Fish n Chips Internet Casualty

London. Manchester. Birmingham. Dublin. Melbourne. There’s a crisis. It’s fish and chips and the printed word. What’s the connection?

The internet pushed newspapers out of business. We now get alerts about the news, sports and screen heroes. Twitter is even faster. Traditional fish n chips shops used to wrap the food in newspapers. The British invaded Africa and brought so-called civilization such as sugar, salt, butter and fish n chips. That’s why Johannesburg, Toronto, Vancouver, and Durban fish n chips joints, also use newspapers.

Newspapers gone. What is the alternative? They have fake newspapers complete with headlines. They also use styrofoam trays which are bad news for the environment. Just recently, they put my fish n chips order in little boxes, largely used by Thai and Chinese take-away.

I didn’t know about the importance of newspapers in fish n chips shops until I got to England as a student. It was a whole Friday culture and they ate with their fingers. That was quite a revelation for someone from a British colony, where teachers told us we ate like that because we were barbarians.

That was all lies, but can fish n fish shops survive without old newspapers to wrap them? They will. We all long for a naughty oily fry once in a while, after the daily kale and green tea diet.

By: Nonqaba waka Msimang.