The Sun Never Sets On Ronald McDonald

 Let me share another chapter in my forthcoming book I LOVE OUR NHS - David's Story

I am not actually talking about a double cheeseburger with large fries.  Is such medicinal ?  If you want a little bit of a giggle, if you want to SMILE go to YouTube and type in Jake goes to McDonald’s where you can see my best friend Doggie Jake who I will speak about in a later chapter checking out a double cheeseburger.

Let me start by sharing something I wrote in the early 1990’s and published in my book Not The Concrete Cows. As you read the next one thousand and fifty-three words ponder just how much things have changed over the past thirty years.

OK………….. Welcome to McDonald’s how can I help you today ?

How Fast Is Fast Food:

Within the current Thompson Directory for Milton Keynes there are listed no less than twenty-eight fish and chip shops, thirteen Chinese takeaways, three branches of McDonald's, one each of Burger King and Kentucky's Fried Chicken, three Indian take aways, six pizza shops and ten other assorted outlets offering a variety of food to be eaten off the premises. A staggering sixty-five establishments.

I suppose when anyone mentions fast food the mind instantly turns to McDonald's. There are at present three branches of the burger giant in Milton Keynes including the restaurant thought to be the busiest in the country. Anyone who has tried to get a Big Mac in Central Milton Keynes on a busy Saturday lunchtime could not fail to appreciate this fact and may perhaps, be excused for questioning just how fast is fast food ? The McDonald's Corporation now runs 13,093 outlets in 63 different countries of the world. There are 522 outlets in the United Kingdom alone employing some 33,373 staff.

As well as actually introducing the term fast food to the English language Ronald McDonald (In real life he was Ray Krock who began the business with Dick and Mac McDonald in San Bernardino California in 1954) has added Big Mac and Big Mac Attack to our dictionaries. The marketing department has taught us to say fries instead of chips, to say to go instead of takeaway and bun in place of bread roll, with or without sesame seeds !

In a recent survey of 500 households 32% had eaten food from McDonald's in the last week while a staggering 73% tackled burgers and fries within the past month. Only 6% claimed never to have eaten beneath the Golden Arches of McDonald's.

The original business is actually called McDonald's Golden Arches Restaurants but revised to McDonald's Restaurants Limited in 1983. The regional training centre in Sutton Coldfield is still known as Golden Arches House.

Worldwide two hundred and fifty million customers are served every day and the last audited yearly account showed that they spent $21,885,000,000 ! The Corporation shares are listed on the New York, Frankfurt, Munich Paris and Tokyo stock exchanges but not in London. In 1995, twenty years after the corporation’s shares had first been placed on public sale, an initial investment of $2,250 add increased over $250,000 !

The pizza may have originated in Europe but it took the American touch to turn it into fast food. One particular establishment in San Francisco would deliver your order to your home in a Rolls Royce motor car. So Domino's of Netherfield how about it ?  The first drive through (sorry THRU) descended on Milton Kings courtesy of Colonel Sanders and Kentucky Fried Chicken on Stacey Bushes. Not to be outdone McDonald's followed with two of their own. They have a total of 106 throughout the country. One of my ambitions is to fill a double decker bus with passengers then pull up at the latest restaurant on Rookley and watch their panic

Have you ever wondered how the guy behind the counter in the Chinese takeaway takes your order in English scribbled it down in hieroglyphics, bawls through the little hatch to the kitchen staffing in Cantonese and then when the brown paper bag pops back knows which order belongs to who no matter how many customers may be waiting in the shop ? Clever isn't it ? But was the ever popular chinky introduced to us direct from Asia or via Chinatown in a dozen major American cities ?

You may smile at the current TV advert which claims the word burger originates from Germany but it's true ! Fries from the Latin frigo but both needed to make the trip to the USA before entering into common use. Let me make a prophecy, One of the most popular US fast food outlets is Taco Bell selling Mexican dishes at budget prices. Within the next decade Taco Bell will open in Central Milton Keynes. We are already on the way there with The Point offering nachos and hot cheese to go with the big picture so developing the Milton Keynes taste for Mexican spice.

But what of the good old fish and chip shop ? Twenty-eight of them in the city and still the most popular vendor of all takeaway food. The survey showed even higher figures for family eating their food than McDonald's with an amazing 50% having eaten there during the past week. Only one family admitted to never having eaten takeaway fish and shop chips and its members are strict vegan-vegetarians.

One of the more famous chip shops in Milton Keynes is Pat O’Leary’s in West Bletchley. It was regional finalist in the 1992 Fish And Chip Shop Of The Year. After a refit to his premises Mr O'Leary intends entering the contest again in 1994 with hopes of making it through to the national finals. If the attitude of his customers is anything to go by he can have every reason to be competent.

Talking to Mr O'Leary I became aware his belief that the local chip shop is an important part of the community and not just another retail outlet. He sponsors Abbeys School’s football team and had received the mayors award for service to the community.

As well as seeing the invasion of American fast food as competition Mr O'Leary believes it has done much to improve the quality of the traditional fish and chip shop. Gone all the days of the steamy fries and grease laden chips which were wrapped in old newspapers. Wherever did the proprietor get all his papers from ? He must have been an avid newspaper reader ! The modern shop is an epitome of hygiene and excellence.

It has been said that what America does today we will copy in ten years time. This is certainly true for the explosion of American fast food throughout Great Britain. But why is that we cannot benefit by exporting our ideas the other way across the Atlantic ? On a visit to California, the birthplace of McDonald's, a friend insisted on taking me for lunch to a traditional English fish and chip shop. We drove to the other side of the city only to find it closed !

Back to the future, back to 2022. How many branches of McDonald’s are there in  the UK today ? One thousand, three hundred and fifty-four but that number will probably have increased by the time I finish writing this chapter. How many in the world ?  Too many to accurately count so we’ll settle for a figure in excess of thirty-six thousand. As for the number of countries serving burgers and fries there are more than one hundred.

In the 1960’s if school dinners served burgers that was a bigger punishment than being sent to the headmaster’s study !

1^st October 1974 has gone down in British History as the opening of the first McDonald’s in England. I have been there, to Woolwich in London and found a plaque commemorating its legend. I think she was four, perhaps five when my daughter Rebekah had her birthday party at McDonald’s in Central Milton Keynes. One of my former students worked at the branch and organised the party, what a super event he gave Beck.

Beck was a great fan of McDonald’s. Her medical condition made eating something uncomfortable and a process to be avoided if at all possible. She spent most of her childhood in and out of hospital, Guys Hospital in London where the catering was the world’s most effective dietary plan. Nobody ate anything ! So when McDonald’s opened a restaurant within the hospital grounds it was a mega hit !  Big time.

But soon there was to be an even bigger hit as the very first Ronald McDonald House in Britain opened at Guys Hospital.

When a small child needs specialist medical treatment as did Beck it is usually at a hospital far away from the family home. That child needs a parent close at hand so the parent will usually crash out with a sleeping bag on the floor beside the child’s bed. That is how it was for our family. Mum rough slept in Guys Hospital while I tried to look after Beck’s older brothers fifty or so miles up the motorway in Milton Keynes. Our family was torn in two both literally and emotionally. Times were hard.

In the 1970’s at Philadelphia Children’s Hospital in the USA the first Ronald McDonald House opened. Today there are three hundred and sixty-five Ronald McDonald Houses attached to childrens’ hospitals around the world. My family was among the first to benefit from the very first Ronald McDonald House in the country when it opened at Guys Hospital.

Ronald McDonald Houses place an arm of love around families with a child seriously ill in hospital. When families which like ours are split apart Ronald says: Come and stay with me. I will keep your family together and support you all. I won’t charge you a single penny.

Families have their own rooms each with a direct phone to the ward where the child is staying. There are communal areas and kitchens the families can use twenty-four seven. This not only gives incredible love and support to families but to NHS staff within the hospitals caring for the child.

Thinking back to Rebekah’s time in hospital it divides into two distinct areas; pre Ronald McDonald and post Ronald McDonald.

Ronald McDonald the house that love built. That can be said of every single house all round the world.

So is McDonald’s the fast food outlet and Ronald McDonald House Charities one and the same thing ?

NO.

McDonald’s is a major supporter of Ronald McDonald Houses, without this support the houses could not exist BUT they are separate organisations in every other way.

When Rebekah died she left it in her will that the family should support Ronald McDonald House Charities. Her friends set up a support group which they called OurRebekah. Together we raised many thousands of pounds but support does not always have to mean money. I tried to set up many different events but simply could not build a strong enough team about me to make them happen. I found myself trying to be all things to everyone which just did not work.

Rebekah died on 17^th May 2017. Two years after  she died I started to form a plan which I called THE SUN NEVER SETS ON RONALD McDONALD. However, the global pandemic forced things on to the back burner until November 2021 when operations began properly.

The Sun Never Sets On Ronald McDonald. I picked at random ten houses of love:

Ronald McDonald House Calgery Canada

Ronald McDonald House Dublin Ireland

Ronald McDonald House Mumbai India

Ronald McDonald House Nashville Tennessee USA

Ronald McDonald House Auckland New Zealand

Ronald McDonald House Los Angeles California USA

Ronald McDonald House New York USA

Ronald McDonald House Birmingham England

Ronald McDonald House Canberra Australia

Ronald McDonald House Johannesburg South Africa

On any given day, every day there are seven hundred families staying in those houses of love.

With the help of my granddaughter we sign with love SMILE cards which we plaster with all kinds of silly, fun stickers and send them to families. I have no idea how much this project costs, I have never kept account and refuse to hazard a guess. Support does not have to mean money and the support within this project excludes all regard to costs.

When this book is published we will have sent nine batches of SMILE cards, nine times 700 if my mental arithmetic is correct comes to 6,300. If just one of those SMILE cards touches the heart of just one family then the cost, whatever it is, will be worth the priceless love our cards offer.

I try to keep everything a bit anonymous other than saying the project is run in Beck’s memory but needing to fill in a small customs declaration for every envelope if anyone wanted to track me down I guess they could. Indeed they did. I received a beautiful letter from Ronald McDonald House in New Zealand.

There was a time when I would munch my way through a McDonald’s but a few years ago I became a vegetarian so could never be persuaded to eat a cheeseburger and fries which was once upon a time my favourite takeaway food. McDonald’s does have a great vegetarian menu which I applaud. Within this are its hash browns. Nobody but nobody makes a hash brown quite like McDonald’s.

There is, however, a problem with McDonald’s hash browns, a big problem. THEY ARE TOO CHEAP. At 99p they represent a delicious breakfast on a budget. I love McDonald’s hash browns and my best friend Doggie Jake also adores them. At random, usually once a week, I sneak out and drive to my local McDonald’s drive through. (Sorry McD I will give in and allow you to call chips fries but drive through is not spelt drive thru.) There I buy four hash browns, three for me and one for Jake although if he gets his way that becomes two and a half for me and one and a half for him. Total cost 4 x 99p = £3.96. TOO CHEAP ! So I pay £8.96 for our breakfast. I get a five pound note and fold it up very tightly then at the payment window slide it into the Ronald McDonald House collecting box.

There’s nothing quite like a McDonald’s – a McDonald’s hash brown that is. There’s nowhere quite like Ronald McDonald House when a family has a child sick in hospital.

Thank You Ronald. THE SUN NEVER SETS ON RONALD McDONALD.