THE differences between men and women run deep - all the way to the fish and chip shop in fact.

I discovered this state of affairs on one of those battleship grey, windswept summer days that can make British seaside resorts so utterly depressing.

We should never have gone but the kids nagged all the resistance out of us. With a game of beach rounders completed and all the cafs full, we decided we'd have fish and chips in the car. And this is where my wife's logic went off in a different direction to mine.

There were two fish and chip shops opposite each other - one with a queue snaking outside into the street, and the other just about deserted. Naturally, I started walking towards the one with the empty counter.

"No, we'll go to this one," my wife chipped in, pointing at the other fish and chip shop.

"But there's a massive queue," I pointed out.

"Well, what does that tell you?" she replied.

"What does that tell me?" I pondered the question, wondering if it was a test.

"It tells me that we'll be stood waiting for half an hour, that's what it tells me."

"No it doesn't," I was corrected. "It tells you that it sells nicer fish and chips."

A counter argument would have been entirely pointless so we stood in the queue and waited. The wind whipping in off the beach was getting chillier and specks of rain were in the air.

As I glanced, hungrily, across to the empty shop opposite, a seagull dropped something unspeakable on my shoe and a toddler in front of us started to wail that he was "starving to death".

By the time we finally made it to the counter, my blood pressure was swirling up with the gulls. And then the pair of assistants were too busy buttering dozens of slices of bread for the caf next door to serve us for at least another ten minutes.

When one of them finally got round to serving us, I saw that she was one of those people who asks you for your order while looking beyond you into the street. So distracted was she that she completely missed our fish and chips with the salt and vinegar.

This was the reason for the queue. It had nothing to do with how good the fish and chips were. It was all an illusion - the assistants were just too slow.

Thirty five minutes after we started queuing (I timed it), we eventually sat down in the car to eat. The fish and chips weren't particularly good, just as I expected.

In fact, I'd have put money on them being at least as good, if not better, in the shop over the road where we'd have been served in under five minutes and I wouldn't have ended up with a splattering of seagull poo on my shoe.

Since this sorry episode, I've asked several mums and dads which shop they would have chosen, and the survey has uncovered a clear divide of the sexes.

Mums, who consider themselves experts of all things retail, invariably say they would have done exactly the same as my wife on the grounds that the queue was a clear indicator of quality. Dads on the other hand (apart from one bloke who's a bit strange anyway) agreed with me that life's too short to queue.

Sadly, we all know that mums make the decisions and my advice to anyone looking to open a fish and chip shop is simple: Employ slow assistants.

THE THINGS THEY SAY

ERNIE Reynolds, of Wheatley Hill, County Durham, writes in about his youngest grandson's forthcoming birthday.

At the grand old age of seven, the boy has become a bit choosy about his presents so Ernie asked him: "Do you want me to buy you a birthday present or would you like the money?"

The little lad screwed up his face and hesitated.

"Come on, make up your mind, which do you want - money or a present?" Grandad repeated.

There was another pause and then the boy replied: "Grandad, is it all right if I make my mind up when I've seen the present?"

THE THINGS MUMS SAY

JILL, a mum down the tennis club, was sporting a new hair-do and - being a bit of a crawler - I happened to shout across the net that it looked very nice.

"Are you saying it looked a mess before?" she replied with a scowl.

Published: 25/08/2005