We might have wandered into a film set..

[verne]

Once when visiting my wife's brother and his family in Sheffield we decided to have a Chinese carry-out for supper.

 

My brother-in-law took me to a quiet terraced street where a single lighted shop shone like a beacon through the gloom of a residential street. Two or three steps upward from the pavement and through an ordinary fully glazed domestic type door and we were standing last in a queue of half a dozen waiting to be served...

 

There seemed to be a hold-up in the serving process and we all stood there for what seemed a long time before somebody arrived at the other side of the counter and began taking orders.

It was then two jolly young fellows came through the door and joined the queue...

It was that sort of time on a Saturday night when you could expect to see someone as jolly as a newt!

 

The order taking process still seemed to be taking a long time - too long for the patience of those two at the back who began a shoving competition to amuse themselves and pass the time. It was all very good-natured until one of them missed his footing and fell backwards through that glass door, down the steps and rolled into the street.

The shards of falling glass had hardly stopped tinkling and crashing on the ground before he was up and away closely followed by his suddenly not-so-drunk mate!

 

Almost simultaneously with the first crashing sound a Chinese guy in chef's whites appeared, vaulted the counter brandishing a wicked looking cleaver and exited through the place where the glass used to be and pursued the pair only a few yards behind the second jolly young fellow...

 

About 15 or 20 minutes later we were given our order and left the shop, not being quite sure whether to open the useless door or step through as the others had done...

 

Strangely, there had been no sign of a returning Chinese cook and no screams of anyone being murdered!

 

Keith seemed to believe it was anything but unusual and the other customers seemed completely undisturbed but I was left with the feeling that little drama I had just witnessed had been rehearsed and somewhere a camera lurked!

 

I certainly hope it had been staged because if it had not it could only mean Sheffield in the 1970's was a very strange place indeed...

Edited March 23, 2012 by verne
small changes.

[innit]

Ha ha! Reminded me of this:- Mid 70's, I was in a Chinese chippy on Staniforth Road one friday night. It was closing time so the queue was right out the door and three people from the travelling community burst in through the door and pushed in at the head of the queue. Obviously, many in the queue had been drinking and took belligerent exception to this and rapidly a confrontation developed. The proprietor and his mrs were screaming in chinese at all parties to no avail and then a chinese bloke ran out of the back room yelling and waving something like a very large butchers knife. One of the traveller's legged it and returned with a shotgun which he loosed off at the ceiling causing a ton of plaster and lath to fall on the assembled masses and into the friers. Everything went quiet and it was immediately evident there was nothing left to argue over and the dust covered crowd wandered off, excitement over. Except for the Chinese woman who was sobbing her heart out.

[Jim Hardie]

Ha ha! Reminded me of this:- Mid 70's, I was in a Chinese chippy on Staniforth Road one friday night. It was closing time so the queue was right out the door and three people from the travelling community burst in through the door and pushed in at the head of the queue. Obviously, many in the queue had been drinking and took belligerent exception to this and rapidly a confrontation developed. The proprietor and his mrs were screaming in chinese at all parties to no avail and then a chinese bloke ran out of the back room yelling and waving something like a very large butchers knife. One of the traveller's legged it and returned with a shotgun which he loosed off at the ceiling causing a ton of plaster and lath to fall on the assembled masses and into the friers. Everything went quiet and it was immediately evident there was nothing left to argue over and the dust covered crowd wandered off, excitement over. Except for the Chinese woman who was sobbing her heart out.

 

It must have been the only establishment in that part of the world that didn't have a hand written 'No Travellers' sign on the door. Very commonly seen at the pubs down the 'cliffe in the seventies and eighties.