Friday night 7

Unexpected consequences
Spanish lorry drivers. They've been striking this week over the price of fuel. The small-time fishermen up here are also being hammered by diesel prices and last night one was claiming that he can't catch enough lobsters to cover the fuel costs of getting them. But a bigger concern for him was the Spanish lorry driver strike - because he sells his lobsters etc onto Spanish lorries and they've not turned up this week. That's a weeks income lost with no drop in out-goings.

It seems to me that the real problem here is a cultural one. We seem to be the oven ready chip generation. There is no local market for the stunning produce these guys are bringing ashore. I imagine that oven ready chippers would scream the place down if confronted by proper food like a live lobster (well I know I would!). If our fishermen could sell from the quayside, or from local shops the price of diesel and revolting foreigners wouldn't be such an issue.

There were some oven ready chippers in the pub last night. A swollen throng of teenage girls were flumping around getting mars bars and diet cokes (I mean diet coke for heavens sake). Unusual for females to be in that bar - and there were two lots last night - shock horror.

And we have new bar staff. A Polish lad. Totally out of place. Apart from his lack of English, and you have to admire his bravery coming all this way to serve behind a bar when his total grasp of English amounts to a grin which stretches from one ear to the other and back again and apologetically fluttering eye-lashes, apart from that - he's a mirror moth. You know that type of young man fatally attracted to admiring himself at every opportunity - sharply dressed and agonised-over hair. I suspect he was part of the reason for the abundance of oven ready chippers last night.

I wish him luck. My god he's gonna need it.