Eroticdreambattle

Wimpy's came to the UK in 1954- well ahead of McDonald's and KFC. Burger King followed in 1957. In 1989 the company which owned Burger King (Grand Metropolitan) took over Wimpy's. Both companies are currently owned by a South African conglomerate.

KFC came to the UK in 1965. Unlike its rivals it it didn't immediately go to London or even a major city- but opened its first branch way up north in Preston, Lancashire.

As of the present moment the number of UK outlets belonging to each of the (originally) American Fast Food giants is

McDonalds- 1494

KFC- 1016

Burger King- 574

Wimpy's- 61

Following on from the last post......

Mcdonald's opened its first British outlet in Woolwich in 1974.

Here's a picture of the event. The ribbon was cut by BBC DJ Ed "Stewpot" Stewart, accompanied by the Mayor of Woolwich, Len Squirrel.



On that first UK menu, a basic hamburger was priced at 15p.  If you wanted to push the boat out a Big Mac would have set you back 45p. O, the extravagance!

(Yeah, but, I can vaguely remember when 45p did seem like a lot of money. )

This next fact surprised me. The first branch to open outside London was in Fallowfield, Manchester in 1986. Yes, a whole 12 years later.

I wonder what took them so long.....

Few weeks back I jibbed at paying £17.50 for a couple of portions of curry and chips in Crowborough. Yesterday I paid £11.00 for the same thing here in Eastbourne.

Curry and chips used to be a cheap snack. Ain't that any more. But £11.00 is a whole lot better than £17.50.

What does constitute a cheap snack these days? Not much. Nearest thing is probably a Big Mac only I don't eat meat....

I used to like a Big Mac. Won't pretend otherwise. The grandkids still think a trip to Macky D's (as they call it) is a treat.....

I didn't grow up eating fast food. We were Middle class and the chip shop was Working Class. Not for our kind. I don't think I crossed the threshold of one until I was 18 and away from home. Guy I was with had to tell me what to order. That was in Sheffield. Never looked back.....

The current President of the USA got a lot of mileage while on the stump out of his promise to "drain the swamp". Surprisingly it's a promise that's being kept. Only in these latter days he's been doing all he can to halt the process because it turns out that one of the biggest swamp monsters (did we ever doubt it?) is himself.

I forget where he used to stand on NATO, but the MAGA rhetoric sort of implied that the USA didn't need allies. Anyway, whether intended or not, he's currently in the process of taking the alliance apart- with the once unthinkable spectacle of European forces being mustered to deter the US invasion of a European country....

He has surrounded himself with incompetents, he appears to decide policy on a whim, he is only feared as a mad dog is feared. He gets no respect.

The USA has been an Imperial power since at least the end of WWII. We have seen it behave rapaciously and amorally and foolishly, but never with so much clown-footed, whitewash-slinging, buttonhole-flower-squirting slapstick as under it's current president. The nation will probably survive him but I doubt that its Empire will....

Picture Diary 115

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I got through the night without having to get up periodically to douse the coughing with cups of tea or wear it out by watching vids.

The night before last I caught a couple of hours sleep by shifting onto a different plane and taking deep breaths, each one visualised as a little square green window, lit up from within. When I'm ill this shifting of consciousness seems easy, when I'm well it don't.

Steve Judd, my favourite astrologer points to a big conjunction of heavenly bodies (Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Pluto)  starting today and carrying on over the next few days with an even groovier and rarer arrangement on the 20th. This,  he says, marks the beginning of a great movement of resistance against the lies of the powerful-  which I'm guessing, though he doesn't specify, means Epstein, Epstein, Epstein.....

Every astrologer, psychic, channeler, cartomancer I pay attention tohas said there will be great upheavals this year- startling revelations- and the world will emerge on the far side a kinder, saner place. Old power structures will collapse, old certainties be disproved, new truths established.

Can't wait....

But they have also said that these first few weeks- where we are now- will be hard going- which is just what they're proving to be....

Judy is reading a time travel story which has modern day people going back to 1914- and it's annoying her that the dialogue the author gives his Georgians to speak feels really "off".

Yeah, well, but how did people speak in 1914? What's our evidence?

It's almost entirely literary. And literary dialogue has been cleaned up, tidied up, rendered, well, literary. And, anyway, we can't know whether any particular writer had a good ear for dialogue or not.

Did anyone ever speak like Oscar Wilde's people- except, perhaps, Oscar himself? Was the speech of Irish peasants half as as colourful as the stuff Synge puts in their mouths? Going back a bit further, did Dickens's Cockneys really transpose their "v"s and "w"s and if so when did they stop?

And how did people cuss during the Great War? Someone a while back was protesting that is was wildly anachronistic to have soldiers saying "fuck" in the movie 1917- and it piqued my interest, so I dug. Turns out they certainly did- all the fucking time- only you wouldn't know it from most of the contemporary novels, memoirs and plays.

Accuracy bows before good manners. It does in our time too. Stick a microphone in front of someone's face and they'll start minding their "p"s and "q"s. There's a lot more casual casual racism (the taboo of our times) in the speech of the streets than shows up in the record that will be available to our grand kids....

I'm not sleeping well because, "Cough-cough-cough, cough-cough-cough." I keep thinking I've got this cold on the run and then it rallies. On the whole, though, I haven't been feeling ill, just tired.....

William Allen, the Quaker polymath, scientist, financier and all-round do-gooder was an ancestor of mine. His younger brother Samuel was my several times great grandfather. Does that make William my many times great uncle? I'm not sure. Anyway we are related.

I don't think the brothers were close. Leastways Samuel doesn't get a mention in the biography of William I'm currently reading. William was a high-flier, active on the world-stage, whereas Samuel was never anything more than a respected Quaker preacher.

Here's William, wearing a Quaker hat. (I want one)




And here's Samuel, holding forth (gloomily?) at a Quaker Meeting.



The difference in status between the two brothers can be gauged by the quality of their portraits. William gets a delicate pencil sketch by Mlle Romilly- the distinguished Swiss painter- while Samuel makes do with a daub by his brother-in-law SamuelLucas, the brewer.

Oh, these old time Quakers, they're so serious! William is esteemed by the Duke of Wellington and more than esteemed by the saintly Russian tsar Alexander I but wouldn't it be jolly if he'd occasionally meet a poet (there were enough of them around in his era) or attend the theatre or say something funny.  He had a wonderful mind for facts but he wasn't creative or playful. He partnered the great Robert Owen in setting up schools for the poor but fell out with him over what should be taught. Owen wanted to teach music and dancing and what we would now call ecology while William wanted nothing but Bible study. Oh, Uncle William, do lighten up!'

You may gather I'm having a hard time actually liking him. A man, however mild and obliging, who wants his nieces to read Pliny to him over breakfast is never going to be my soul-brother.

But he did like the ladies! His third marriage- to a woman pushing 70 and a good decade older than himself- allowed the profane to go, "See, we always said the Quakers are randy old goats under those silly hats." Cartoons were published. Sincere and loving Friends wrote to tell him, "Don't do it!"   For the first time in his life he was a cause for merriment....

Ah, unseemliness! Now that's more like it!