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The
Chipmunk And The Fat Fryer
by Wendy Freebourne
A fat friar renounced the world, joined
a brotherhood of chip monks, mainly
Tamias and Spermophilus, and went
to work in a reclusive fish restaurant
in Highchurch. Prior to being
a fryer, he was a novice in
the abbey, but he wasn’t very happy
there. Now he was dapper and
chipper amongst the dabs and the
kippers and those other whippersnappers –
sprats, which they battered, acolyte and
fluffy, and cooked in huge vats. But
these were only nippers, small fry,
compared with the monkfish, a very popular
dish, served with Benedictine sauce and Imam
Bayaldi. On high days and holy days, or
when the French friars came from Chartreuse,
they presented
celibate halibut and tonsured turbot with
crinkly chips, salted and ascetic. And,
on Fridays, Moishe the Monk would cook
Gefilte fish for the Catholic clientele. For lunches,
or brunches, they did salads of hermit
crab sticks and coleslaw, seating the public on
monastic plastic tables and chairs. In the evenings
the tables took to the cloth and offered 
candles. But last holy orders for fish
and chips had to be taken by eleven o’clock,
as the chamber of trade had ordained
they should close before matins, and
shut down completely on Augustinian bank
holy days. (Our friar hadn’t known that banks
had a spiritual life). They also closed down
the toilets, when the Cistercians didn’t function,
temporally. Nor did he imagine, when brown
berobed, his overcooked chips would
explode and burn him badly. They treated
the poor fryer with monkshood balm, to
calm his sores and used his monk’s
hood to clean up the cooker
hood and extractor. One day
our friar was tempted, with a lay
brother called Alvin, another chip
monk, cloistered and sequestered in
their larder. But he’d frittered away too much
time, tucking into gourmet meals, fry-ups
at dawn were his habit. He’d grown adipose on
bloaters, as pinguid as a penguin, rubber,
like whale blubber. His fleshy
body was captured like a Trappist, in
an embarrassing position. The other monk
did a bunk, leaving our friar contemplating
the cod and place. (He couldn’t catch
site of his navel). The chip monks finally
freed him, but wouldn’t chip in for a
fat farm fund. So, although soused as a
mackerel, and just as oily, he celebrated
the unctuous gifts of Omega three, which
kept him healthy. However, when the chips
were down, he behaved like our father. A
regular chip off the old block, he ended up
wearing
a chip
on his shoulder.
Published in Madelaine ezine March 2005
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