Losing It

by Ross Gilfillan

  Then there was the meat. Its provenance was never made clear enough for me or for many others. We devised elaborate schemes to avoid actually eating any of those strange, stringy bits of tissue, which we thought were frogs, of course, but could as easily have been calf’s brains, or (a thought which had reduced the pony club girls to tears), horse meat. We didn’t trust Monsieur LeClerc. It wasn’t as if he was a real chef anyway. Monsieur LeClerc had been a supply teacher, until his contract ended, a time which had coincided with TV chef Jamie Oliver’s campaign to Get Kids Eating Stuff They Don’t Like At School Lunch. I may have got the title wrong.

  The school governors had seen the way things were going and had taken note of government directives and decided to change the school menu. Out would go the pleasantly palatable diet of before – crinkle-cut oven chips, instant mashed potatoes, carefully processed tinned peas, delicious oven-baked beans in tomato sauce and more body-building protein in the form of giant fish fingers, cryogenically frozen beefburgers and partly pork sausages – and in would come fresh, nutritionally approved and, we were repeatedly assured, wonderfully tasty food.

  Jamie Oliver has said that eating habits affect mood, behaviour, health, growth and even our ability to concentrate. And I must say, he was bang on with all of that. Monsieur LeClerc, whom we had grown to know and mistrust as a teacher of French, had barely pulled on his checkered trousers and a new Raymond Blanc accent (Monsieur LeClerc may have a French name, but he grew up in Huddersfield) before our mood began to change. Just as Jamie had said it would. First it was alarm (where the fuck have the Turkey Twiddlers gone?) then it was fright (what is this thing on my plate?) and then complete and utter despondency when we realised that despite the April 1st launch date, it wasn’t an elaborate joke and we’d be getting variations on this awful muck for the foreseeable.

  Jamie was right on the other points too. Diet did indeed affect our behaviour, to the extent that two boys were arrested for stealing Ginsters pasties from the local Spar, while any kid foolish enough to openly display a pork pie in the playground risked being savagely mauled. To be honest, I don’t know if the new food affected our growth. There wasn’t time to find out before everything changed again. But it did affect our ability to concentrate. It stands to reason. I mean, how can you possibly concentrate on the reproductive system of a dissected rabbit when there’s a good chance you’ll be finding it on your plate in an hour’s time?

  Emergency committees swung into action. Diesel’s mum, who you probably saw on Newsround, was a shining example to us all. Each break time she would be down at the corner of the playground where a hole had mysteriously appeared in the wire netting, offering to run errands to the local chippie for the very reasonable fee of £1 per trip. It was agreed by all that a fried Mars bar had never tasted quite so good. The school black market boomed. Chocolate bars doubled in price, Jelly Tots realised 80p per pack while a retro Curly Wurly fetched a record-breaking £1.85 at auction (the one held in the boys’ bogs at morning break). Anything with Mr Kipling’s name on it was worth its weight in Gold bars, by McVitie’s. It’s a pity you couldn’t buy shares, as a canny investor would have made his fortune.

  There had been various attempts to make us attend the canteen and actually eat some of what Monsieur LeClerc cooked up, but it was hopeless. Food disappeared from plates in the time it took a sweaty palm to pass over it. It was then spirited out of the hall like escape-tunnel sand in trouser turn-ups. And turn up it would at some later date, discovered mushed into someone’s games bag, dropped in the foyer aquarium (where even the guppys and angelfish had refused it) or rotting pungently behind a warm radiator. Even the teachers were at it. Always encouraged to sit and eat their meals with their students, an arrangement as popular with them as it was with us, they were supposed to set an example and show us that sampling the new menu would not bring on immediate stomach cramps or a slow and agonising death.

  For a while they were our food tasters. We closely watched their every mouthful, waiting for signs of pain and distress and preserving what distance we could, for fear of projectile vomiting. To begin with, they were quite game about it, I have to give them that. Some finished whole platefuls, or very nearly and Mr Hartlebury, who taught physical education and so was entitled to an abnormal appetite, was rumoured to once have asked for more, but this turned out to be an urban myth. In the end they could no more keep it up than we could keep it down. Empty places appeared at the heads of tables. Officially they had been called away on urgent business, had gone home sick or had extra marking to do in the staff room. Then some year 12s on a chippy run had seen them through the window of the Nag’s Head, clustered around a table loaded with pints of beer and huge plates of lasagne and chips and shepherd’s pie with baked beans.

  Eventually, like a town suffering a long siege, with the difference that the besiegers became fewer and fewer until only a trickle of die-hards, masochists and the terminally weird appeared at Monsieur LeClerc’s counter, something had to give. In fact it was M. LeClerc himself, who was encouraged to tender his resignation after it was discovered that he was no more qualified to prepare food than some year nine chode doing food tech. And so, rather than have an empty canteen and no cash in the coffers, the chips and the beans and the fish fingers and those greasy little pizzas we all loved were back on our plates. The only concession to change was the continued absence of Turkey Twiddlers as a staple of our balanced diet. On the first day of the new old regime, the place was heaving – filled to capacity, I mean.

  And it’s still fairly full today, with a long queue behind me and five or six diners in front of me as I await my turn at Sylvie and Pamela’s food-filled counter. They’ve done us proud. An appetising smell of fried food is filtering down the line and the array of pastries, sausages and mountains of chips is a reassuring sight to a hungry school kid who probably hasn’t eaten a single thing since morning break. I have my eyes on a steak pie, which I’ll have with gravy, a decent portion of chips and some mushy peas, or baked beans. No, mushy peas and baked beans. There’s some sort of jam tart with custard which will sort me out for afters. I just wish these chodes in front of me would hurry up and make their choices – any hungrier than this and I’d qualify for foreign aid. I look down the line, to see what the hold-up is.

  Ahead of me is Titch Taylor, opting for curry sauce on his quiche, I see, Andy Towse, having a bit of everything as usual, Chris Eshelby, who’s going for sausages, beefburger and the bolognaise sauce, brave lad, and then, holding everything up at the cash register is someone partially hidden by the portly form of Mr Brentnall, who has stopped to talk to another teacher. Finally, he moves off, bearing what looks like a model of the Swiss Alps sculpted from mashed potato and mushy peas. And that’s when I see her, at the till, talking to the new catering assistant like there’s all the time in the world and no long queue behind her, impatiently waiting to be served.

  At last, Rosalind Chandler pays her money and lifts up her tray. On her plate is a mixed salad and coleslaw and rather than opting for a Sunny D, or a Diet Coke from the machine, there’s just a simple glass of water. Well, it’s just another interesting facet of her altogether wonderful personality. She drifts down the queue, seems not to notice me as she passes, leaving the gorgeous scent of some exotic perfume trailing in her wake. I’m so distracted that I don’t notice Sylvie talking to me or Darren Alexander prodding me in the ribs from behind. ‘Go on, you prick,’ he says. ‘Your fucking turn!’ Sylvie’s tongs grip a huge sausage which droops heavily over my plate.

  ‘Double sausage, large chips and what else today?’ she asks. I might have settled on a fat steak pie for today’s feasting, but double sausage and large chips is my usual canvas, on which I add creative detail, like a serving of mushy peas, spaghetti hoops in tomato sauce or maybe, if I’m feeling adventurous, one of Sylvie’s mystery pasties.

  ‘No, no,’ I say in horror, waving away her tongs and her sausage. ‘Just a salad and a glass of milk.’ I can hear my
self saying this but I can’t believe it’s me. I wonder if Darren has been practising ventriloquism. I seem to have no control over what I’m saying. ‘And a little potato salad on the side,’ the voice adds.

  I pay at the till and stand there, probably looking like a chode, as I scan the fast-filling canteen. Ros has found herself a seat at a nearby table that’s almost empty. There are a couple of speccy nerds at one end talking about gigabytes and terabytes as I edge behind them with my tray, and just Ros, sitting at the table end. I rest my tray next to one of the geeks, leaving a gap of one empty chair between me and Ros. I don’t want to look like I’m pushing myself on her, though that is of course something I’d very much like to do. She looks amazing today, having really gone to town on her gothy make up and her shock of black hair is adorned with all kinds of especially interesting plastic knick-knacks. She’s wearing some thin black blouse with the suggestion of a dark bra beneath and some kind of knitted black shawl over the top. She’s sporting a diamanté brooch fashioned in the shape of a skull, I notice. No one else dresses like Ros, she is a complete individual. As usual, she has her headphones in, but responds with a nod when I say, ‘Hi.’

  ‘God, I’m so hungry,’ I say, partly to myself but also loud enough for Ros to maybe hear and respond to, if she wants. ‘I could eat a horse.’

  ‘I’m a vegetarian,’ she says, fiddling with her iPod, turning it up or down, I don’t know which. ‘So horses aren’t exactly on my menu.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Me too. It’s just an expression.’

  She takes an earphone from her gorgeous ear. ‘You’re a vegetarian?’ she says.

  ‘A vegan, actually,’ I say. I’m not totally sure what a vegan is, in fact there was a period I thought a vegan was what Mr Spock was, on Star Trek, but I’ve said it because it sounds a bit more impressive, a little more hard-core than vegetarian.

  ‘How long have you been a vegan?’ she asks, as I take a sip of my milk. This is the first time Rosalind has talked to me and I treasure every word, committing to sacred memory the way her mouth opens and words come out. I try hard to abort some heathen thoughts occasioned by a glimpse of half-eaten coleslaw on her tongue.

  ‘Oh, long enough,’ I say, airily. ‘I think it’s important to make a stand on certain things, don’t you?’

  ‘Uhh,’ she says. ‘I’m not, like, all political and stuff. Whales should be big enough to save themselves, you know what I’m saying?’

  ‘I’m not a full time vegan,’ I start to say, but then she looks at me oddly.

  ‘Aren’t you the boy who, like, saved my life? That was so cool.’

  It’s odd, but whenever I had imagined her speaking – she never does in the classes we share – I thought it would be in standard Helena Bonham-Carter Edwardian English. No hint of American at all. It’s cool, though. She probably has American relatives. She looks at me and seems to be thinking of something. Her future with me, I hope. ‘Oh no, wait a minute, you didn’t save my life. You got my stomach pumped. That wasn’t cool.’

  I must look as uncomfortable as I feel because after a period of reflection, or maybe she’s just waiting for the track playing on her iPod to end, she says, ‘It was cool in a way, though.’ (She loves the word cool, which I think is really, well, cool.) ‘It was, like, an experience, right? Did you know that no one else in our year has been stomach-pumped? Not a single person?’

  I know for a fact that is not true but I let it go. She won’t want to hear about the time Nick Garnett and Andrew Fitzpatrick emptied the booze cabinet at The Party to End All Parties or when Don Fell and Caroline Eyre drank what they thought was a bottle of vodka they’d found among the cleaning products under the kitchen sink. Probably not, anyway.

  ‘I think that makes me kind of special, right?’

  I take only a moment to consider this.

  ‘Yeah, right, it does,’ I say. Because stomach pumped or not, she is special.

  ‘It’s funny how you have to be stomach pumped before you meet other people, isn’t it?’ she says. ‘I met some amazing doctors and some really nice nurses and like, wow, I’ve just met you!’

  ‘Phenomenal,’ I say.

  ‘You know what we should do,’ she says, her head moving closer to mine in a gesture of shared confidentiality, I think. ‘We should…’

  And I will never know whether Rosalind was about to suggest that we should slip off somewhere quiet and get to know each other better, meet after school to discuss her Kerouac and Kafka or just start a support group for people who have met after one or both parties has been stomach pumped. Because right then is when Faruk and Clive choose to crash-land their trays at this table, like there aren’t any others in this massive hall that is actually full of them. They’re followed by Andy Towse and Chris Grayson, who edit Smeg!! the underground, online school paper, and talk about sex all the time.

  I was about to compare their intrusion with Ozzy Osbourne appearing at the Queen’s garden party, but I think something like that actually happened and it went rather well. In this respect, Clive and Faruk and anyone else are less welcome. I now see they are incredibly noisy – they clatter their cutlery and talk with their mouths full, they are inane – what they talk about is complete rubbish – and they are amazingly coarse. How can they talk about Lauren Sykes, let alone Lauren Sykes’s enormous arse, and be totally oblivious to the staringly obvious fact that this table has been graced with the presence of someone very special, a princess among plebeians?

  ‘Pass the f-f-f-salt,’ Faruk says.

  ‘I’ll have the f-f-f-pepper, please,’ Clive joins in.

  ‘I’ve had a f-f-f-terrible morning,’ Faruk says.

  Apparently, they have invented some new and sophisticated word game.

  ‘I’ve had Mrs Bennett, who is f-f-f-strict.’ Clive.

  ‘But she’s got a f-f-f-nice arse.’ Faruk.

  ‘And I suppose you’d like to f-f-f.’ Clive.

  ‘Fill in my UCAS form with her, yes,’ Faruk says, and stuffs his mouth with greasy pizza and chips.

  Clive is the first to notice. He’s struggling to cut one of Sylvie’s giant sausages, which can sometimes be like lengths of durable rubber hose, when he sees my plate.

  ‘What’s the score, BJ?’ he says, loudly. ‘What’s that?’

  ‘What’s what?’ I say, though right now I’d much sooner suspend our friendship, for the duration of lunch at least.

  ‘That stuff on your plate,’ Clive says.

  ‘If that’s some sort of meat, I should take it back. It’s gone green,’ Faruk says.

  ‘Gangrene, you mean,’ Clive says.

  ‘It’s salad,’ I say and affect an interest in what Diesel and Lauren are doing, sitting by themselves at a corner table. In fact, they are doing nothing, just sitting there, looking glum, neither of them talking, Diesel appearing not to be eating his food, which is a first.

  ‘He’s eating salad,’ Clive says, showing off his acute powers of observation.

  ‘BJ eating salad,’ Faruk says, shaking his head.

  ‘You on a diet, then?’ Clive says. ‘Or what?’

  ‘And if he is, why’s that?’ Faruk wants to know.

  ‘He’s not on the pull, is he?’ Clive suggests.

  ‘I saw him watching Jenna Berry run the 400 metres in her tight little shorts.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Jenny Berry? With the tits like freckles, BJ?’

  ‘Fuck me,’ Clive says. ‘Even I wouldn’t shag her.’

  ‘Probably not,’ Faruk says.

  ‘Must be the time of year, rising sap etcetera,’ Clive says. ‘We blokes’ll shag anything then, right?’

  ‘The balls get heavy,’ Faruk allows. ‘They seek release.’

  ‘But Jenna Berry, fuck me,’ Clive says. ‘I’d sooner fuck Brendan Berry.’ He laughs, uncertainly.

  All this is delivered between imprecise mouthfuls of food, some of which end up around, rather than inside mouths or on the table, dangerously close to Ros’
s plate. Ros appears to have missed everything and to be giving her total attention to whatever she has playing on her iPod. I want to go, but I also am wondering if Faruk and Clive, who both eat like street-cleaning machines, might actually finish up and go off to carve cocks on the bog doors, or whatever is this week’s chosen amusement. Be nice to have one last word with Ros, I’m thinking, if only to assure her that these two idiots aren’t actually my friends. Seconds later, I decide I should have gone while the going was good.

  ‘Fucking salad, though,’ Clive’s saying. ‘You gone veggie or something?’

  I see Ros’ eyelids flicker. ‘Actually, I am a vegetarian.’

  ‘You, a veggie?’ Clive says.

  ‘I’m a vegan,’ I say, hoping they don’t know what a vegan is.

  ‘Isn’t that a veggie sausage?’ Faruk says. ‘Linda McCartney?’

  They don’t, thank God.

  ‘Since when?’ Clive demands.

  ‘Since that dodgy quarter pounder in town last week?’ Faruk says. ‘I vommed that up, too.’

  ‘Never thought I’d see BJ without his big sausage,’ Clive says.

  ‘BJ’s big sausage,’ Faruk says loudly, as they’ve sussed that Ros is listening faster than I have.

  ‘The things he’s done with his big, porky sausage.’

  ‘He’s fed it slowly into his mouth,’ Clive offers.

  ‘He’s wrapped his lips around it and given it a good old suck,’ Faruk says.

  ‘And he’s swallowed it. And I’ll give him this, he’s never spat it out.’

  They fall about with laughter and Chris Grayson and Andy Towse join in.

  I’ll leave you to imagine my inner turmoil at this moment. I’m trying to keep half an eye on Ros, to register how much she’s hearing of this, while trying at the same time to pay her no attention at all, in case Dumb and Dumber here finally realise that it’s not Jenna Berry who’s the object of my affections. Then Clive makes a misjudged remark about Faruk’s sister, Deniz, but the ketchuppy sausage-end Faruk flicks in immediate retribution falls short of its grinning target and drops onto Ros’s plate, where it sits among the last of her lettuce leaves.