Reading skills - FISH AND CHIPS

     FISH AND CHIPS
 

      A British tradition is under threat. No, it's not the Royal Family, not the BBC, not red buses - it's more important than that: it's the fish and chip shop.

     For over a hundred years, fish and chip shops everywhere in the country have supplied poorer families with a cheap and healthy meal. But now unemployment is so bad in Britain, that many people cant't afford even this simple pleasure.

     Newspapers report that customers in many poorer areas are spending less money on their fish and chips. Many chip shops have already shut, with more closures to come.

     If the fish and chip shop dies, it will be a sad day for British popular culture. No one quite knows when fried potatoes were first united with fish, but fried fish was on sale in the streets of London in the 1830s. Chips were probably introduced into Britain from France, in the 1870s.

     However they started, fish and chip shops spread rapidly. By the . end of the nineteenth century, there was one on every second or third street corner in industrial towns. They soon became a very important part of working class life - a social focus, as well as a source of cheap and convenient hot food. The various sorts of fried fish with their portions of chips were always wrapped in newspaper, to keep them warm on the way home, and this in itself became a tradition.

     It seems a sign of bad times when even the fish and chip shop is in trouble. 

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