Wading through the tortuous misery that is being a Guardian reader in 2024, as the noble (yet terminally boring) newspaper lays out the roadmap to our self-induced apocalyptic future, I find the very occasional story that is a choux pastry vol-au-vent hiding in the deep forest of doom that faces us all.
Here is the story! Here it comes…..62% of the Welsh population are officially fat fuckers!
And, wait for it, it’s all the fault of the ubiquitous ‘meal deal.’ Is it buffalo! That lazily thought-out theory is utter hairy dogs testicles. The twats in the think-tank know the real reasons why my brethren are all huge porkers, why the once well-toned Cymric body is now as flabby and soft as an elephant’s ball-bag…. It is the selling-off of school playing fields, public playing fields and the general lack of exercise our little tubby angels now undertake. Unless of course they are middle class, then they are shuttled around organised sports teams by willing (and able to) parents and don’t sit around eating jumbo bags of Monster Munch playing Call Of Duty: Black Ops ll in a chair that Stephen Hawking would have eyed with great envy. For god’s sake even the occasional wank over whoever the modern equivalent of Felicity Kendall is might lose a few kilos.
My lunch for at least three years at school was usually a crisp sandwich with the occasional pasty bought from the back of The Tredegar Arms in Bassaleg, but not an ounce of fat spoiled my shaggable (well, I thought so) frame, and the same applies to all of my eminently more shaggable male and female friends (you know who you are).
And why was this? Because we ran around playing football til it got dark, walked miles, rode bikes, performed other strenuous teenage activities and generally never stopped. This was only possible because of the open spaces in the areas we lived… they’ve now mostly gone. Sold off to ease the housing crisis brought on by our rampant desire to increase our population to levels that are clearly and catastrophically unsustainable.
My peers and I were also lucky enough to be allowed to run freely on these public spaces without our parents worrying themselves shitless that we would be buggered senseless and left in the woods by TV personalities or the other baddies out there. A local ‘tramp’ who would regularly get his cock out was a source of mirth and bewilderment; he was not beaten to a pulp by villagers and vigilantes. Oh simple times!
Thank the Baby Jesus I’ll be dead before the shit really stains the carpet and it’s too late to turn back the tide – according to many wiser than I that day has been and gone.
As ye sow so shall ye reap.
