FEAST TO FAMINE
We’ve passed from feast to famine in Anticlockwise. Tia told me the other day that I was looking seriously scrawny. One of her friends had asked her if I was ill. Apparently she’d never seen me so pale and haggard. I laughed it off at the time but when I took a closer look at myself in the bathroom mirror I realised that she was right. There wasn’t a spare ounce of flesh on me. I’ve always been naturally thin but I look decidedly skeletal now.
I was suddenly seized by panic, not because I was worried about my immediate state of health. I’m confident that I can withstand physical hardship. No, it was something else. I was afraid because of the impression I might give to the authorities. Anyone looking gaunt and undernourished would inevitably be viewed as a dissident of some sort. The Snoops are all overfed. They gorge themselves each night on the fat of the land. So they’d definitely see me as a potential threat to public order if they think that I’m starving. Anyone on the Deviants List who appears to be wasting away with hunger is a clear and present danger to Anticlock law and order.
I decided to bulk myself up with extra clothes. I’ve started wearing three pullovers and several T-shirts. I’m also eating a lot more porridge to fatten myself up. Porridge is the only food readily available now. For some inexplicable reason there are vast reserves of the stuff in Anticlockwise. Maybe the authorities had been planning all along for shortages.
It’s now two years since the Anticlocks took over and we’re seriously feeling the pinch. The glib assurances we were given about a prosperous future now seem faintly preposterous – yet more electioneering lies to be consigned to the dustbin of history. We’re living through hard times. Abundance has been replaced by scarcity. The feast has been replaced by a famine.
I recall my grandfather describing the dire poverty he experienced personally after the last interplanetary war. He’d had to beg and steal to survive. On occasions he’d been reduced to scavenging in bins for food. The widespread hardship had led to serious social disorder and much bitterness and resentment.
I’m not saying that we’re in that state yet. Most of us have just about enough food to survive. There’s still plenty available for anyone with cash of course. But for everyone else it’s a struggle. Food rationing was introduced four months ago, as soon as Safronika refused to trade with us. Max says that the Safronikan economy is simply much bigger and more self-sufficient than ours. They produce virtually everything they need. For us in Anticlockwise it’s different. We’ve been importing most of our food from abroad for decades. The current trade war means that most of us simply haven’t got enough to eat.
The Anticlocks aren’t stupid though. However much they despise us, they know they need us as a labour force. Without us the whole Empire would soon grind to a halt. They learned a lesson from the previous bout of food shortages. They give us enough food to keep us physically capable, but that’s all – it’s like a food rationing regime without the rationing coupons. They know how to dole out enough food to keep us quiet – not too much, just enough.
It’s absurd when you think how times have changed. A few years ago most people’s lives were focused on devising ways of avoiding putting on weight. TV programme after TV programme bombarded us with the latest dieting regime – from exercise plans to slimming pills, from surgical interventions to controlled calorie intakes. Now all that’s been scrapped. Food’s not on the agenda any more. The Anticlockwise Empire is putting us all on a forced diet for our own good…or ill. You don’t see many obese people in Anticlockwise nowadays.
The Anticlocks will probably claim this as a victory for public health. In a few years’ time though, if things get really bad, this group of `lean and hungry men’ may become `dangerous’.
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