No orange juice please – we’re the NHS

Seven o’clock in the morning and the hospital canteen was serving up breakfast. The porridge came at £0.75 a bowl. Suspiciously I grabbed the ladle and stirred around for a while but there was nothing wrong with the porridge and I duly jammed a paper bowl full to the brim, squeezed on the lid and headed to the beverage section.

I have juice with my breakfast. For me, it’s a good start. With juice and porridge in my tummy I’m set to go through yet another NHS-day.

The drinks before the tea and coffee consisted of bottles of Coke and Fanta, all of the diet or ‘zero’ variety standing in metre long lines, high on sweeteners, their erect profiles reflecting in the stainless steel. Below was a selection of jellies, all in luminous green, yellow and orange. I couldn’t imagine anyone eating such things. What are they anyway? “They are made by jelly-powder, you know?” explained a member of staff when I queried. I felt like a pervert just looking at them.

If my son would tell me he’s smoked weed, I’d probably pretend to be mildly upset. I imagine we would sit down like men and talk. About what drugs are, about addiction, legislation and the cognitive functions. About good trips and bad. And I would tell him the funny story about when I was young and was stopped on the streets of Brixton by two bobbies on the beat.

“What are you smoking?” asked bobby number one.
“Oh, j-just a roll-up,” I answered truthfully.
“Let’s see about that,” said the other, snapped it from me and with the potential joint carefully held by his thumb and finger he let it in between his lips, took a mini-drag and looked thoughtful as he tasted the smoke in his mouth. A couple of tense seconds passed before he arrived at his conclusion.
“That is a roll-up, sir. Thank you and have a good day!” And he handed the fag over with a nod.

Yes, it’s a little while ago. The thought of a policeman in Brixton today asking anyone on the street over eighteen what they are smoking is laughable and the poor copper who decides to have a taste of someone’s gear would be off to tribunal somewhere faster than he can say “decriminalisation and harm reduction seem to be viable alternatives in the lost war on drugs.”

“What are you smoking?” asked bobby number one.
“Oh, j-just a roll-up,” I answered truthfully.

But never would I let my son indulge in such obscene things like these colourful jellies from Chernobyl, vibrating like an obese bum on the beach of Bournemouth. There are limits.

Juiceless I headed to the cashier where a short but wide man paid for his breakfast. He might well have been a good man. Maybe even a doctor, devoted husband, a loving father and/or passionate lover, but his appearance resembled the animal he was about to eat. The moist surface of the bacon rashers on his plate glittered under the fluorescent lights. The sausages, the beans, eggs and hash browns were all there, squeezed slightly to the side to provide space for the two, possibly three, slices of fried bread.

As the man asked the lady for some more brown sauce I scanned his neck’s pink skin folds for the vein that might hide the clot that one day will dislodge and travel into his brain through continuously narrowing blood vessels where it eventually will get stuck and deprive areas, possibly crucial function-centers, of oxygen and consequently turn him into the vegetable missing from his plate. Poor sod.

The cashier smiled warmly to him as she pointed at the sachets of sauces beside the till and gave him his change. She probably feels sorry for him, I thought as he walked off, stiffly holding his tray in front of him. Finally it was my turn. Smug I showed her my porridge and jokingly, maybe even slightly flirtatiously, I asked her where she’d hidden the orange juice.

The woman’s face changed from warm to dull as she replied in a monotone voice; “No orange juice. We have stopped selling sugary and sweet drinks!”

It for sure was going to be a rubbish day.