I Ate At McDonald's

Putrid bile, vile heartburn shit.
Oily, greasy tasteless crap.
Insipid, limp-wristed rain-forest destroying cow-pat.
Artery clogging, cholesterol saturated cud.
Cloying, soul destroying, denatured cardboard indigestion.
Silicon coated, Teflon tainted American plastic.
Have a nice day.
Vomit warmed up, spewing forth, choking unable to breathe.
Sandblasted, sanitised French Fries from hell.
Dizzy spells, packaged smell, feel unwell, puke.
Why the fuck did I go back to Mc Donald's?



I wrote this piece at the height of a bitterly cold winter in the Czech Republic. My company did not have company (or pool) cars back then, and I could not afford one, so I had caught a lift (in a Škoda 120) to Brno where I spent the day working at a campus recruiting event. I had only been in the Czech Republic for two months at that stage and the only way for me to get back to Prague was to brave the deep snow in a frozen bus from Brno to Prague. I was a 210km trip back home, it was the worst winter in 75 years, I was feeling pretty miserable and was hungry.

I believe the coach dropped me at the bus terminal at Praha hlavní nádraží (the main railway station) and from there I made my way down Václavské náměstí (Wenceslas Square) where I was going to catch a tram back to my apartment in Prague 7, Holešovice. At the time McDonald's did not have any restaurants in South Africa (where I had relocated from) and I had only tasted my first Big Mac about a month earlier...and it had been a far from pleasant experience. Nevertheless, it was dark, the snow was deep, I was frozen and there was probably very little to eat in my apartment, so I took the convenient way out, and returned to McDonald's for my second attempt at a Big Mac. On the tram home, I scrawled my less than complimentary assessment of the meal on the back of a graduate interview form.

Penned at breakneck speed on December 8, 1995 (in the freezing cold) on Tram 14 to Náměstí Republiky (Republic Square), Prague, Czech Republic.

Cheers, MAlfaRK ©