Patience rewarded — An Elegant Sufficiency

I was chatting to Edward at the weekend about how lovely it would be to have some kind of take away food nearby. He and Amy live in Islington and are spoiled for choice with so many restaurants close by, most offering delivery services. Living in a village is great for much of the time, but we can only dream of the kind of take away food choices they have. In particular, we were missing the occasional treat of fish and chips from our favourite chippy five miles down the road, even though we do have to go and get it ourselves. So when I spotted a post on the Simpsons FB page yesterday that they were starting a click and collect service, I nudged my Hero and suggested we give it a try.

Not immediately, of course. We’d leave it till tomorrow! (today)

I clicked, I ordered, I paid for it and saved the precious order code. 6.35pm Wednesday.

It’s been a glorious day; the warmest of the year so far. We enjoyed lunch out in the garden and might have mentioned once or twice how good it was to look forward to fish and chips later. We chatted with friends on Zoom and probably told them more than once that we were going to get fish and chips at 6.35pm. We set off in plenty of time…who knows what the traffic might be like? Well, of course, it’s not busy but around here there are so many roadworks happening - a Good Thing, unless you need to be somewhere for a specific time.

And we did! How horrible would it be to get there and find we’d missed our slot? How busy might it be? Would there be crowds of people waiting? What if we couldn’t park the car and I had to run?!

I needn’t have worried. I waited until just gone 6.30pm to go to the door having heard how Bettine was told off for arriving too early for her appointment at the eye clinic the other day. It made sense to be there “on time” and not before…but we were hungry! As I put my head around the corner, a voice called “Gill!” and the precious brown paper bag was handed over the counter. (Well, once I’d taken the photo, that is!) So efficient!

With the piping hot package on my knee, my hero lost no time in heading up onto the common, to our favourite fish and chip eating spot. No trouble social distancing here!

The ordering process included the salt and vinegar options too, so all was there, ready to enjoy. We normally help ourselves to the wooden fish forks in the shop, but thinking ahead that it might not be an option, we’d even remembered to bring cutlery and napkins as well.