feeling listless

Flashback In honour of the taxi-cab ride I’ve just taken through the local Macdonalds Drive-Through (you should try it – it’s some kind of adventure), here is the story of the last time I went to such a drive-thru.

It was 1998 and ‘Friends’ was still very good. My friend Tris had been away and missed much of Season Two, so I’d been to his new house for a catch up night. We began at half past six and by eleven we realised that there are only so many episodes of any programme you can watch in a single evening.

As I’m leaving I realise I’m still hungry, and since the only place open at that time of night is Macdonalds, so I make that cheeseburger my goal.

I begin the long walk to Edge Lane, where the restaurant is (via the opposite direction and a proper direction finding run in with some pissers-by). When I get there, I find the damn place is shut - having walked - in the pouring rain - for nearly twenty minutes. BUT, the drive-thru is open. I look at the people in the cars all being served with processed meat on sesame seed buns. It doesn’t seem fair that they would get food simply because they’re sitting in shelter on wheels. In that back of my mind (which I must stress was not fuelled by any kind of alcohol) something screams and I decide that the best thing to do is join the queue. With the cars. Without a car.

The queue is not short – by the time I arrive there must be about twenty-five of them. So I’m standing there, in my long black woollen coat, which is just sponging up those raindrops, wondering what the personal number plate ’FO 1’ means. The kid on the back seat of the car in front is staring at me, and the guy in the car that just pulled up behind me honks his horn.

I stand there for a good ten minutes. Like any good human queue, I move forward with the other Mazda-shaped members, bending the corners in the lane that twists around the building. Of course, I knew all this was vaguely unusual. But as I kept saying to myself – pickled gerkins, cheese, lettuce. A guy in a car a few ahead in the queue opens his window and asks me were I left my sun roof.

I first spotted the police as they cruised up the carriage way. I thought nothing of it. Then they appeared around the corner in front and actually give me a drive by. We eyed each other as they passed-by, and I could tell that they are checking me out to see if I’m all right. I realise that if I run, or try and disappear, it will look suspicious so I stand my ground. At the back of my mind all I can think of is that I’m about to be done for causing an obstruction or some breaking the natural laws of the road.

They disappear. I sigh and step forward determined to reach the front.

A window opens in the car in front and a girl drops her head out. She asks me what I’m doing. I tell her I’m waiting the queue because of my burger craving. It is now, having stood here for twenty minutes, that she decides to tell me that there is actually a window at the front for people like me who are on foot. At first I don’t believe her. But she insists. I shrug and tell her to save my place. It takes a few moments for this to register with her. She nods and says quietly ‘Well OK’, and I charge off looking for the window, already decided that I’d simply go home if the window did not exist, knowing I’d looked like a tart for long enough.

The window exists. I arrive and order a cheeseburger and fries. I tell the girl serving my story, hoping to break the sullenness of a graduate with the worst job in the world. It’s now one o’clock on a Saturday night. She has every right to be depressed. But it has the right effect. She laughs hard and loud, and then tells me in her sweet Glaswegian accent that I’ve made her evening and it will come in really useful at 3 o’clock. We chat for a moment while she works. She tells me that their computer keeps bollixing up and losing orders. Which is why there is a tailback of cars in a usually efficient system. She is lucid and intelligent, which made a change for Macdonalds, compared to the staff at the city centre branch who forget orders even when they are written down and often provide the wrong food. So I ask her if it’s worth working at this branch and after a moment’s thought, she says yes, and tells me were to apply.

Like all great real life stories, thus one doesn’t have a punch line, but to be honest I don’t think its that kind of story - yet. Perhaps in five years I’ll bump into that girl (Lucy – oh that everyone in the world wore a name tag), remind her of that night and we’ll marry. Unlikely, but at least it would be a good end to this story. [related]