Mars Bars and a Wimpy's Grill
Mars Bars and a Wimpy's Grill
Comfort food
I used to work around Erdington, Birmingham in the 1980’s.
Once a month I would go to the Wimpy restaurant near the train station for ‘comfort food’ before going home.
I loved this Wimpy restaurant.
Always very friendly staff, no frills, just good plain food that filled you up.
The chips were always perfect!
A Regular Customer
Every time I was there - the same other customer was there too.
A much older gentleman, he looked to be around his late seventies, but I’m not a good guesser of people’s ages (I've upset a few people who’ve made the mistake of asking me ‘How old do you think I look!').
He was not very tall, maybe five foot seven - don’t ask me for it in centimetres, I still use lbs and oz’s!
Tuna Boat
No matter what the weather was like outside, he always wore a bright yellow Sou’wester hat and matching hi-vis coat, leggings and dark green welly boots. He looked like he’s just stepped off a tuna boat.
An odd look in landlocked Birmingham, so that's why he stood out. He could have worked on the barges or for the dwindling coal industry I suppose.
Same table
He always sat at the same table - the one nearest the kitchen.
I got the impression that he was a regular customer as the bubble haired blonde waitress always made more of a fuss of him like she was his attending nurse and kept his mug of tea topped up.
She always had a bright cheery smile and called him ‘love’, 'sweet-heart' ‘chuck’ in his conversations with her. She would put her hand on his shoulder now and again or pat his hand when she brought stuff over to his table.
Special Mug
He had his own special mug there - it was a big ‘two-hander’ beige coloured earthenware mug - not a two handled mug, just too big for one hand to lift type mug. The rest of the customers had white tea cups and saucers.
He would come in and sit down, take off his Sou’wester hat and neatly fold it away into the righthand pocket of his coat, revealing his small wizened, sun-patched old face and scrunched up sparsely thatched covering of grey curly hair.
BFG
His ears were like an elephant's - big and flappy with a crop of wiry grey hair sticking out of each one. He reminded me of a miniature version of Roald Dahl’s ‘BFG’.
Sewn-on coat
He never took his coat off, not even in the summer.
I would sit there and visibly sweat on his behalf, wondering how he could stand it and not be broiled alive in his rubber--coated outer coverings - it was as if it was sewn on to him by the cuffs and collar.
Dripping wet
He looked all of nine stone dripping wet - his heavy coat probably taking up at least six pounds of that weight.
It was too big for him now, but it had the well-worn look of a coat that had been with its owner since new, so I put the difference in sizes down to him retiring from the physical labour he’d done all his life, shrinking with age or illness - although he looked in good health at this time.
Solitary figure
His black gimlet eyes peeked out from many folds of crinkled wrinkles and wild bushy eyebrows, but he would only interact with the waitress or look down at his table.
He cut a solitary figure to me, but seemed content in his solitude.
I don’t think I ever saw him look around the restaurant or stare out the window or ‘nod’ a greeting to another customer.
The Wimpy Grill
He always had the same meal - ‘The Wimpy Grill’ - Saveloy sausage, beef burger (no bun), half of a beef tomato and a shedload of chips.
They’d also added two soft fried eggs and two slices of heavily buttered white bread on side plates and his mug of ‘builders’ tea (two tea bag strength tea with a splash of milk and four spoons of white sugar).
Surgical precision
He would add a huge blob of ketchup to his plate, then tuck in - laser-focussed on his meal. Surgically separating a bit of the Saveloy into a bite size piece, layering it with ketchup and a chip, then popping into his mouth, chewing each piece reflectively.
Between each mouthful, he would put down his knife and fork and place his forearms on the table either side of his plate.
As he finished each morsel, he would grab his mug with both hands and take a slug of tea, then return the mug to its original place on the table.
He would repeat this action with each mouthful of sausage, then slicing the beef burger into eight pieces before taking each piece and adding the ketchup and chip again. Finally, he finished the remaining chips off one by one, dipping them in the ketchup before eating.
The Fried Egg Butty
He saved his fried eggs until last.
When the main meal was finished, He would place one slice of the bread onto the big plate and arrange the runny fried eggs on top of it, douse the eggs in ketchup and place the other slice of bread on top to make a fried egg sandwich.
He would then cut the sandwich down into four square pieces and then each piece again into smaller sections with his knife and fork, parcelling out each piece as he had done with the rest of his meal, mopping up any spilled egg yoke and remaining ketchup with the bread until his plate was clean.
The waitress would pop over every ten minutes or so and have a quick check everything was okay and top up his tea mug.
The Pièce de Résistance
The pièce de résistance was after the meal.
The waitress would clear away the plates and bring out an empty clean sandwich plate with a fresh knife and fork for him.
She would take his tea mug to the kitchen and give it a ‘swirl-out’ under the tap, then fill it with a fresh brew for him.
The Mars Bar
He would then produce out if his left coat pocket - a full size Mars Bar. Not the tiny shrivelled one they have today, but the big, chunky handlebar sized one of the 1980's.
The Dissection
He’d unwrap the bar, place it on the clean sandwich plate and proceed to dismantle it with his knife and fork.
I don’t mean cut it into slices like the sausage - I mean dissect it into it’s component parts.
First he would hold the Mars Bar down with the fork - hard enough to hold it in place but not hard enough to break the surface. Slicing off all of the chocolate and scraping off any tiny bits until all of it was in a little pile on the plate.
Corralling and rolling
He would ‘corral’ the chocolate bits to one side with his knife.
Then holding the now denuded nougat in its place with his fork, he proceeded to curl back the caramel with the knife, like it was a mini rug being rolled up from the nougat floor, placing the roll of caramel next to the chocolate bits - but not near enough to touch them.
He cut the rolled-up caramel into two pieces and ate them one by one.
Out of sequence
This surprised me as it seemed out of sequence - I thought may be it wasn’t his favourite bit of the Mars Bar so he cleared that first!
He then ate the larger slices of chocolate, carefully manoeuvring them onto his fork - leaving the crumbled bits on the plate.
Nougat Mash
The nougat, he placed in the middle of the plate and mashed it like it was a banana!
He then folded in the remaining flakes of chocolate and ate it like it was the ambrosia of the gods, scraping the final bits noisily off the plate with the fork and licking the fork clean with a look of complete satisfaction on his face.
Cheerio
He would finish his mug of tea and have a quick chat with the waitress and then put his Sou’wester back on. With a quick ‘cheerio’ to the lady on the till after he paid his bill - he’d be on his way to wherever he was going.
Long Gone
He must be long gone by now as he was in his seventies then!
I never even knew his name. But I’ve never forgotten him, he’s a little jewel of a memory from years gone by.
Mesmerising
I can’t even explain why this fascinated me so much - or why I couldn’t look away even though it was and is very rude to stare - but he was mesmerising!
The meticulousness, the exemplary table manners, the pathos of this little old man finding solace and comfort in a grey world via the old-fashioned kindness and care shown to him at this little Wimpy lined pool of warmth.
I still have questions!
It just fills me with questions which I will never have answers to - one of which was - how did he cram all that food in one little body!
But it also makes me smile when I think about the Mars Bar, ate with such child-like relish by a man who obviously had a hard-working life and now found himself (possibly) alone in the twilight of his days, but still taking pleasure in something that seemed of so little value to an outsider but obviously meant so much to him.
I find myself wondering about what his life had been like, the stories he could have told. What he’d seen over all of his years and did the nice waitress attend his funeral or send flowers when he eventually passed on? I'd like to think so.
Farewell and fair weather Mr Sou’wester. I have lit a candle for you today to your memory, though I never actually knew you.
I hope you sailed on to a well-earned rest where there’s always a Wimpy grill, a mug of tea and a Mars Bar waiting for you at your favourite table.