What are you looking forward to today?

I wasn’t brought up on McDonalds or any fast food options that are so readily available today. McDonalds was an extremely inefficient way to spend the family’s limited resources. In fact, it still is today in most European cities. A standard meal in London is definitely not cheap.

I do still treat McDonalds like a special treat now in adulthood. It always feels special to bite into their “French Fries” and I feel lazy and overindulgent if I eat there more than once in a while.

But let me not hide the fact that I am almost due another free tea…I guard my sticker cards as though they were real currency. Each time I get a cup of tea, I don’t relax until I have safely added the sticker to the collection in my purse. I’m not usually partial to fizzy drinks because they make me feel bloated (although I do always make an exception for a nice cloudy lemonade). However, eating a McDonalds meal with a cup of tea definitely feels very civilised and grown up.

 

My favourite sauce. Not only do I like the taste, I love the recent update in packaging. The hot pink makes me happy!

So today, I am not sharing anything particularly creative with you (although I have something fun I can’t wait to show and tell soon). I am simply going to confess that I’m really looking forward to going window shopping and having a McDonalds meal of some sort after work tonight. And…if you see some girl standing in front of the menu for ages, unable to decide what to get, that could possibly be me. It often gets to the point where the staff behind the counter have given up calling out to me and are just looking at me funny. It is supposed to be fast food after all…except that it is never fast on my end. I am still that little girl for whom eating fast food counts as a special treat 🙂

What are your simple, special treats?

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SOMEWHERE YOU SAT + LOGO

I’m going to be lazy this weekend. Two days’ worth of topics in one photo. This is not very original, but then it is quite Olympic. I sat here with my sister last night. We met up around the same time last month because neither of us had had a McDonald’s meal in ages. This time round, we were both in a celebratory mood. Team GB had moved up to third or fourth position on the medals chart (depending on when you were checking) and McDonald’s are giving away the traditional Olympic Coca Cola glass throughout the Olympic period (if you paid them extra).

I understand the sponsorship stuff. The business side of the Olympics. I understand those who criticise the choice of sponsors. I also understand the choice of a very very clever market player such as McDonald’s. I have nothing but admiration for the marketing strategies of the fast food giant in the UK. Over the past decade or so, it has gone through a major face lift. Engaging in community endorsements, repackaging with more environmentally friendly materials, upping its litter responsibilities, reforming the ingredients that have gone into its food. And haven’t we heard about it all.

Then to pull off the coup to end all coups. Helping with recruiting and training the Olympic volunteers successfully. (Beware of following that link, you will meet with much healthy British ranting and cynicism and comments are closed so you won’t be able to add your own retorts.) No G4S-style debacle here. Only thousands upon thousands of smiling volunteers in smart uniforms.

I am not advocating the sponsorship of the Games by fast food companies. And as for syrupy fizzy drinks, you can see that I am partial to a cup of a hot caffeinated drink with my large Cheddar Deluxe meal. However, it does not escape my attention that when a global company gets behind something, things happen with an ease that a conglomerate of local companies cannot yet achieve. We were not ready for an East London wide collaboration organised by small business. Whether that means that smaller food outlets should not have been let into the park to sell more authentic British food, I dare not say. But optimistic though we may be, I feel the truth is, it was always in the interest of McDonald’s to do a good job. That’s why the organisers could trust them to do it well. They delegated to someone who had an impressive record of delivering the goods and would not want to risk messing it all up.

I don’t want to fall into the big thorny bush of Olympic issues. I know many people have a difficult relationship with the proliferation of junk food in modern society. It’s complicated and I acknowledge that. I’m not going to enter a debate here, it’s way out of my league so please don’t start!

Last night, I just enjoyed a treat, a nice chat with my sister, and it was so lovely that I generously bought us some deep fried apple pies to enjoy with the second half of the large teas we had to buy to get our glasses. She’d swum quite a few lengths in the pool in the morning and I’d accomplished a few hauls of laundry. I feel we earned the calories! This is where I sat, and among the mess on my tray, you might spot a logo or two.

#4+5 | SOMEWHERE YOU SAT + LOGO

Incidentally, I noticed that all the McDonald’s I’ve ever visited around the world have apple pies, but each country has a slightly different take on them – what are the McDonald’s apple pies in your corner of the world like?

[If you take part in Fat Mum Slim’s photo a day challenge, let me know – I’d love to see how you get creative with the daily posts!]