S o, time to return to McDonald's, now that they're getting
healthy (or so they say) and you can't move for TV commercials and billboards and bus ads showing nice, white, fitlooking, professional-looking women with good teeth and vivacious hairdos discovering the Salad Plus." range and lovin' it, although why they are lovin' it with an apostrophe rather than a 'g' is never made clear. A `g" is, surely, no more trouble than an apostrophe, and might even be less trouble, what with the apostrophe's habit of straying and ending up in the weirdest places (I would write a book on punctuation, with particular emphasis on the straying apostrophe, but fear it wouldn't sell). McDonald's, so long synonymous with fat and chips and meat transformed into slimy grey pucks, is now trying to appeal to the chic, slim, gym-going generation. However, it didn't do much good for James Cantalupo, McDonald's chief executive, who recently dropped dead of a heart attack, aged 60. Funny how you don't see him on the side of buses, above the slogan 'It's lain' me.' How could McDonald's have missed such a marketing opportunity? Beats me.
We go to the McDonald's on Green Lanes. north London, situated in the picturesque gap between Homebase and Sainsbury's. It's a Thursday lunchtime and the car park is surprisingly full but, then again, a large proportion of the bays seem to be given over to the disabled, possibly disabled by being really, really fat. (The bays do seem extrawide.) I have my son with me as it's a school 'inset' day, which in other words is one of those days which the school says is for staff training but really all the teachers do is go in and kick off their shoes and laugh a lot about the inconvenience they've caused parents who find it tedious enough to be saddled with their own children during weekends and evenings. I had to terrorise my son into coming with me — the threat of six Chinese burns did the trick, as ever — because he does not like McDonald's. We last went there a couple of years ago, as you may recall, and as you also may recall, he rightly described the food as 'for people with no teeth. You don't have to chew anything, Mum'. I also had to terrorise my partner into coming with me, who is as anti-McDonald's as anyone could ever be: 'Shit food for stupid people.' he says. Terrorising my partner is not as easy as terrorising my son, as he is a lot bigger than me and has no fear of my Chinese burns. So I told him that if he didn't come I'd never have sex with him again, and when that didn't work I told him I would have sex with him again, every night, and that did the trick. As ever. In we go. Is there any point describing the interior of a McDonald's? I guess not, but the pointlessness of an exercise has never put me off before, so here goes. A 'crew member' is mopping the floor. Slip, slop, slip, slop, slip, slop. One wall is, surreally, covered in spotlighted Victorian photographs. Pourquoi? There's a large cut-out of Ronald McDonald, the scariest man ever. The customers today? Lots of evil toddlers sticking ketchup-ed fries up their noses, and depressed-looking mothers with the decidedly unfit faces of
chain-smokers trying to dissuade aforementioned evil toddlers from sticking fries up their noses — 'stop it, Jenelle, or I'm goin' to wallop sin!' Why she is goin' to wallop Jenelle with an apostrophe rather than a g' is never made clear. Other customers seem to be either youths in baseball caps wearing jeans around their ankles — 'they're rude boys, Mum' — and yellow-waistcoated roadworkers of the sort more often glimpsed in McDonald's than ever doing any work on the roads. I see no white, professional-looking women with vivacious hairdos and absolutely no Salad Plus— action. Not a single Salad Plus" being consumed at any of the tables. Ain't folks 'min' it after all?
Up to the counter, where apples (patent pending, shortly to be renamed the McApple ) sit in the glass display cabinet above the Smartie and Rob o McFlurrys-". The apples are 35p each and are, according to the menu board, 'bursting with goodness'. They do not look as if they are 'bursting with goodness' to me. They look old, sad, tired. They look like Jenelle's mum. I don't think there has been a rush on apples lately. Behind the counter, the milkshake machine has obviously broken down and is spilling its tubed insides as well as a lot of milky, greasy goo. Nice. 'Can I take your order?' asks the girl. 'You can.' I say, not knowing what else there is to say. 'No, I'm only windowshopping'? The whole Salad Plus'. business
turns out to be a confusing nightmare, the salads coming as they do in a variety of combinations. You can have Ranch (Ranch dressing, real bacon and cheddar cheese) or Caesar (Caesar dressing, basil and roasted garlic croutons, plus Italian hard cheese) which you then top with either crispy chicken (breaded) or chicken breast fillet (unbreaded). The combinations are not only confusing for us but cause such confusion at the till that in the end a manager has to be called to get the orders right. I'm guessing McDonald's don't actually sell a lot of salads. I'm guessing they are just a PR thing to make people feel better about going to McDonald's.
We're told that our salads will take a few minutes to 'construct', so we sit at a table and wait. I read the croutons packet (ingredients: wheatflour, vegetable oil, salt, flavour preparations, lactose, yeast, whey powder, sugar, maltodextrin, herbs). I read my Salad Plus" dressing sachet (ingredients: water, vegetable oil, spirit vinegar, dried medium-fat cheese — contains E105, 7 per cent sugar, modified maize starch, spice mix, egg yolk, olive oil, milk protein, Worcester sauce, garlic, lactic acid, salt, stabiliser, E415, natural rosemary extract, citric acid). I watch Jenelle's mother give Jenelle such a wallop that the chip, which is now both snotand ketchup-smeared, flies out of her nose. Slip, slop, slip, slop, slip, slop, goes the mapper, slaloming the mop round the hazard cones. Ah. . . here comes our food if, I suppose, you can call it that.
The salads arrive in plastic dishes with tops that don't fit and they are all totally, irredeemably and spectacularly vile. The chicken, whether breaded or unbreaded, crispified or uncrispified, tastes of and has the sodden texture of wet cardboard. The tomatoes taste of nothing. Ditto lettuce, which is a pile of iceberg. The 'real' bacon is a vivid pink and comes in weeny little pieces. It looks as if someone might have caught their little finger in the blender during 'construction'. The croutons taste of sugar, as does the dressing. The plastic forks have obviously been made for people with no teeth, because my son, who has good teeth, bites down on his and all the prongs snap off in his mouth. He swallows them. He later says the plastic fork prongs might have been the tastiest bit of the meal. A McDonald's salad, with dressing and croutons, actually contains more calories and fat than a Big Mac. We leave feeling very McQueasy. My partner says that even sex with me would have been preferable. Yes, it was that bad. I'm afraid, when it came to it, we made a complete hash of lovin' it.
McDonald's, anywhere and everywhere, alas.
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