The Jolly Fryer

05/06/2026

You are about to learn the solution to one of life's age old problems.

For millennia scholars and educated people have sought the answer to this and it's taken a bloke who cooks chips to stumble on it.

It's the answer to the question - what's the difference between the male and the female of the species. Well specifically, what makes them happy.

I can now reveal the answer.

Bloke. " I've landscaped a large part of the garden, moved most of it around, spread 10 ton of topsoil on it, levelled it, rolled it and its ready for sowing seed. That'll do."
All in one day.

Wife, just now. " I'm so happy, I never thought I'd get this load of washing dry outside today".

This revelation will inevitably cause bruising and some pain to myself later but on the plus side when needing to choose a gift to mark special occasions I now realise not to aim quite so high. The money saving implications are enormous.

03/06/2026

It’s about time I had a rant. And with no pigeons involved.
I ordered something from Mr Amazon & was told delivery was today, Wednesday 3rd June.

So just now I get this email telling me of “issues regarding delivery”.

Now we are a bit tucked away but I urge you to note the time delivery was “attempted” & the time I received the email.

Not clever…

( click on the photo to see all)

28/05/2026

Whilst aware of the potential problems this heat can give both to our refrigeration and us, after feeling incredibly guilty at not going out yesterday we are going to be open tonight at Godshill.

We’ve noticed that nowadays, strangely, it can be hotter late afternoon / early evening than around midday so if it does get too hot later in our shift we may be forced to cut it short.

Just to reiterate, we don’t cancel venues lightly. Our primary aim, even after all these years, is to maintain a service. But if something onboard isn’t able to function properly which may impact on our ability to adhere to standards we have no choice but to cut things short.

If in doubt, give us a ring.

Apologies again to all those at Chale whom we couldn’t serve yesterday.

But on balance it may have been safer attempting Chale yesterday.

Determined not to just sit around I set to, to get outside jobs done. If you had large bifold doors why wouldn’t you open them to try & keep indoors cool whilst outside?

Pigeons. That’s why.

Be warned, unless you’re about to keep a beady eye on those avian rats you could be in for a nasty surprise.

When nature calls and maybe you’ve left it a bit longer than you should the last thing you need is to run into the loo & come face to face with a startled pigeon flapping like a mad flappy thing imprisoned in the shower enclosure.

If you’ve not experienced this I must let you know that the what comes out of a panic stricken pigeon bears no resemblance to the actual size of said feathered rodent.

I suppose it’s best it all happened in a fully tiled bathroom & not a carpeted room.
Boy did that take some cleaning.

Mrs J F thought the world should see me in full pigeon relocation paraphernalia. Not pretty but very effective.

Doors will now stay shut when we’re not there. No matter how hot it gets.

27/05/2026

Good morning all. Unfortunately, for those who work in our sort of environment, rather too good.

Due to the high temperatures we’re experiencing currently we’ve had to take the decision to not open today, Wednesday 27th May at Chale Green. This isn’t us being afraid to work, for us to make this decision is akin to bunking off school - we feel incredibly guilty at not going out.

At the tail end of last week our refrigeration in the vehicle struggled to maintain the correct temperature. We’d not anticipated just how hot it became. This with commercial grade equipment but even so it’s not designed to work in the sort of temperature reached inside a chip van!
The two old farts within weren’t operating quite as they should either…

The problem we face currently is that the official forecasts show something not overly hot yet the actual temperatures are way higher. Should this be the case today we risk all sorts of problems.

It’s hard to get it right when all the info we’re fed gets it so wrong so we’re going to take this one day at a time.
We’ll make a decision about Thursday tomorrow morning.
Currently it looks like Friday & Saturday should be better for us but again we’ll wait and see.

As I write this the Beeb are reporting the highest ever May temperatures. It’s fair to assume though that this should be considered our summer. The rest of it will no doubt be awful.

Sorry folks.

18/05/2026

A trip to the Great North Island today saw us on the 9pm ferry back to Yarmouth.

Took me back to the old days.

Look at all that space - 6 of us!

Got out of the car without being a contortionist.

Spare a thought for poor old Wightlink though, they probably didn’t even break even on this one.
😂😂

14/05/2026

Quite a few years ago we made the decision to stop taking on private functions. They mostly clashed with our regular village calls anyway and we’d never let down our regulars in favour of the quick buck. That and we were getting older…

Then recently we had a call from the head of a well known Island company whose family we’ve served for many years.
They were hosting an event for many of their UK dealers at their premises in Newport & they’d like us to cater for them.

Like so many of our customers we think of them as friends not just customers.
Beside which, how could we possibly turn away wood burning stove royalty?

So today we were with them in Newport.
Set up, start cooking & over 130 meals freshly cooked and served up in 47 minutes. Pretty pleased with that.

Everyone had a great time despite the odd torrential shower - surprising the buzz you get from doing these sort of things despite the workload.

No time to hang about, stow everything then back to base to clean up, restock, cup of tea, wash the floor (very slippery!) then out to Godshill for our usual call.

So all in all we’re now knackered! But also, as a couple of old farts, feeling rather smug that between us - one a pensioner, the other a pensioner in waiting - we’ve managed rather well.

Who says Oldies are past it?!

Got a sneaky feeling we’ll feel it tomorrow though…

😁

12/05/2026

An interesting week. Started with our Chrissy having a tussle with her nag.
Nag won. Chrissy’s little finger lost. So you won’t be seeing her onboard for some time.
Ah well, it’ll curtail her finger wagging at me when she returns.

On another note we’ve been both interested & intrigued to see the emergence of a new mobile business akin to us which rather cheekily labels itself as “The Island’s very own mobile fish ‘n chip van”.
Hmmm. That’s making us wonder just what we’ve been doing over the last 36 years…

Their pleas on social media asking for suggestions of potential venues seems to suggest they’ve not decided where they want to be currently. Might we suggest ( since they’re now one of our many fb followers) that a quick look at our locations page on our website might prevent any unfortunate misunderstandings. There’s plenty of Island to go around. 😁

The big irony though?
We’re closer to retirement now than we’ve ever been; a word in our shell like and a long established business with an amazingly loyal customer base could well have been available to the right people…

As long as toes aren’t trodden on we welcome competition - we couldn’t have kept going this long if we didn’t.
And you know what they say about imitation being ….

We’re very flattered.

05/05/2026

We thought we'd try something new!

For many years now Mrs JF has made fish pies when the mood takes her. To make it worthwhile she always made a batch which was too many for us so we'd spread them around family and friends, compliments of us.

Now, after many variations she's come up with a recipe which I, and a great many others, reckon is the best she's ever done. They really are good.
I've persuaded her that they're too good to keep to ourselves so she's made a trial batch for sale which will be available from this week.
They contain a mix of white fish (one variety can be a bit bland) in a creamy white sauce with leeks, slices of hard boiled egg and a jumbo prawn. Then topped off with creamy mash potato with grated cheddar cheese sprinkled over.

Once cooled we freeze them to maintain quality.
To serve, simply defrost, remove the container lid and heat in a moderate oven for about 30 minutes until piping hot in the middle.
They're a good size single serving.

They're available now by pre-order, space on board is limited so first come first served and they're priced at £7 each.
If you're interested you will need to phone us before we leave to ensure we bring enough.

Just so you know, she only prepares and cooks all the ingredients and all the other stuff like that.
I do the creative bit. I mash the spud.

01/05/2026

Not so much a rant as an information snippet.
The article attached from the Beeb highlights an issue we’ve always been aware of but will only get worse as prices rise. Have to say the fish in question is probably the worse example of conning people.

Many moons ago, and I do mean very many, I worked in the aquarium trade.
Yep, gone from keeping ‘ em to cooking ‘em!
We used to import fish from around the world directly from their country of origin. A particular catfish from abroad was never welcome being very fast growing and voracious in its appetite.
This fish eats anything, including its tank mates, and grows fast.
Fast forward some years and it’s now being farmed on a huge scale in muddy ponds being fed lord knows what and exported worldwide. It’s banned in some countries because of the volume of heavy metals found within it, no doubt because of what it’s fed.

It can be readily found in supermarkets labelled as Bassa, River Cobbler & anything else that’ll make it sound respectable.

I will never knowingly eat it, I’ll never buy it.

Because of the huge increase in fish prices we’ve taken steps to include more reasonably priced options but I need to stress what you ask for is what you get.

If you want Cod you’ll get Cod. Same with all our other varieties.

If you go elsewhere and see something labelled as “Fish & Chips” ask them what fish they’re selling you. Don’t be fobbed off. You have a right to know what you’re eating!

During a discussion recently about the rising price of Cod a sales rep from one of our suppliers suggested I buy cheaper fish and market it as just “Fish Supper”. This to maximise profits.
I no longer have anything to do with her.

Please read the article. It’s disturbing but does highlight something which needs telling but rest assured this will not happen with us.

A BBC investigation finds chip shop owners passing off cheaper species as "traditional fish and chips".

21/04/2026

Just in case anyone's interested, we've got some really nice large fresh flat field mushrooms as a special this week.
When battered they don't shrink so they'll make a nice side, or a couple would make a good meal for vegetarians.

£1 each - when they're gone they're gone...