Anyone remember a fish and chip shop on or near Bottetourt Road in Weoley Castle/California near the footbridge over the old abandoned canal? - I say fish and chip shop - It was just a bungalow (maybe a prefab), Every Friday and Saturday afternoon there would be a blackboard leaning against the fence outside saying "Frying Tonight 6pm". - If you went back there at 6pm there would be a queue of people, anywhere between 10 and 50 people. A few minutes before 6 an old man (well he seemed old to me at the time, I'd have been only 5 or 6 at the time) would come out and count the number of people waiting in Line. He'd disappear inside again and then a few minutes later the top of the front door would swing open (it had a stable-type door) and they'd start serving. I seem to remember that the only things on the menu were fish and chips and maybe a pickled egg or pickled onion, so it took no time at all to serve everyone (how different to today when the range of stuff on offer is so large that you have to wait ages for it). The fish and chips seemed to be cooked in a big cauldron of fat in the middle of the front room with a gas burner under it. There were always two or three older boys hanging back at the end of the queue to ask for any leftover bits of batter or chips once everyone else had been served. Once the queue was served it would shut up shop. This would have been about 1964. It didn't last much longer, I guess the competition from "proper" fish and chip shops that stayed open longer because they had proper fat fryers they could keep running all evening killed it off. Strangely, years later I came across a fish and chip shop that operated on the same principle at Seydisfjordur on the East Coast of Iceland, complete with "Frying Tonight" blackboard, they had got the taste for Fish and Chips from British troops stationed there during the war.