One Sunday a few weeks ago, I was asked to bring a big bag of ice to a brunch party. Rented accommodation meant there was no freezer to produce the stuff, while the fact that it was a Sunday meant that everybody was in need of either a restorative orange juice or a cold Bloody Mary. It isn't usually a problem to raid a pub and ask for a plastic bag full of ice cubes, but of course I was spectacularly late for the brunch, and ended up trying to track down some ice during holy hour.
My only hope was a fast food place on Baggot Street, but a more alarming experience it would have been hard to find. I went in and explained that I was stuck for ice and if they could possibly fill a bag from that huge trough of ice over there, I would be very grateful. "A cup of ice, is it?" said the youth behind the counter looking slightly confused by this odd specimen come to mess up his Sunday.
"No, I'm afraid I'm looking for a whole bag of the stuff," I said apologetically. "You want a bag, is it?" he said. "Mmm, yes, a bag. With ice in it," I said, beginning to feel that the whole situation was slipping away from me. "Ice? In a cup?" Finally, I managed to get the idea across that I was looking for a plastic bag, rather than a paper bag or indeed a paper cup, full of ice. "Ah we wouldn't have a bag I'm afraid. No."
I gave up because I was getting a little bit confused myself at this stage. What had started out as a simple request was beginning to feel like an episode in a South American magic realist novel. So I arrived at the party without ice and was unpopular for five minutes, until somebody who was obviously dying for a quick settler volunteered to break down the door of the local pub. To be honest, you couldn't really blame the guy in the burger joint - if I was working on a Sunday for £4.50 an hour or whatever, I don't suppose I'd turn my brain to full power either. But it did start me thinking about fast food, fast food outlets and about our continuing habit of eating in them. We've all got so used to seeing McDonalds, Burger King, Supermacs, and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets on every high street in every town, we've probably forgotten what odd institutions they really are.
For example, it seemed apparent that the man behind the counter didn't understand my need for a bag of ice because it wasn't a normal request. It came outside the usual mantra of "Regular, medium or large?" or "To have here or take away?" and although it was a simple enough question, it completely foxed him. This Dalek-like way in which "service operatives" are trained to talk in fast-food places is like the uniformity of decor in each outlet - the same colour, the same curved plastic and the same wood veneer, be it Moscow or Mullingar.
Then there is the food, which usually looks uncannily like the photos on the menu, and tastes exactly like every other burger you have ever had in the same chain. As environments go they're pretty dead spaces and as food goes, it's as soulless as it comes, and yet they're more enduring than any other kind of restaurant in this country.
In part, their continuing popularity can be put down to the children factor - the height of excitement when you're five years old is getting to sit on a plastic mushroom, eating chips and sticking a Smurf figure in your best friend's ear. But children and their parents are not the main consumers of fast food. Look around any chain restaurant in the country, and you may be quite sure it will be full of twentysomethings stocking up on burgers, fries and milkshakes. Firstly, there are the young people who make no bones about the fact that they eat fast food all the time and are unashamed devotees at the shrine of Ronald McDonald. Their rationale is that it tastes good, it's quick, it's cheap and it's easy. We're all so madly busy being 20 that we don't have time to stop for longer than five minutes to eat, and anyway we're so busy being dynamic outside the home, we're nowhere near a kitchen at meal times.
Then there is the other category of fast food aficionados - the ones for whom it's a guilty, forbidden pleasure. It's not really cool to eat fast food and most trendy folk would deny going anywhere near a McDonalds: "Ooo no, I'd rather just pick up some ciabatta, tapenade and a bit of hummous and throw together a sandwich".
But I know I'm not the only person who sometimes gets taken over like a zombie, and finds myself walking in a daze to the nearest place offering chips that are made of fluffy and lightly fried cardboard pulp. I know because I sometimes see other food snobs while I'm there and we exchange mute glances which promise "I won't tell if you won't".
For us it's not an issue of convenience - the modern obsessions with time and space may well be the reason why fast food first came into existence but I don't think they account for why they continue to be popular. Of much more relevance is the fact that today's twentysomethings are the first generation for whom fast food was a fact of life. Our attitudes towards fast food chains were shaped in early childhood and, like it or not, fast food will always have played an important part of our lives.
Even if your parents were of the mungbean growing variety, there were always children's parties in McDonalds and fast food would have figured as the forbidden apple just out of reach. In addition, fast food is designed to appeal to the infantile in all of us. The restaurants are full of bright colours and plastic furniture; the food is individually wrapped so any meal is like an extended birthday party; nobody is ever going to ask you strange questions like "can I have a bag of ice?", and nothing ever tastes "funny". It's bland, unspicy and above all, familiar.
The sad fact is, fast food is the nursery food of our age. Just as other generations garnered comfort in times of stress from mashed potato, rice pudding and spotted dick, we go for quarter-pounders, salted chips, diet Cokes and milkshakes when we want reassurance that all is right with the world. We eat fast food because we feel this is what food should taste like, what it has always tasted like, or because it reminds us of a time when happiness could still be found at the bottom of a Happy Meal. Fast food is safe food, and as a generation, we'd rather not know that it's full of additives, preservatives, artificial colourings and GM products, thanks very much. Have a nice day.