"I am writing to advise that you continue to be eligible for free school meals and that they have been awarded for the 2008/09 school year in respect of the following....."
The letter rambled on with catch-all ambiguity, forged with mundane jobsworth mediocrity. Ken Jones, Denbighshire County Council's "Head of Revenues and Benefits", had written to me to let me know that my 16 and 11 year old daughters were welcome to free lunches for a year provided they went to school. Ken seemed to be very pleased about this because he had written to me a week earlier to tell me the very same thing. Perhaps Ken would even write to me next week after my girls had had the chance to sample their school's canteen food just to ask how it was for them. Perhaps. Ken is not a penny pincher. The letter had been laser printed in at least 600 dpi resolution. Ken's printer was fully duplexed, too, because side two of the A4 sheet of paper bilingually regurgitated a dump of contacts and appeal options. Life as a laser printer in Town Hall must be about as dull as it gets.
No matter. The girls have each been awarded £4.00 a day (about $8.00) to spend at their canteen this year, and the point of sale technology even protects their privileged status.
I say "privileged". There would have been a time when the girls would take their lunch trays to a segregated queue which would have made their newly awarded assisted status plain to caterers, students and teachers. Britain in the 21st century is more socialist than ever, though. It looks after its own. Just as well.
Ironically, the girls will be better off than most of their counterparts. Many of my friends are encumbered with bitter credit problems, and the looming ordeal of finding their kids' weekly lunch money is going to be a stark proposition as they go to bed on Sunday nights. I spoke to Sally a day or two ago. She and her husband never imagined that their household, worth £100k a year in income, could be sifting piggy banks for two "tenners" worth of assorted coins to keep 2 children fed at school for a week. Yet that is the quality of their life in 2008, and yet... yet, even if means did permit how many parents fork out £4.00 daily for their own lunch, let alone their childrens'? Having spent a few dark years trawling my pockets and drawers in hope more than expectation, I understand too well the heartbreaking exigencies of downsizing that so many of my friends are reeling from. In this economic downturn, no household is safe. Or should I say, few households are safe. Poverty has no respect for social order in 2008.
In case there is doubt about the entrenchment of social policy in Britain, here is a parting shot. My 16 year old daughter is to be rewarded for spending her next two years at school. She will be paid a State benefit of £35.00 (about $70) weekly for agreeing to continue at school. This benefit is called "EMA", or Education Maintenance Allowance. It is payable in addition to other grants like school lunches. Presumably EMA is a ploy devised by grey suited ones to discourage students leaving school at 16 to pick and choose from the wide range of attractive unemployment and social benefits available to school leavers. I am tempted to go back to school for two years myself.
The temptation is only whimsical, though. Instead, I will focus on my experiment in Palaeolithic nutrition. There will be celery and cream cheese for breakfast, shrimp salad for lunch, and grilled pork loin chops with a spicy home made guacamole for dinner. Palaeolithic? Why not? There is no carbohydrate. It is not costing me anything, and I doubt many hunter/gatherers needed plastic for their killings either: I can afford my day's nutrition from the money I would otherwise be spending on school lunches. The three day sugar withdrawal is gone, and one week into my project, I am three pounds down. The search for Umar continues.
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