This morning I read a social media posting by a woman who’d had the misfortune of losing her mobile phone. In the post, she mentioned it was her belief she’d mislaid the device outside a McDonalds restaurant the previous evening.
God bless her, she was so desperate to get this particular phone back she was offering a reward for its safe return.
On reading her heartfelt plea, I pondered what the reward would be. A Big Mac meal perhaps? With this in mind the return and reward presentation painted itself on one of the walls in my neurological corridors.
This picture, although lacking clarity due to it’s abstract nature and crude linear composition, was my epiphany of how the phone return scene might pan out. This imaginary scenario was played out in front of the particular McDonalds where the phone had initially been mislaid.
The sequence started with a middle-aged Trappist monk handing the cell phone to a petite thirtysomething lady. A formal event, this segment of the scene brought to mind the pomp and circumstance of Changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace…… Only with more chicken nuggets.
To the sound of a pan pipe version of JayZ’s ’99 Problems’, the wee dark haired woman, wearing a t-shirt bearing a picture of her mobile and the wording ‘Has Anyone Seen This Phone’, gratefully accepted the device, presented on a silver tray.
After undertaking an immaculate about turn, she marched with military poise towards her partner, stood with dignitaries around 10 yards away.
The dignitaries included the Lord Mayor of Leeds, members of Leeds band The Kaiser Chiefs, along with TV puppet and former Bradford City footballer Basil Brush.
They stood stoney faced while the lady exchanged the recovered phone for the brown bagged reward held by her partner. A thank you gift for the monk’s honesty.
Following a clumsy about turn, during which she lost balance causing a near fall, she then marched with pomp back to the Trappist monk. On reaching the trustworthy chap, they both respectfully bowed, prior to her handing him his bag clad reward.
On receipt of his gift, the monk excitedly opened to the brown bag to see what bounty his honesty had brought forth. As a Trappist he ordinarily didn’t say a right lot anyway, however he was rendered even more speechless on seeing his prize for returning the phone was a Big Mac with fries.
He smiled disingenuously back at the young lady. She, jubilant at being reunited with her phone, was already tapping on the device screen. The swift movement of her digits announcing to her Facebook family that she was feeling happy at the return of ‘her world’.
Her posting included pictures of the return/reward ceremony, including a selfie with Basil Brush and an earlier shot of her removing the gherkin slices from the burger.
As the Trappist monk was a vegetarian he ate the already cold fries, before muttering something disparaging on seeing the gherkins (his ‘go to’ comfort pickle) had been removed.
At this point the ceremony concluded, the crowd slowly dispersed and the monk, who abhors littering, headed towards the bin to throw away his reward, minus the cold fries he’d troughed.
As he reached the cylindrical brown bin he felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to see Basil Brush, who in his trademark excitable delivery asked “Mr Monk! Mr Monk!…. I’ll have that Big Mac if you don’t want to eat it!”
Without speaking, the monk passed the crumpled brown bag to the Brushmeister, before heading off towards Lower Briggate.
The grateful puppet fox devoured the burger, belched and gave out his trademark catchphrase “Boom! Boom!” At this point my vision, which had become too random even by my standards, thankfully abated.
What did I learn from the bizarre set of circumstances that played out in my imagination this morning?
Well, apart from the revelation that Basil Brush likes Big Macs without gherkin, not a lot.
