Free Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play by Danny Wallace Page B
Authors: Danny Wallace
across the screen, swords cut through faces and blood spurted violently from sockets
where arms had once been. Oh, and then Brigitte Nielsen gave Arnold Schwarzenegger a “special hug,” at which point Mum tried
to distract us all by dropping a pound on the floor and shouting “Scramble!”
And there—on the corner. McDonald’s. Now that may not sound like a big thing to you, but the arrival of McDonald’s in Loughborough
was absolutely one of the defining moments of the late 1980s. Even bloody
Moscow
got one before we did. Up until ’87, we’d simply had a Wimpy, where you had to share your table with grannies drinking tea,
and you had to eat with a knife and fork and use paper serviettes. Despite this, it was a regular Saturday afternoon hangout.
Even Gary, the DJ who ran the roller disco in the Leisure Center, ate there sometimes. Gary was the coolest guy in Loughborough.
Possibly even the coolest guy in the whole of the North Leicestershire area. He was probably about twenty, and he wore white
jeans and Hawaiian shirts and had blond highlights and he
knew my name.
He’d sometimes say hello to me in the Wimpy, which made me feel incredibly grown-up. He was Loughborough’s George Michael,
and
he had a
girlfriend.
Which made him way cooler than George Michael, who, to be honest, never seemed to be able to meet the right girl.
And for a while at least, all I wanted in the world was to be like Gary. All I wanted was to grow up and run a weekly two-hour
roller disco in a regional leisure center for children. Only now do I realize he probably worked in Kwik-Fit the rest of the
time. Anyway, one day in the Wimpy, after Gary had climbed into his electric-blue Ford Capri and shot away, we looked up and
were amazed to see a huge, red banner being put up outside the town hall… we rushed out and read it.
COMING SOON TO LOUGHBOROUGH… McDONALD’S!
We had stood and stared at it, in stunned, silent awe—me and Andy “Clementine” Clements. We couldn’t believe it.
We
had been
chosen! We
were to get a
McDonald’s!
We may have hugged at this point.
The day it opened, we were first in the queue. Neither of us could handle a Big Mac—in those days we couldn’t even finish
a can of Coke—but the fries and the chicken nuggets and the barbecue sauce were a taste
sensation.
And on its opening day, you got to meet Ronald McDonald himself! He’d come over specially for the opening—he must’ve looked
ridiculous on the plane—and in what I could only assume was an attempt to fit in, he’d even adopted a gruff, local accent.
He was calling people “me duck” and hiding his American roots and he seemed to know his way around town already! I wanted
to shake his hand; to thank him for what was
surely
the finest cuisine the world had ever known. I wanted to know how he’d done it; how a simple clown with a ragtag group of
friends had founded one of the global sensations of the 1980s. But I never got the chance. The last time I saw him was when
he was being driven away in a yellow transit van with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was quite an occasion, having
Ronald McDonald in town—the only other celebrity I saw in Loughborough was Barbara Windsor, the day she opened the Kwik Save
on the high street, when I’d decided my new hobby was autograph collecting. You might remember me appearing in the local newspaper
expressing my delight.
But soon, McDonald’s was a firm part of our Saturday afternoons—as established as the Woolworths pick ’n’ mix counter and
a walk around the market, marveling at the stolen Liverpool tops and knock-off
A-Team
duvet covers.
The A-Team
had been my
particular
childhood passion. It was all I cared about for quite some time. I’d written to
Jim’ll Fix It,
of course, asking if perhaps he could fix it for me to have Dwight Schultz, Mr. T, George Peppard and
especially
Dirk Benedict get in a chopper and pop round to 63 Spinney Hill Drive
where arms had once been. Oh, and then Brigitte Nielsen gave Arnold Schwarzenegger a “special hug,” at which point Mum tried
to distract us all by dropping a pound on the floor and shouting “Scramble!”
And there—on the corner. McDonald’s. Now that may not sound like a big thing to you, but the arrival of McDonald’s in Loughborough
was absolutely one of the defining moments of the late 1980s. Even bloody
Moscow
got one before we did. Up until ’87, we’d simply had a Wimpy, where you had to share your table with grannies drinking tea,
and you had to eat with a knife and fork and use paper serviettes. Despite this, it was a regular Saturday afternoon hangout.
Even Gary, the DJ who ran the roller disco in the Leisure Center, ate there sometimes. Gary was the coolest guy in Loughborough.
Possibly even the coolest guy in the whole of the North Leicestershire area. He was probably about twenty, and he wore white
jeans and Hawaiian shirts and had blond highlights and he
knew my name.
He’d sometimes say hello to me in the Wimpy, which made me feel incredibly grown-up. He was Loughborough’s George Michael,
and
he had a
girlfriend.
Which made him way cooler than George Michael, who, to be honest, never seemed to be able to meet the right girl.
And for a while at least, all I wanted in the world was to be like Gary. All I wanted was to grow up and run a weekly two-hour
roller disco in a regional leisure center for children. Only now do I realize he probably worked in Kwik-Fit the rest of the
time. Anyway, one day in the Wimpy, after Gary had climbed into his electric-blue Ford Capri and shot away, we looked up and
were amazed to see a huge, red banner being put up outside the town hall… we rushed out and read it.
COMING SOON TO LOUGHBOROUGH… McDONALD’S!
We had stood and stared at it, in stunned, silent awe—me and Andy “Clementine” Clements. We couldn’t believe it.
We
had been
chosen! We
were to get a
McDonald’s!
We may have hugged at this point.
The day it opened, we were first in the queue. Neither of us could handle a Big Mac—in those days we couldn’t even finish
a can of Coke—but the fries and the chicken nuggets and the barbecue sauce were a taste
sensation.
And on its opening day, you got to meet Ronald McDonald himself! He’d come over specially for the opening—he must’ve looked
ridiculous on the plane—and in what I could only assume was an attempt to fit in, he’d even adopted a gruff, local accent.
He was calling people “me duck” and hiding his American roots and he seemed to know his way around town already! I wanted
to shake his hand; to thank him for what was
surely
the finest cuisine the world had ever known. I wanted to know how he’d done it; how a simple clown with a ragtag group of
friends had founded one of the global sensations of the 1980s. But I never got the chance. The last time I saw him was when
he was being driven away in a yellow transit van with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. It was quite an occasion, having
Ronald McDonald in town—the only other celebrity I saw in Loughborough was Barbara Windsor, the day she opened the Kwik Save
on the high street, when I’d decided my new hobby was autograph collecting. You might remember me appearing in the local newspaper
expressing my delight.
But soon, McDonald’s was a firm part of our Saturday afternoons—as established as the Woolworths pick ’n’ mix counter and
a walk around the market, marveling at the stolen Liverpool tops and knock-off
A-Team
duvet covers.
The A-Team
had been my
particular
childhood passion. It was all I cared about for quite some time. I’d written to
Jim’ll Fix It,
of course, asking if perhaps he could fix it for me to have Dwight Schultz, Mr. T, George Peppard and
especially
Dirk Benedict get in a chopper and pop round to 63 Spinney Hill Drive
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