Visualising a billion

I've never intended my blog to be political but I felt I must try and write down a few facts on the wastage of money over this thing called Brexit.
I imagine most folk have difficulty imagining what a billion, for example, would look like or represent in real terms - especially if, like me, you got grade 5 in maths (ability to write ones name at the top of the paper).
Politicians do have a tendency to throw monetary phrases about . . . how many millions/billions/squillions they have/would have/will/should have spent on various building schemes, plans, roads, rail, hospitals, schools, or in the case of the present bunch of maniacs, how much was spent on the celebratory 50 pence piece (figures not available in this case - shame as it would have been fascinating to know) and the marvellous 'Get Ready for Brexit' campaign - A hundred million on posters that told the population to get ready for something as useless as getting ready for a mass seance to contact Churchill and ask his advise on how to get out of this pointless, time and money-wasting stalemate.

I just looked up some info on what Brexit has actually cost, as far as anyone can make a stab at the amount. sixty-six billion . . . or 1,000 roughly for every person in the country within the last three years.
So, what is a million or a billion in visible terms?
Say, imagining the amounts as hospitals, placed on a governmental, countrywide Monopoly board. A small one in Cornwall that was completed recently cost seven million, where as the reconstruction of St Barts in London cost around One billion. So, if we are talking about fairly expensive hospitals, say a billion a piece that would be sixty-six hospitals. Sixty-six hospitals, or many more schools, public swimming pools, new trains - versus Brexit. And not even Brexit. Lots of talk and hatred created by one word.
Still having difficulty imagining these amounts?
What about an MIR scanner - 895,000. Ah, that I can visualise. So, instead of Brexit we could have had . . . err, I couldn't work it out but enough scanners for everyone to have their own personal one had they have needed one.
What about a school? Very, very roughly, thirty million. Solar panels for every roof: 6000,00 or so for each house. New posts in teaching? An average salary is apparently about 70,000 per year. That would be worth investing in and relatively, a minuscule amount of money.
Anyway, the point being that astronomical amounts of money seem to be be magically available for spurious ferry companies, Brexit commemorative coins, parties, poster-splattered buses and a thousand other things when even fractions of these amounts could make such huge differences to education, infrastructure and above all tackling the climate nightmare.
Personally, I don't think this marmite, double-breasted blazers, cricket, crumpets, straw boaters, good old pint of British beer, Spitfires over the cliffs of Dover idea will ever actually happen - just a series of delays, transitions, arguments and more money-burning until Scotland, Wales, Cornwall and any other pissed-off county/region have split themselves from the mother rock and the UK is left on its own, complaining slightly about the weather and the price of tomatoes.

Meat and two veg

Or two veg and one meat, or six veg and no meat, and preferably as un-messed-about-with as possible.
I was fascinated to read Jay Rayner's review of 'Le Cinq' in Paris, a gastro-palace the likes of I am very unlikely to step inside even if I did win the pools which again is highly unlikely as I never do them.
If I did win them, or went out to celebrate the publication of my latest book and its handsome advance ;o) I would probably choose a good Indian restaurant or perhaps somewhere very beautiful with a menu of say forty pounds a head, or perhaps just the small fish restaurant I went to with my son the other day where we sat on a covered terrace looking over the sea and ate lovely fish that still looked like fish.
When did all this farting about with food really start? In the 70s? Nouvelle cuisine, I suppose, but then I just looked that up and Wiki told me that N. Cuisine was actually a movement away from over-faffed food - simpler, fresher, less rich ingredients, etc. So the stuff in eateries such as Le Cinq must be a combination of the two: old classic/ haute cuisine and nouvelle - rich sauces, marinades, gold -leaf, aspic droplets, stuff hanging off bits of other stuff and/or balanced precariously/sizzling, on fire, dry-iced and so on.
When I worked in a 'French restaurant' in Farnham in the early 80s, there was a lot of piddling about with food: placing small bits of meat on top of a carefully sculpted potato with a crescent of sauce, etc, but it still was generally food that you could recognise unlike some of the oddities in Mr Rayner's photos and other over-elaborate messes I've seen while trawling Google for Michelin signature dishes.
Then there's the cost . . . Which would you rather eat?
This fresh fish salad with goat's cheese which cost fifteen euros at the afore-mentioned sea-side restaurant.

                                               


Or this depressing lamb thing at a price of ninety-five euros

                

                      Jay Rayner iPhone photo

Okay, their overheads will be a little different - small town in Southern France compared to a spot on Le Champs Elysees but there must be a happy medium . . .

My favourite part of Mr Rayner's review - the bit about the chocolate pud:

A dessert of frozen chocolate mousse cigars wrapped in tuile is fine, if you overlook the elastic flap of milk skin draped over it, like something that fell off a burns victim.

                                Yum

And it's true. My son turns grey at the sight of milk skin, and I don't think most people find it that appetising, so why drape it (or leave it in a rumpled heap) on some dessert that was probably going to set the diner back sixty odd quid? The subtle use of an edible flower or a nice honest blob of clotted cream instead? But then what do I know? I get excited about a buttered and Marmited crumpet or home-made coleslaw. You eat to live, not live to eat . . .

Love this line I happened to read this morning in Will Self's Psychogeography Too tome:
'Food is just shit waiting to happen'.