got up and kicked straight through the window of the Estate Agents next door, picked up what I can only describe as a sword of glass and made chase after them (Ron didn't shut the shop of course) - I don't imagine that ended well...
A few years after I stopped working there I read in the local paper that Warren and Graham had been on a fishing trip in the Algarve and (allegedly) thrown a German tourist off a 12 foot high sea wall (luckily(?) he was only paralysed rather than killed) - last thing I heard Warren was on the run somewhere in Australia and an EU arrest warrant was out for Graham.
Fun times...
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