Yesterday. I’m in Cheddar George – in a tearoom – when a woman says, “Stop looking at me like I’m fat”. I avert my eyes, contemplate my gaunt reflection in my black - calorie-free – coffee; count the flecks of dandruff floating on the surface. I get up to seventy-six – the amount of calories in a cup of Olvantine Light - and the coffee’s gone cold, so I run my fingers through my salt and pepper hair to try and make it 114 – the same calories as in a Milky Way. I think its safe to look up, but she’s still sat at the next table. I attempt a thin-smile, but gawp at the amount chins I’m faced with. She’s got more chins than Mount Rushmore - and none of them chiseled: we're talking President butter-mountain here. “You’re fattist you are”, she screams. I’m about to leave anyway – I like my coffee like I like my liposuction: sucked through a very thin straw. And I’ve never been known to flatter, as I’m slipping out of my chair, I utter: “ How can I be the fattest? You are clearly much fatter than me - by at least four dress sizes - I’m a size 12. I’ve always responded better to flattery than to a factory. But the factory responded and my dandruff ends up back where it came from: back on my head (along with my coffee).
Reunited with my dandruff I go in search of the scientologist (climbing partner) I’d left in a cave, reading: “Ron The Photographer: Writing With Light”, L Ron Hubbard’s (the founder of Scientology) classic text on photography. “What’s scientology’s line on fat? No, lets start at the beginning. Where did L Ron Hubbard stand on Fat? And what does the strange L before the Ron stand for? Lard? Lard Ron Hubbard?” Consider the front-cover: a photograph of a somewhat bloated L Ron wearing a jacket, tailor-made to hold lard. Look. The pockets are the size and shape to hold lard. L Ron’s pictured contemplating a landscape of thin trees and thin sunlight, with his feet cut off. He could be standing on two blocks of lard (explaining why his pockets are so deflated) for all we know?
Not so farfetched. Scientology fights obesity with something called: The Purification Rundown Programme. Amongst other things this detox-diet programme advocates lots of saunas and massages (5 hours a day for 5 weeks), and you wouldn’t expect to find fat – a block of lard - balanced on a sauna and massage sign in the street. Even more bizarre: notice how the sauna changes its name but the block of lard stays there just the same. One minute it’s ‘Secret Moments Health Studio’, the next it’s, 'Whispers Sauna - Massage and Relaxation Centre'. ‘Secrets’ or ‘Whispers’ doesn’t hide the fact that both are brothels; and I think the lard’s there to attract punters; as a kind of a take on the saying: “I only have to look at food to get fat”. But in this case: “I only have to see lard to get hard”. And in they flock. Marshall McLuhan was right: “The medium is the massage”.
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