I’ve been reading Naomi Klein’s No Logo and, frankly, all that talk about multinationals, workers below the poverty line and abuse of corporate power gave me a hankering for a lukewarm piece of fish slapped with thick white pickly sauce huddled between two sugary buns.
That’s right, this pescatarian went to Maccas for a filet-of-fish or, as Jazzy Jeff scoffs, a “fillay” of fish. Those pesky Americans know all the fancy foreign words.
Oh, and I had some fries with that.
Anyway, this pescatarian hasn’t stepped foot inside a Maccas or a Hungry Jacks or any of the fancier fast food restaurantslike Nandos for nigh on two decades. True, there was a time when my feisty metabolism allowed a McFeast here and there, not to mention some fries with that, when I hopped off the bus from Bundoora on my way home from uni, in my 2nd heyday. But that was only during that short lapse – from 1991 to 1995. Up until the hot dog with bacon incident, I’d been a card carrying member of the vegetarian cult since anorexsix– that’s 1986 – the year that my friend Annette and I decided to see who could out starve and out spew each other on our way towards the tightest dresses ever seen at the end of year formal. We both lost 20 kilos in 3 months, which could explain fairly average HSC grades.
But back to the hot dog with bacon. I was at the Chevron with Frank and the others and I might have been a smattering on the wrong side of sober when I announced: “I wanna hoddog wif baco-”
It lasted a while, this carnivorous descent, up until I arrived at mecca – that would be the biggest prawn I ever did see, sitting at a street stall in Malaysia – not literally. But I went cold turkey after that.
Not literally.
Luckily I lapsed again just before the China trip because I was faced with this mother.
It was pretty much downhill from there. Once you’ve eaten a live crustacean, raw, you don’t have such a hard time with rainbow trout or even McDonald’s hake. But I do stop at anything with feet, or hands. Although, given that my fillay didn’t taste anything like my mum’s blue grenadier, I have doubts about its actual ingredients, much like commercial dog food and Macca’s fudge sundaes, so I might have to give it a miss in future. And I may skip the fries as well.
