by Terry Tyler
Brody has a brooding quality about him that is so attractive when it comes with great bone structure, broad shoulders and gorgeous blue eyes. His fairish hair was short when I met him but is currently shoulder-length, and usually shoved back in an elastic band. This is not a style choice; he gets it cut far too short about once every eighteen months, then leaves it alone until it's seriously getting on his nerves, and has it all chopped off again. He’s almost always dressed in an old US army jacket that has seen not so much better days as better decades, which he wears with varying thicknesses of clothes underneath according to season; these tend to be items he's acquired rather than bought. Gruesome jumpers that come from I know not where, and t-shirts that are only still on him because they haven't fallen apart yet.
I don't think he's totally unconcerned with how he looks, though, because he always wears great jeans and cool boots.
I envy men; the couldn't-give-a-shit look can work so well on them, whereas if I tried it I'd look like a bag lady.
I don't want to sleep with anyone but him any more, so I don't. Not that I ever meet anyone, these days. Being faithful to someone who hasn't expressed such a requirement might seem like shooting myself in the foot, but I don't like my life to be messy. I grew up messy; I need ordered, now.
We have loads of wonderful reunion sex, and for the next week we're glued together, shut away in our own world of my room and TV series binge-watching; all the stuff he's missed in the last few months. It's total heaven, and I don't write at all. After a week we emerge, and go out; he has lots of overdue holiday stored up, and we catch up with old friends and go to a few gigs, and it's good, it's fun, but Brody can be incredibly intense; he can't watch or read or listen to anything without discussing it in fine detail afterwards, and many of our friends get tediously political once they've had a few. I begin to long for solitude. Mostly, I need to work, because I have to work now, so I pack Brody off home, and get stuck into a couple of books that need reviews; the authors have already paid me.
I've got a couple of indie films to review, too, so I invite him round for a film sesh. Nick's sometimes-girlfriend Claire is here, too; it's good to get four other opinions.
When we're in bed, he says, "Sometimes I want to just get some undemanding job and stay here, like this, with you, forever, but that would be escaping reality, wouldn't it?"
I say, "Yes and no. It's part of your reality. Reality doesn't mean just the bad stuff."
He likes this. "I never thought of it that way. Perhaps one day we'll end up together. Properly, I mean. What do you think?"
I know him too well. The idea might appeal right at this moment, but he's never given me any indication that he's ready to 'settle down', whatever the hell that means. And I'm certainly not about to let myself want something he might change his mind about next week; to do so would be to set myself up for disappointment.
Pain and loss and heartbreak―
"I think we should take each day as it comes, and not talk about decisions we aren't ready to make."
He laughs, and rolls over on top of me. "You're a hard nut to crack, you know that?"
It occurs to me that he doesn't know how I feel about him, either. Maybe that's part of my attraction.
His holiday ends but his job allows him to work from home, so for a week or so we settle into a routine: him sitting on my bed writing reports and recommendations on his laptop while I write blog posts and do social media at my desk―I have to keep my views and shares up to keep the site advertisers happy.
Then, one morning, it's all over. Just like that.
There's been a fire in a Hope Village near Hull. A bad one. Lots of casualties, and sixteen people have died, nine of them children, though the final count could be higher. The DSC wants Brody up there to give support and direction to the Beckys and Duncans, and he has to leave immediately.
He's in shock; we both are. This is bad. He promises he'll be in touch soon, but his mind is already up the motorway, as it should be.
As soon as he's gone I look online to find out more, and am appalled to see that it isn't even reported as a headline on the main news sites.
Imagine if this had happened in, say, a swanky apartment block in Kensington. I am sure the reaction would be completely different. But this is a fire in one of the leper colonies, that's all. Nobody cares.
Those poor people. Brody emails me; all the deaths occurred because of smoke inhalation; the fire started at night, in the family units.
"Story is that it was a kid playing with candles; they say it's the family's fault for leaving a cigarette lighter where he could find it. There's some sort of crappy counselling set-up, but mostly they just dole them out more happy pills."
The thought of those people depresses me for days.
I miss Brody, too, but this will lessen as the days go by.
It has to. I can't afford to need him too much. I had my heart broken when I was ten and badly dented when I was sixteen, and I won't put myself in another situation where I can feel that bad, ever again.
Nick says I should have asked Brody about the no babies thing, but I didn't want to. When I'm with him, I want to stay in that happy corner of our reality.
11
Reduce
Official flu numbers for the winter: up again. Four hundred and twelve people dying from a glorified cold. Little fuss is made about them; mostly, they occurred in the lower socio-economic groups.
As I read, adverts for Nutricorp smoothies flash up on the screen.
Guy, Mona, Aubrey and Hunter Morrissey have become the unashamed poster family for Nutricorp. In photos and videos they swig NutriPowerPlus whilst hiking up a hill, or enjoy a sunshine breakfast with gluten-free Oatrition cereal, the box carefully placed on the table.
Commerce and politics shouldn't mix, says one blogger.
The first comment says that anyone who thinks they haven't always done so is an idiot.
In the many branches of Nu-Mart and Nu-Mart Local, their products have replaced all other brands of sweets, nuts and cereal bars at the checkout.
Widow Skanky delves, and discovers that they're buying up junk food firms, too, as the parent company. Nick says the conspiracy theorists are out in force, claiming that the cheap food of the masses is to be injected with a drug to keep them docile. I doubt it. I think it's just another stage in the conquering army's takeover of the UK.
Kendall thinks it's great that her favourite cereal bars are readily at hand at the supermarket checkout.
"Trouble is, they're so more-ish!" she says, as she unwraps her second yogurt-covered goji berry NutriBrunch. A hundred and seventy-eight calories per bar, laced with sugar, but it contains a smattering of goji berries, so it must be a wise choice.
Alas, at the beginning of April, her dress size becomes a matter of more than just aesthetics. Zest employees attend a mandatory monthly medical which, for Kendall, means getting ticked off about her weight once a month. She's scared that her birthday cakes and booze blow-out in mid-March will be all too apparent, despite not having had a drink since birthday clubbing night with her colleagues, when she got falling down drunk and, she says, made a total fool of herself.
She doesn't offer details, and I don't ask.
She comes home in great distress on the day of the medical, having been told that if she wants to keep her job she must lose ten pounds in time for next month, and drop at least one dress size by the beginning of June.
"What rubbish," I say, pointlessly. "They can't make you do that!"
"Yeah, but they can, though." She flops onto the sofa and digs in her bag for another goji berry NutriBrunch. Some people drink or smoke when under stress; others go for a run, retreat into a shell, start rows or cry. I retreat; Kendall eats. "They showed me the bit in my contract that says I must adhere to all current employee requirements, that may change whenever they feel like changing them, and blah blah blah. The new Zest uniforms will only go up to a size fourteen, so if I can't fit into one, I don't have
a job."
"This is bullshit―"
She raises a hand to cut me off. "Marla says we're supposed to inspire the customers. Like, they won't want to eat Zest food if they think it's going to make them look like me." She puts down the NutriBrunch and bursts into tears. "I'm fed up with everyone making me feel like an elephant." She wipes her eyes and looks up at me. "Will you help me, Lita? I've got to do something, I can't carry on like this!"
I must be a true friend, because I agree to go with her to our local MoJo fitness centre.
"Do you think I will ever, ever look like you do in lycra? My legs and arse are disgusting."
We're changing into cycling shorts and leotards which is, apparently, what cool chicks wear to a MoJo Medium Impact Calorie Burner.
"No, they're not."
"Are too."
I curse that bloody mother of hers for chipping away at her self-esteem for so many years that it will take more than a few words from me to build it back up again.
The hall is filled with MoMo disciples in their workout gear; boy, is it competitive. The superwomen cluster at the front, ostentatiously warming up, offering each other a feel of their rock hard quadriceps.
It's punishing; if this is the Medium Impact, I don't want to think about what the High Impact or, worse, the Super Intense session is like. I'd probably die.
Forty-five minutes later, at the end of which I could drink a small lake, I'm burning hot, and my entire body is drenched. We do the cool-down exercises, and flop onto the floor. The competitive cuties at the front have hardly broken a sweat.
As we file out to the showers, I see a few of them looking through the window where another class is taking place. They're all laughing. Taking the piss. I look; in the packed hall is a throng of mixed sex, age and body type sweating their way through a Low Impact.
"That's the #FitForWork crew," says Kendall. "They call it the Losers' Club here. Like, even the instructors."
I wonder if MoMo does, too.
By the beginning of May, Kendall has failed to lose the required ten pounds. She has lost five. For a normal person trying to lose weight, a reduction of five pounds over a period of a month would be both acceptable and pleasing, and indeed the healthiest way to go. But the Nazis at Zest aren't happy.
Kendall is frantic.
"Marla was such a cow. I told her I'd been really trying, but she says if I can't get into a size fourteen uniform by the beginning of June, I'm out. And they're small size fourteens."
She tries fasting, and detox diets, and two-days-fruit-only diets, and I go with her to MoJo three times a week, as promised. Every day she comes home with another Nutricorp product: vitamin power boost water that has only ten calories but supplies the body with all essential nutrients (doesn't sound very likely), and metabolism-boosting teas.
As the June medical draws near, I get so fed up with all talk of weight loss that one evening I walk out, mid-sentence, to stop myself pointing out that she's lucky not to have to rely on food banks to get enough to eat.
The coming of summer sees Kylie Jordan parading her new svelte size eight figure on her fitness channel. She's brought out a book, The Kylie Jordan Effect, which, her publisher claims, she co-wrote. Every other woman in the country, it seems, is #FatNotCurvy, and inspired by both Kylie and MoMo to get #FitForWork and #FitForLife.
The dark side of all this is, of course, fat shaming on social media, bullying in schools, and a rise in eating disorders.
I write: Should we not make our own choices about how we look, without being ridiculed? Are our leaps forward in tolerance over the last thirty years to disappear overnight? It's bad enough that we have to give up our social media links and undergo a full medical to secure a job; now that we have to give up all privacy just to keep a roof over our heads, is even our dress size to be dictated to us by the government?
Fat shaming is 'in' once more, and anorexia websites are enjoying a resurgence, but I've been studying statistics. Not since the 1930s have there been so many children living below the poverty line―hungry because they don't have enough to eat, not because someone has told them they're fat. At the same time, childhood obesity is a bigger problem than ever before in the history of the UK.
How have we got it so wrong?
12
Sugar Sugar
Surprise, surprise: I get a nice little windfall in the shape of a request for four reviews. Trouble is, the request comes from Nutricorp. Alas, the state of my finances means I can't turn it down.
Orla from Social Media Marketing emails me, demanding a Face2Face session, which I grant, much though I loathe them. She wants to send me the four flavours of a new 'power juice drink' called Flower Power, and requires a review for each, which means payment times four―so my principles definitely have to be put on hold.
I dislike her on sight. Her thin-lipped, scarlet mouth talks to me as if I am a particularly lowly employee.
"You'll produce four reviews, using promotional material provided by us, and post them on all your social media streams," she tells me, like I don't know how to run my own blog. "The promotional video for each one will be the focal point of the reviews. You'll give discount for the four?"
We agree on three hundred; she tries to beat me down, telling me how cheaply other 'influencers' are providing the same service, but I don't fall for that old chestnut. Our business is completed with scarcely a smile on her behalf. She sends me product information on the four flavours: Rose Garden, Violet Underground, Woodstock and Turmeric Trip. The ninety-second videos are fabulous, and would sell them all on their own; dreamy 1960s hippies drinking Woodstock, a Goth in castle ruins drinking Violet Underground, etc. Two days later I receive sixteen bottles of Flower Power. Four of each flavour. The bottles are glorious, with a 1960s psychedelia-type design and a cute little stopper, like they contain magic potions; I'm sold even before I open them.
Rose Garden is my favourite; it's a gorgeous dusky pink and tastes how roses smell, if you can imagine that, with base notes of champagne. Delicious. Woodstock is pale green, tastes of elderflowers, and is too sweet for me, Violet Underground is so heavy on the Parma Violets that it's a bit like drinking soap, while Turmeric Trip has a definite bite. What you're paying four quid-fifty a bottle for, though, is the 'power boost', i.e. the nutrition: they contain spirulina and various other algae alleged to do amazing things for your well-being, along with wheatgrass, B and D vitamins, extracts of green tea, and of course the all-powerful turmeric in the 'trip' of the same name.
I get Nick and Kendall to try them. Nick says they're nice, but not worth four-fifty, and could do with a shot of vodka to liven them up. Kendall raves about them, but says they taste fattening; indeed, they're each around a hundred and sixty calories. However, she is convinced that they've given her an energy boost, and says that Woodstock makes her feel 'all dreamy'.
I notice that the first ingredient listed on all of them is apple. The percentages of the nutritional extras are not stated, but I remember Esme telling me that manufacturers have been having a ball with the lack of food labelling legislation since we left the EU.
I need to know more.
I phone Cameron the food analyst guy, and he is most intrigued; Kendall gives me a lift round to his place with the four remaining bottles.
"You had me at the packaging," he says, caressing these items of beauty with his eyes. "I'll get back to you in a day or so, okay?"
I'm as surprised as he is to discover the nutritional properties of these magical beverages are negligible. How dare they?
"The fruit is mostly apple," says Cameron, "and the colour and flavour is mainly synthetic. They do have vitamin content, and yes, they contain spirulina and all the rest, but the amounts are too small to be of any real benefit. Basically, you'd be better off eating an apple and taking a multi-vitamin and mineral tablet. As for the turmeric, you need at least a gram a day for it to have an effect; most of what you can taste is just flavouring, as is the rose, the violet, the elderflo
wer and all the rest. And the sugar content in all of them is higher than I'd like to see in something that is being sold as a health product."
I write up my reviews. I give Rose Garden and Turmeric Trip three out of five stars (Turmeric was the favourite of both Nick and Cameron), ditto Woodstock because Kendall loved it, while Violet gets two. I praise the packaging, concept and taste, but make clear that I have had them professionally analysed. I spend some time phrasing each review in a completely different way, though I'm basically saying that, although they don't live up to the blurb nutritionally and they're higher in sugar and calories than you'd expect for a drink sold as a health product, it's maybe all down to whether or not you love the taste; my three testers and I each had a favourite, and they're possibly worth four pounds fifty for the bottle alone, and the 'Flower Power experience'. Possibly.
I post the reviews in my auto-schedule to appear in a few weeks' time, schedule tweets to give them a boost when they appear, stick four of the empty bottles on the kitchen windowsill, and think no more of it.
Brody sends me a news link, from a local paper, about more deaths at a Hope Village. Twenty-three of them. Twenty-three. This time, though, it's down to a salmonella outbreak.
"Salmonella isn't always fatal by any means, but the weak and malnourished are more likely to die from it, and Hope Villages are filled with both."
The official enquiry declares it an isolated incident; a kitchen operative was found to be lax about hygiene during food preparation and is now facing a prison term, but Brody tells me that in one Hope kitchen he saw frozen chicken thrown straight into a stew, and, in another, workers handling raw meat then moving straight to potato peeling without washing their hands.
He was asked for photographic or video proof to accompany the report he filed, and was told that without it they could take the matter no further. However, they assured him that 'kitchen procedures are being revised'.
