A FOUR-DAY LENT IS LONG ENOUGH. Heras’ hopes for a vinegar-free lent are dashed. BY THE LATE, AND LOVED, PETER SCHIRMER
‘I
thought you were going to stop drenching your fish and chips in vinegar during Lent?’ Hera’s greeting was waspish. The first day of March, and after only four days during which the air of the main penthouse lounge had again smelt fresh and sweet with a hint of the sea, today Zeus had returned from Casemates in a miasma of coarse vinegar and cheap cooking oil. The Father of the Gods had developed a taste for fish and chips soon after the Olympians arrived on the Rock when – during one of his few attempts to earn honest cash – Zeus had posed as a statue in Main Street. But, ever-impatient, he had fidgeted and glared at the onlookers. It was soon obvious that his venture had failed, and hunger pangs had quickly driven the god and his handful of coins to the nearest ‘chippy’. There, though he had 82
disdained the accompaniment of ‘mushy peas’, the battered cod with chips and vinegar delighted his taste-buds, and Zeus had found what was to become his unvarying lunch. Food scooped onto a slip of kitchen paper, then swathed in newsprint as insulation, the fat from the deep-fryer and the rank Spanish vinegar with which the chippy doused his products, seeped through the wrappings, permeating them with a distinctive odour. Atop the Rock, in the Olympians’ first months of alfresco living, the wind had dispersed the pungent tang as rapidly as the apes had disposed of any unwatched wrappings, but in the luxury penthouse apartment the smell clung to curtains and upholstery wherever Zeus had chosen to spread the newsprint.
Like so many of the Great God’s enthusiasms, it hadn’t lasted. For he had resisted Hera’s attempts to serve his meal ‘properly’ on a plate with cutlery, insisting that the ‘correct way’ to eat fish and chips was with his fingers and directly from the wrapping. He had seen BBC television reporters at the seaside eating this way, so it MUST be right. And he liked to spread open the newsprint to read while eating, often finding ‘interesting’ news items about mortals’ foibles, he pointed out. And the lingering rankness had resisted all Hera’s efforts. GIBRALTAR MAGAZINE APRIL2020
