A Big Idea

______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Discussion

A Big Idea

Gordon,

I know it’s been a whilst since we spoke what with all the goings on, but, well, I thought I’d drop you a note just to catch up with things at our end and to let you know about an idea I had the other week when I was having dinner with Iris. It was a lovely dinner – a sort of celebration for me having been at the department for forty years. Nothing was mentioned in the office but Iris remembered. We went to that place in Stockwell that you and I used to meet at, Rebatos – remember?

Anyway, we had a lovely time and talked about the old days and how things were different when I started. Obviously the world was a different place in 1968 when I started work, and things only started to go really wrong when you started working in the seventies – only joking, Gordon. Oh yes, congratulations on your new job; sounds a bit tougher than the old one, though.

Anyway, I’m rambling now. My idea, yes, that was what I was going to mention! OK, I don’t know how to start this but I want you to think of fat. Yes, I know it’s an odd thought for an idea which I think might save you, your team and, well, all of us – all of us being more important in the context of my idea anyway. So not fat as in profitable or wealthy or plentiful, although they are all relevant for my idea, but fat as in obese.

We are being told day after day that we should all be eating more healthily and that the western world is getting more and more obese by the day and even though the Dept of Health and even the World Health Organisation have put out dire warnings, the situation is getting worse. And, it is true – Iris said that when she goes swimming now, as she does every Thursday morning in Victoria, all the women are bigger than she ever remember they used to be; she said the changing cubicles are not big enough for some of them – can you imagine that? The thing is, though, that if I think back to my childhood, hardly anyone was fat – fatty Smithson from Kirkaldy excepted – do you remember the Smithsons? Anyway, it was unusual. So more people are fat and getting fatter by the day.

And to top it all, this obesity business is only happening in the rich, educated countries that really ought to know better. The Far Eat boom has meant that demand for the stuff is also rising and, guess what, so are the prices. It’s a vicious circle; the more we in the West eat, the higher the price goes. Unfortunately, for people like me, though, who don’t eat much and am relatively trim for my age, I have to suffer the higher prices because of the greedy, obese people who are also responsible for putting up the air fairs and squeezing the life out of me on the tube. You don’t get the tube that often these days, do you Gordon.

It seems that the fast food outlets are the people who are being blamed most for the rise in obesity – but it’s hardly their fault that there has been an abundance of cheap food which, with a bit of processing, they can make it seem bigger and tastier than it really is – the truth is, that people are just eating more and not caring. There are even press and TV campaigns to make fat people feel more a part of society – what next? Why should we help to make fat people happy when everything about their greed is bad?

.

Next