Pay Lip-Service To McTonsils

I miss Woolworths. I miss the taste of their lips. When I knew the end was neigh – after kissing a ‘good buy’, goodbye - I embalmed (lip-balmed?) a set of their sweet red lips and gave them a funeral. Can you say, ‘a set of lips’? I preserved them in a tiny clear-plastic coffin – appropriated a dental-floss container – and on the day Woolworths ceased trading (January 6^th 2009, with 27,000 job losses) I buried the lips down the back of a sofa; a sofa abandoned in the street; a sofa destined for landfill.

I’d never had much trouble with my teeth, but as soon as my lips were sealed, my gums started to bleed! Next thing, I get a mouth ulcer. Now, I don’t believe in coincidence, but a second ulcer sent me out searching for the sofa: but the sofa had gone; parked in its place, a Citroen Picasso.

To all the world I might have looked like I was admiring a Picasso; but I don’t drive - cars leave a nasty taste in my mouth: No, I might have been standing next to a Picasso, but Salvador Dali’s sofa - the thought of sitting on May West’s lips – occupied my mind (behind?).

But it was the lampposts that did it. I looked up at them looming over me, like gigantic toothbrushes. I followed the dental floss (white lines in the road) to the library where I immersed my head in mouths; illustrations of mouths in medical books.

That night, drunk on Listerine (swallowed not gargled), I drew-up plans for a brand new concept in ‘fast food’; a visually-stunning, verbally punning, mouth wateringly cunning new design of ‘drive-in’:  McTonsils Drive-in – Lip-Service areas: Big Mouths to rival Big Macs.

I plan to erect a chain of gigantic, drive-in mouths - situated in service-areas beside Motorways - up and down the land: massive open mouths surrounded by fields; mouths so big you can drive right into them; mouths with teeth that come up out of the road and slash your tires, if you try to drive-off without paying; mouths you can see from the air; mouths with their own abattoirs (way underground, where the stomach would normally be situated). Horses and cows will be herded off the meadows, straight into the mouths;  be processed (masticated?) into burgers, ‘on site’ and within sight, of their parents or offspring, in the very landscape they grew up in: environmentally friendly (smiling?) mouths.

Initial research favors a mouth with inflamed tonsils. Whilst this might put some customers off their red meat, the inflamed tonsil design has the advantage (over the mouth with normal tonsils) in that the inflamed tonsils - situated as they are, either side of the drive-in-ramp of the tongue – are ideally sited to function as food dispensing booths (points-of-sale). The driver will simply pull up at the inflamed tonsil (the tonsils will be manned 24/7, but unlike certain other well-known Burger chains, tonsil-encased-staff will be allowed to wear their own clothes – none of those mandatory dental gowns), wind his/her window down, order their flame-grilled burger, before driving on, through to the exit at the back of the mouth. But here’s the thing: Big Mouths-McTonsil Drive-ins are not only meat dispensers, they’re a carwash to boot. Massive hydraulic toothbrushes the size of lampposts, automatically scrub your Peugeot, Picasso, Clio, Mondeo, or whatever, before you’re vomited onto to the motorway again: another car-full-of-meat heading for a crash.