THE THIRTY-TWO-POUND CHIPPY TEA

THE THIRTY-TWO-POUND CHIPPY TEA

Friday night used to be chippy night in our house.

No cooking, no washing pans, just that lovely smell of hot chips, salt and vinegar filling the room.

We ordered three fish and chips, mushy peas, another portion of chips with curry sauce, and four barm cakes.

Nothing fancy.

No champagne.

No silver plates.

Just a chippy tea.

Phil returned carrying the food with a strange look on his face.

“How much?” I asked.

“Thirty-two pounds.”

I nearly fell off the settee.

“Thirty-two pounds! Did they catch the fish wearing gold watches?”

We opened the paper parcels and stared inside. The fish seemed smaller, the chips looked lonely, and the curry sauce barely covered the bottom of its little tray.

Even the barm cakes looked as though somebody had sat on them.

“That’s it,” I said. “No more chippy teas in this house. We’ll need a bank loan next time.”

The following morning, I went to the supermarket. The shelves had great empty spaces in them, like a mouth with half its teeth missing. Nobody had put up a sign explaining why. Perhaps there were delivery problems, perhaps shops were ordering less, or perhaps everything had become too expensive to keep properly stocked.

Whatever the reason, it was ordinary people left walking up and down the aisles, searching for food they could still afford.

Butter cost nearly as much as perfume.

Cheese needed its own security guard.

A small basket of shopping now cost what a full trolley once did, and a bag that used to last a week barely covered two days.

Then I reached the chocolate aisle.

That was when my temper really started boiling.

Cadbury used to mean a proper treat. You bought a bar of Dairy Milk, felt its weight in your hand and heard a lovely solid snap when you broke a piece off. There was enough to share around, even if you secretly hoped nobody else would ask.

Now you pick one up and wonder whether the chocolate escaped from its wrapper.

The packet still looks cheerful and familiar, but when you open it, the bar inside seems half the size it used to be. The squares are thinner, the bar is shorter, and the price has somehow marched in the opposite direction.

Half the chocolate and twice the cheek.

Cadbury is the worst for it in my eyes. They keep shrinking the bars while the prices climb higher and higher. They might call it business, rising costs or shrinkflation.

I call it daylight robbery in a purple wrapper.

And Cadbury is not alone. All the other big, well-known chocolate names seem to be playing the same little game. Mars bars, Twixes, KitKats and bags of sweets have all become smaller, lighter or meaner, while the price tags have become bigger and bolder.

The multipacks are the cleverest trick of all. The bag looks big enough for a family, but open it and there is so much empty air inside you could use it as a balloon. The tiny bars at the bottom look embarrassed to be there.

The chocolate aisle had begun to resemble a line-up of very well-dressed crooks. They wore bright wrappers, smiled from the shelves and charged a fortune for less.

One bar even said “new size” on the wrapper, as though losing chocolate was something we should celebrate.

“What will they sell us next?” I muttered. “A photograph of a chocolate bar for two pounds?”

A young mother standing nearby laughed, but it was a tired laugh. She had three children with her, and the smallest one asked if they could have some chocolate.

“Not this week, love,” she said gently. “Mummy has to buy bread and milk.”

The little girl did not complain. She simply put the bar back on the shelf.

That hurt me more than the price.

How do families manage now? How do parents explain that wages have not grown, but everything else has? How do you tell a child that even one little chocolate bar has become a luxury?

At the checkout, the mother watched every item appear on the screen. The total rose and rose while the food in her trolley looked like hardly anything at all.

She quietly removed a packet of biscuits.

Then she put back a box of cereal.

Her eldest child whispered, “It’s all right, Mum. We don’t need them.”

Children should not have to understand money worries so young. They should not have to pretend they do not want a treat because they can see fear on their mother’s face.

I came home without chocolate and told Phil what I had seen.

That evening, we peeled potatoes, made our own fish in breadcrumbs, warmed some peas and put the kettle on.

It was not wrapped in paper.

It did not come from the chippy.

But it tasted good, filled our plates and did not cost thirty-two pounds.

Still, as we sat eating, I kept thinking about that mother and her children. I thought about empty shelves, smaller packets, rising prices and companies hoping we would not notice what they were doing.

But we do notice.

We notice every missing square of chocolate.

We notice every smaller fish.

We notice every pound added to the bill.

Food is not a luxury.

Feeding your family should not feel like fighting a battle.

And a little chocolate bar should not need a magnifying glass and a payment plan.