Olympia Fish and Chips Cleveleys

It has the feel of a log cabin. Albeit a log cabin which stinks of chip fat. Alluring all the same. The café part of Olympia is u shaped, with a male and female toilet in the middle. Inside; apart from us four, an old man was talking, presumably to someone round the corner from us, out of our view.There were no other customers.  The man was saying that the Fylde Coast has been taken over by the EU. He was a Manchester lad though originally and it was disgusting what the EU was doing. I strained my neck looking for a waitress, eventually an unapologetic woman appeared with a note book. She took our order. Danny had been dreaming of a meat and potato pie since the start of our holidays and the dream was about to be realised. I opted for cheese and onion pie, chips and peas. Sophie had chips and cheese, a Fylde Coast delicacy, but she didn’t want the cheese melted as usually is the case. My sister dithered for ages about what she wanted eventually opting for the delicious sounding fish cakes and peas.

We were all ravenous and impatient for our food. The old man was talking of how important it was to be nice to people, when all else fails, it’s very important to be nice to one another, especially with all this EU business. There was mention of a Polish woman who works in the working man’s club. Olympia’s internal walls are adorned with framed photographs and newspaper clippings of all things Fylde related. Outside the toilet door there were signs from Walt Disney World, Tennessee, Tampa Stadium and one depicting that Jesus was the Heartbeat of The World. My favourite framed photo, taken in what appeared to be the function room of a working man’s club starred a horse (plus rider). On closer inspection the rider was a Canadian Mountie.

 Everyone else’s food arrived, bar mine. This irritated me. There was, what appeared to be, an old fairground game hanging on the wall near our table. As I photographed it, and everyone else tucked in, the old man was still talking about the Polish woman. He said he hated her and she hated him.  They both knew where they stood with each other. My daughter heard him say this. My daughter, Sophie,  aged 11, told me that the old man mouthed the words “she is a fucking cow”. My cheese and onion pie chips and peas was lovely. It was a Holland’s pie, microwaved to perfection. We all cleaned our plates. I commented to Danny that I hoped the old man would speak to us on the way out. He staggered by. He stopped in the middle of the shop, he was mumbling to himself, something about Nazis and Poles. I quickly changed my mind and didn’t try and attract his attention. I shovelled in the last of my pie crust. There were some hard bits inside the pie, I didn’t say anything though.