Benjamin Judge (Photograph by Gill Moore)

Biography: Benjamin Judge lives in Littleborough. He is one fifth of Manchester’s Flashtag Writers. His stories have been published in various places. He believes cheese is the answer to most of life’s problems. His blog, Who the Fudge is Benjamin Judge? won the Best Writing award at the Manchester Blog Awards. If you would like to stalk him or talk to him on Twitter, he is @benjaminjudge

Introduction: The LWH theme for May is Place. Signs in Chip Shops by Benjamin Judge is the the fourth Place piece  to be commissioned by the Pretend Boss.

Ben Judge is very glamorous. Well okay, he’s quite dapper,  it’s just that I’m going to go on about how glamorous Sarah-Clare Conlon is next week and I’m already on a warning from the Political Correction Constabulary.  Ben was my first and (between you and me) best virtual friend; we were blogging friends for years before we met last September.  I admire his work ENORMOUSLY and I’m so pleased (and only a little bitter) that he won that blog award.  Ben wrote a story called 50 Stories about Sting which he read at Word Soup. It made me cry with laughter. If the Political Correction people saw that story I think they might lift my court order. They might even offer me a job.

(I think The Sting Thing might get an official airing at the Prestwich Book Festival - you MUST attend!)

Signs in Chip Shops

A handwritten sign on the wall of the chip shop reads, “Our pies are NOT microwaved. They are WARMED.” It is positioned just around the corner from the industrial microwave they use to heat the pies.

This chip shop does not exist, or rather it does, but not like this. The chip shop exists but the sign doesn’t. I can picture this particular chip shop but you cannot. All you can see is the sign. But you have begun to sketch a chip shop around it. I see my chip shop and you see your chip shop. This doesn’t matter. All chip shops are fictional. All chip shops are the same.

The floor? Ceramic tiles the colour of malt vinegar.

The walls? White paint. Adverts that portray meat-and-potato pies as exciting new advances in molecular gastronomy or as solutions to years of marital strife. Posters for school jumble sales, printed on orange paper.

The ceiling? A mystery. Who has ever looked at a chip shop ceiling?

The counter? A strip of metal, folded and hot to the touch: an extension of the vat of oil beneath it and of the glass cabinet sitting above it. A glass cabinet displaying a battered sausage and a selection of pies in red, blue, and silver foil cases.

Behind the counter? A jar of pickled eggs on a white plywood shelf. A cardboard box full of plastic forks. Jars of Daddies sauce available to buy for £1. And the signs.

The chip shop signs. The chip shop signifiers.

If I write about a chip shop it will be an amalgam of dozens of actual chip shops. My version of a Platonic chip shop form is pieced together from chip shops in the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and various seaside towns. It sells peas but no battered Mars bars. It usually has two sorts of curry sauce. Since I moved to Littleborough, it has started making its own cheese and onion pie. You have your own imaginary chip shop, your own jigsaw of memories.

All chip shops are the same. All chip shops are fictional.

I was asked to write about place. More accurately I suppose, I was asked to write about writing about place. Let’s pick a place. Let’s say Manchester. Let’s say we are going to write a story set in Manchester, and let’s say we are going to have a scene within that story set in a chip shop. Now, somebody reading your story in Swansea may never have visited Manchester, but they will have visited a chip shop, so how do we describe this one?

We don’t. We describe one thing in it. Don’t fight the fact that your reader is picturing a different chip shop; use it. The first paragraph of this essay – a description of a sign – is enough for the reader to start building a picture of a chip shop in their mind. All we need to do is paste some new thing onto that picture. This all sounds a bit obvious, but it is worth remembering that as writers we can only gently push the reader’s imagination toward picturing something, and that whatever they do picture can only ever be formation of things they already know.

To describe a place we only need to describe the one thing that makes it different from everywhere else.

I have fixated on chip shops because I like chip shops, I have fixated on signs because they are rather obvious signifiers, but I could have chosen anything really. If I say ‘public swimming baths’; you will think of a swimming pool. I do not need to say it is a large rectangular hole with water in it. I only need to tell you about the line of crimson tiles where the water laps the sides, or the single grey plaster floating on the surface, or the hexagonal windows in the ceiling.

To pull a place from the abstract I need a single detail. To make a chip shop real, to make it tragic or absurd, I only need a sign on a wall.

“We do NOT give change in ANY circumstances. PLEASE DO NOT ASK.”

“Have you tried our scampi?”

“This is a chip shop. NOT A BUS STATION.”

“Please keep your dog on a lead.”

“Let us know when you enter the shop if you want plaice or fresh roe.”

“When was the last time you had peas with it?”

“Welcome to the church of the chip.”

“Grab a microphone and give us a song! Tuesday night is Chip-aoke Night!!”

“Due to unforeseen circumstances, we no longer serve Margaret Drabble.”

“Our chips are ABSOLUTELY NOT made out of potatoes.”