When I lived in Texas I never went to a Sonic fast food restaurant. I was on my own in a new country and just didn’t know how they worked. I had the idea that you stayed in your car and they came to you, or maybe you used one of those drive-through intercom things to order. I was intrigued and kept looking at my local Sonic wistfully, but never had the balls to go try it out.

I was worried that it might use the intercom thing because that never, ever worked for me. I had enough trouble making myself understood in person, let alone through the scratchy, wax-cylinder-style filter of those terrible speakers. This always baffled me, because being middle class and from south east England I don’t have an accent. Everyone else has accents, we’re the ones without accents from which all others deviate in strange and disturbing ways.

(If my lovely wife reads this post I can probably expect a good old American ass kicking when I get home – or least a wifely look and a shake of the head. For some reason she thinks I have got an accent, even though I clearly don’t! Crazy American lady!)

Anyway, I never went to Sonic.

Thinking about it, the real reason was that whenever I wanted fast food I would always go to Taco Bell, it being my favourite place in the world. Lord, I miss Taco Bell. On, nachos, how I long for you! And free refills of Mountain Dew! Oh!

I’ve only just had lunch and now I’m hungry again.

Oh, and after munching on the tasteless crap I grabbed in Spar I played some Sonic The Hedgehog 4.

Sonic The Hedgehog 4

My arch nemesis.

I’m stuck on the first Mad Gear level, so I played the second one and completed it without a problem. Very much enjoying myself at the moment. Although Mad Gear Act One is kicking me all over the place, I don’t mind. It’s a fun level. It’s just a shame I haven’t quite managed to work out how to deal with what might well be the final obstacle.

(There’s a long line of crushers and I guess you have to spin dash through them, but the moving platform next to the crushers doesn’t sync up with them, so I have no idea how I’m meant to prepare myself.)

It’s tricky. Tricky, tricky, tricky.