Those Golden Arches

I now know why McDonalds took the Golden M as their logo. At each outlet they have huge (I always thought UNSIGHTLY) golden arches on the roof so they can be seen from way off. Cars filled with kids and normally overweight adults hone in on these arches like the three wise men following the Star to Jesus' manger. So these people come from afar to pay homage at the great windows of McDonalds. Well .... they come to pay anyway. Both in filthy lucre and, afterwards, in heartburn and another couple of kilos! But I must not knock this establishment too much as I too have paid homage at the knees of Ronald McDonald. It happened like this:........

Having dropped my OAP at a buddies office so they could have lunch together I was at a loose end but with a car filled with 3 laptop computers, cameras, binoculars, etc. etc. Since our burglary in July we never leave these items at home. They get dragged everywhere and you should see the faces of those who are brave enough to invite us to stay for a night or two! We look as if we are coming for months as we offload the car into the guest room. Number One: we can plug everything into someone else's electricity supply and charge everything up, from the computers to the rechargeable storm lantern! Number 2: I have normally got a problem with one or other of my many gadgets and need someone to help me put it right again. And Number 3 we get a better internet signal in town so we can do our email or go off to a Mugg and Bean and use the WiFi.

Anyway - back to the story - the OAP instructed me not to leave the car under any circumstances which meant my finding a bite of lunch hard to imagine. I decided to program my Garmin into finding me the nearest Drive Thru (as they are so quaintly called) but unfortunately this was one of the gadgets I'd managed to mess up! It is also my MP3 player and I had downloaded 200 english podcasts onto its memory instead of onto the storage card, therefore said gadget refused to work ANY program until I removed them. So I began aimlessly driving around in ever increasing circles thinking this was going to be the most expensive lunch EVER as petrol went up the other night 25c per litre. Then Daughter No 1 phoned and I explained my dilemma (hard to explain where you are when you don't really know but she is excellent at deciphering my vague ramblings) and she was trying to locate a place I could go when ............

I saw in the FAAAAR distance THE GOLDEN ARCHES! I must have been at least 5km away but there they were and I zoomed in and took my place in a really long queue of cars. Thinking this was going to take forever I got my book out, but to my annoyance didn't have a chance to read as the cars moved forward with great rapidity and soon I found myself at a window without a clue what to order. The lady on the other side was ever so nice and suggested a Crispy Chicken Burger, a medium chips and a Coke Lite (just to make me feel I was sticking to my diet!) then she told me to move on to the next window where I parted with the better part of R50 and then to the last window where I was given a vast brown bag containing my lunch.

As it was steaming hot outside with the sun beating down remorslessly I sought the shade of the only tree left standing within 50 km which happened to be in the carpark for employees fo a huge department store. Someone must have moved from the spot only minutes earlier so I grabbed the spot, opened my brown bag and my book and blissfully ate the best lunch I have had for months!!