Friday, October 03, 2014

Flash 12 (6) The Last Fat Huddlestone

I missed one!

So far 12 pieces in 2.1 days.

This one was about ni=umber 6




The Last Fat Huddlestone


My dearest, darling, my dear Daphne, please sit down, I have a confession to make. 

Biscuit?

My love? My love, are you listening? OK, finish the packet.

You are very large, Daphne. Very, very, large. You are a mountain of flesh. I am not.

In case you haven’t noticed, my love, I am trim, I am svelte, I am worked-out, I have 8% body-fat, I am the man. And I love you, and you love me, and size doesn’t matter and it’s inner beauty, blah-dee, blah-dee, blah.

I need to show you a picture. This is my father, his father, and his father's father's father - the sofa was specially made by Armstrong & Armstrong of Sheffield. Now that is fat. That is an Andes of fat, that is a Himalaya. That is big, big, and big on big.

When I was five years old and hit two hundred pounds, they let me sit on the family sofa for the first time. Great-great-great grandfather Hiram was dead by then, so it was just the four Huddlestones, back as far as my great granddad Billy.  I was so proud to be big, Daphne, because big was what Huddlestones did, big was the place, big was sexy, big was celebrity.

And, as a good Huddlestone lad, I grew older, fuller, fatter. I was three hundred pounds at eleven, twice that at twenty. When we met at Sheffield Polytechnic I was 657 pounds and you couldn’t even make 400.

And we fell for each other.

That’s the fat world. You take what you can get. You and I, Daphne, we were the human equivalent of two very large Labradors. No food escaped, many non-foods were ingested.

Then I had the accident.

I remember when I woke. For a while I didn't think I was me. I remember, waking in that reinforced bed, looking down at my enormity and thinking I had been kidnapped and put into some horrible experiment, my brain swapped into a fat man’s body and where was I, who was me?

I remember when they weighed me and the doctor started, “Five…” and I said, “Pardon?” I remember how the flesh just flowed away. Gargantuan became a memory and after a norm of obese I became just big, then one day someone said, “Hey!” (A nurse from Spalding, cute little thing…)

It will probably surprise you, but I like it, Daphne, thin. I like not being an oil-tanker, I like running up stairs, I like lightness.

Yes, there was the excess skin issue, but after the operation, we had to admit that it was hard to believe I’d ever been a big boy. I was a cool 180 Pounds, and that was when you clicked into gear.

Have you looked in a mirror lately, Daphne? Daff, you take up the whole of the Armstrong sofa. You cause eclipses, Daff. You’re a little bit big.

Let us confront ourselves, D. Let us face facts, tell the truth, say it like it is, call a spade a a spade, a whale Cetacean.

Yes, I left the party, and yes, I wasn't alone. I’m sorry. This is the new me, Daphne.

As far as we know this me is the last one on earth, this life may be my only shot. It's about time we told ourselves and each other, the truth. While you eat your second bucket of KFC chicken legs (for an appetiser) I am contemplating my Wednesday half-cup of pea and ham soup. While you are calling the Royal Engineers out to go to the bathroom, I’m doing laps at Meadowhall Stadium. I think we have become incompatible.

Now is the winter of or something, Daff. It is time to get off the bus, time to head west. I am thin. I don’t like fat any more

Ignorant, did you say? It takes effort to be this ignorant, D, just like it took effort to take off thirty layers of weight. But here is where I am. I am not “jolly”. I am not “fun”. I am “fin” and I like it in here.

691 Words

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