Red

LARGE

**Photo subject: Katrina Reid, modelling the simply exsquis' jewellery of Roisin Connolly **

Last night a friend of mine showed me a documentary called The Pervert's Guide To Ideology in which the Slovenian, marxist intellectual Slavoj Zizek demonstrates how capitalist propaganda manipulates us on a day to day basis. The way to understand it, according to him, was to envisage a box of sunglasses; each pair, when worn, acts a lens that delves into another ideology. Therefore, to analyse an ideology objectively you must first take of the shaded lenses.

I had this theory whirring through my exhausted mind this evening whilst stood in the queue at McDonalds (my stint of vegetarianism is going well, then!). I knew exactly what was going on, I’m not going to get caught up in all this capitalist crud, I thought, as I looked around at the menus on the wall.

I watched the paper-wrapped burgers slide down the metal chutes and wondered exactly how many McDonald’s burgers are sliding down metal chutes on earth at any one given second.

And so I was stood here, teetering on the edge of sampling some of the most delectable delights Broxden Park & Ride had to offer, when I started to have second thoughts about the whole thing. The fundamental characteristics of McDonald’s go against the grain of the principles I tend to preach after a few glasses of wine.

I shouldn’t be stood in the queue in a place where young children are informed by advertisements as to what they should desire, I shouldn’t be stood in a queue in a place that encourages greed; and would you like that in large? ‘go large for just 30p more!

And besides, that rather flushed looking couple over there have taken the last seat suitable for one, and I don’t want to take up a four seater by myself, what with all these people behind me still to order- imagine the dirty looks- perhaps I should just leave after all, I don't want to be part of the machine, man!

“NEXT PLEASE!!”

“Oh, um, a big mac please”

“would you like that large?”