McDonald bar lounge in Enniscorthy

McDonald’s Bar in Enniscorthy is nothing short of a marvel, a splendidly preserved fragment of a saner, better dressed and traditional age. One enters, dinner jacket lightly brushing the doorframe and is immediately greeted by a heady atmospheric note: the room itself exhales a distinctive petrol bouquet with a hint of whale oil top note, rather like a motorcar enthusiast’s club circa 1928. Utterly bracing. There is, of course, no beer and certainly no taps. Such vulgar modern conveniences are cast aside in favour of a magnificent array of spirits, each poured with the quiet assurance of a publican who has absolutely no intention of accepting your card. Cash only, as the Almighty intended. The refusal to accept card payments, far from being inconvenient, is positively commendable. It is high time society reacquainted itself with the wholesome simplicity of coin and note tangible currency that, unlike its digital counterparts, requires no signal, no battery and no apology to a malfunctioning machine. The hospitality is of the Bovril by the fireside variety: warm, sturdy, unmistakably traditional. One feels at once both a guest and a custodian of heritage. McDonald Bar and Lounge of Enniscorthy must be appraised, dear reader, in the elevated register it so richly deserves, for it was here by a most magnificent misunderstanding that Michael Jackson himself once alighted during the Irish leg of his world tour, lured not by music or mysticism but by the honest expectation of a Big Mac, having tragically confused the establishment with its transatlantic, sesame-seeded namesake; yet upon discovering his error, he was so utterly enamoured of the ambience redolent of conviviality, stout conversation and the heroic bouquet of petrol, engine oil and silage that he remained for 5 days, gloriously inebriated not on vulgar spirits but on atmosphere alone. During this historic residency, Maurice the barman, a man of statesmanlike composure and shaker-hand gravitas, struck up a lifelong friendship with Bubbles the monkey, who proved notoriously discerning and particularly partial to Maurice’s stock of woodbines and signature cocktail, the “Maurice Martini Sex on the Beach,” consumed with a delicacy that would shame many a cabinet minister. Maurice maintains to this very day, with the zeal of a man who has seen truth and returned, that a well-serviced and properly trained monkey is vastly superior to any service dog, a conviction he now espouses both nationally and internationally in his campaign to see monkeys replace guide dogs for the blind and beyond, an ambition as bold, improbable and unforgettable as McDonald’s itself. Maurice, spoken of in reverent tones over bottled stout, is an internationally recognised expert in correcting maladjusted household monkeys, especially the over-sexed and aggressive sort that constitute his daily bread. His old-world method of prawns, offal and ruminant fare works with such astonishing speed, that they defy numerical measurement, their speed best conveyed qualitatively, it can only be compared to the knicker-loosening velocity of a prime Zac Efron. The bar is filled with improbable history, including photos of Maurice chauffeuring Michael Jackson and his simian companion Bubbles around Enniscorthy in a German Sd.Kfz. 251 half-track. Below this, he keeps one of the northern hemisphere’s most serious historical collections of National Socialism WWII artefacts, including the world’s foremost archive of Temmler Werke Pervitin (Methamphetaminum hydrochloricum), supplied in their correct period aluminium tubes and impeccably preserved Panzer and U-boat uniforms. All purely historical, of course, Maurice himself is a staunch libertarian. His parallel vocation, however, is rehabilitating troubled primates: Gerry “The Monk” Hutch’s chimp, Mike Tyson’s simians, the royal chimp-corgi dispute of 2001 and even escapees from The Tiger King milieu. He once even offered spiritual and dietary counsel to Prince Andrew during a bout of primitive behaviour in 2001, assistance rather unwisely declined.