CATFISH AND FRIES

BORDER OF WEST VIRGINIA: APRIL 6
Back in my youth, blue-collar Brits queued at the chippy most Saturday nights for fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. Thick soggy batter encased a stale chunk of greying cod; chips oozed grease. Today's preference is for equally vile fast-food sweet-and-sour with fried rice, chicken tika, donar kebab or a Savaloy sausage.
So I muse as I shelter at a corner table in a gerry-built road-side diner in the Appalachian foothills on the border of West Virginia.
Lunch hour and the diner is packed with locals. These are country folk and polite. They don't stare at the fat old man off a Mexican mini-bike. A friendly waitress serves coffee and takes my order for catfish and fries. A woman at the next table interjects that we are suffering a cold front.
Yes, indeed...