A better bit o’ batter

WE used to go to South Shields on the OK bus trip, about five and ninepence from outside Dowson's paper shop. Apart from a spring tide of replica football shirts, the old place doesn't appear to have changed a bit.

Before a late lunch - a magnificent late lunch, it may be said by way of appetiser - we headed to Arbeia, the former Roman fort overlooking the mouth of the Tyne.

Arbeia means "Place of the Arabs". In the 4th Century, it's said, the garrison was reinforced by a naval unit sent from the Tigris - now Iraq - both a tribute to their navigational skills and a lie to the old joke about where Hadrian kept his armies.

It wasn't up his sleevies, it was on a windy promontory above the North Sea, and it may also explain - though there are conflicting theories - why South Shields folk are to this day known as Sand Dancers.

A plaque at Arbeia's entrance records that the first phase was opened in 1953 by Sir Mortimer Wheeler. Now there are audio/tactile points, citations to the place's child-friendliness and even something called a sniffarium.

Authenticity's important, too. They don't even sell Minchella's ice cream - in that respect perhaps unique in South Shields - or have posters of half-naked young ladies, or Mr Michael Owen, on the recreated barrack room walls.

It's likely, of course, that the locals didn't take too kindly to the arrivals from Tigris to Tyne, and not just their minds occupied. Shields lads, it's reckoned, aren't even particularly welcoming to them from Jarrer, and that's just three miles away.

After an hour living in the past - admission free - we strolled down to the sun-blessed beach for a taste of Minchella's finest, complete with the obligatory monkey's blood.

There may even by a local bylaw, like not peeing in the paddling pool, requiring all visitors to have at least one Minchella's ice cream while in Shields. The Boss, who'd clearly been at the sniffarium, thought she'd never seen so many tattoos in one ice cream queue.

No matter, incidentally, that the ice cream came before the main course. You know this column, ever iconoclastic.

The Saturday sands thronged, just like the good old days. After a three-mile round-trip to the end of that extraordinary pier, we headed inland up Ocean Road to Colman's fish and chip emporium.

Ocean Road is famed for having more Asian restaurants than anywhere this side of Calcutta. Even the place offering southern fried chicken may simply mean that it's from Bombay.

A line of seven or eight - Star of India, Crown of India, Dilshan, Royal Tandoori - is parted only by a stray hairdresser's.

Colman's was there before any of them.

The family's first place, a hut on the beach, opened in 1905, followed after the Great War by a posh beachside cafe where a palm court orchestra played on Sunday afternoons.

The Ocean Road premises opened in 1926, takeaway and restaurant with a rock shop in between. Recently it's been named Britain's best takeaway by the BBC's Food and Farming programme and regional winner in the Fish and Chip Shop of the Year contest.

Local MP David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, is a regular visitor, sometimes bringing guests like Mr Tony Blair, seen grinning like a guppy fish from the picture gallery on the wall.

The website also has images of Mr Miliband serving customers, perhaps in preparation for the day when he, too, will have had his chips.

We ate in, the restaurant convivial, the staff - well done, Maria - friendly and efficient.

One wall is dominated by a picture by local artist Bob Olley - he who painted the Westoe Netty - of the place in 1997.

The menu's the size of the Shields Gazette ("100 per cent recycled paper"), with pictures of Colmans down the generations.

An additional fact card points out that all fish are from sustainable fishing grounds, that chips are freshly made and from Maris Piper "or similar" potatoes and that the oil is changed continually, the waste made into bio-fuel.

They're health conscious, too. Not just the eco-warriors will be happy, but the coronary care unit at the Ingham Infirmary (or whatever the district hospital is now called.) Cod, chips and tartare sauce is £6.95, cheaper - much cheaper - than other highly-rated establishments down the North-East coast. Other fish include pollack, whiting and ray. The Boss, however, ordered seared scallops with butter, lemon and capers (£14.95) and since she'd pushed the boat out, so did I.

The seafood platter, also £14.95, comprised substantial portions of battered cod, haddock and plaice plus a salmon and dill fishcake, a lovely, crunchy "Maryland"

crab cake and scampi, skate wing and the best calamari in history - though that's really no great achievement.

It all came on a plate that would have covered the mizzen deck of an average trawler, the first five fish each identified by a little flag atop, like Mr John Masefield's well-remembered Quinquereme of Ninevah. The chips, excellent chips, came in a sort of Hollywood bowl; plentiful salad, too.

It was the biggest meal I've seen outside a Desperate Dan strip, so huge that it seemed necessary to essay a photograph.

Though the imagery may not be as sharp or compelling as Mr Olley's, it's a case of every picture telling a story, nonetheless.

The Boss, truth to tell, thought the scallops a little lightweight for the price, but was regularly compensated from the abundant aquarium that, opposite, overflowed.

The batter was crisp, golden, greaseless and quite delicious, the fish as fresh as a Shields sou'wester. The little pennants should perhaps have been replaced by Her Majesty's red, white and blue, so heroic the achievement in clearing - well, damn near clearing - the plate.

Afterwards we had a bit of a dander along the river bank and a pint in the excellent Alum Ale House, next to the ferry terminal. As they used to say on the keel boats, canny Sheels.

■ Colman's, 182-186 Ocean Road, South Shields (0191-456-1202).

Restaurant 11-5 45pm, takeaway 11-6 30pm; www.colmansfishandchips.com LAST week's column on the Dog at Heighington provoked, shall we say, considerable discussion. Tony Cannam in Crook quotes Christina Rosetti: "Better far that you should forget and smile than that you should remember and be sad." This is doubtless relevant.

TEN years since I'd been to a Mc- Donald's and now a distinctly senior citizen in such company, conspicuously clutching a copy of The Oldie.

Others looked for the Sun or reached for the Star, talked of GCSEs and used phrases like Sizlayer (which, being translated, appears to mean "It's au revoir for now, but I trust that our paths will cross again very shortly.") The burger chain is promoting something called The M - "Reserved for beef lovers" - and for some reason available only after 10.30am, as if the cows were kept in a watershed.

The whole operation seems to me a bit chaotic, a bit cacophonous, a bit complex.

No wonder you can now get PhDs (or something) in McDonald's. As for the M Burger, firm and slightly peppery, it was very pleasant. If only I could get away with McDonald's chips.

....and finally, the bairns wondered if we knew what birds fly in formation and let off red, white and blue smoke.

The Red Sparrows, of course.