You can learn a lot in a chip shop.
This Chip Fiend had never heard about the Nottingham murderer Herbert Mills before. A self-proclaimed poet who met a woman in a cinema in 1951 and invited her out for a walk the next day... Only to murder her in cold blood.
I was sitting on a bar stool in a chippy on the Chilwell High Road eating my fish and chips as this story unfolded, read aloud from a magazine by a shop assistant to her colleague.
Herbert Mills wanted to commit the perfect murder and strangled his victim purely to see what the experience would be like, and to see if he could get away with it.
Gill's Fish and Chips stood trapped behind a cage on the day I visited. A victim of the road works as part of the Nottingham tram extension. The owner was counting down the days until the road was reopened and passing trade would once more return to this charming street of independent shops.
As I ordered my chips, an eccentric lady came in and ordered something smothered in mushy peas. She enquired as to why I wasn't eating peas. I told her I ate them sometimes, but not tonight.
After she left, the murder story continued. Herbert Mills confessed to his murder in the form of a newspaper story. Selling his story to the News of the World for £250 (the magazine article of today was called 'Pay Me For A Murder'), Mills was captured, tried and hanged.
Gill's Chip Shop was relatively quiet on this evening, despite the murder story and the visiting eccentrics, and therefore the food appeared to have been standing for a while. The haddock was nice (the batter sticking out in spiky, hedgehog peaks) but the chips had gone a little leathery. As I sat eating my meal, listening to the grisly tale of strangulation, some more freshly fried fish were stacked in the glass cabinet and they looked ravishing.
When the metal cage separating the shop from the street is pulled down and the tram line opens, the staff at Gill's will undoubtedly be too busy to entertain customers with real crime stories...
Ratings out of 5:
Fish: 3
Chips: 2
Entertainment Value: 5
Over all: 3
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