The Demon Grain

Official semester work is all handed in, so here is something from a January project before I get into my final portfolio.  I'd love to hear what you think.  Please refrain from identifying any mis-placed semi colons.

 *

The audience in the movie theatre sits in darkness, their faces lit occasionally by flashes of light from the screen. It's a late showing of the latest blockbuster, so the seats are filled with a young crowd. Almost everyone is eating or drinking: nachos, candy or sodas the size of their heads. But by far the most popular snack is popcorn. Vast cardboard cartons are clutched in laps or balanced on arm rests. Hands reach in to stuff mouths mechanically. Stray kernels litter the floor. They fall down girls' tops and gather on men's belt buckles.

Those who were forced to sit near the front dare not try it: it is only safe to do so in the true dark of the back rows. The young men that sit there are quietly confident. Most of them have already put an arm around their date.

This is an epidemic: a movie theatre in Birmingham, Alabama, has banned the sale of popcorn under heavy pressure from evangelical Christian groups, who claim that they must stamp out the so-called “popcorn trick”, a thoroughly unholy disturbance that is becoming rife amongst the state's youth.

A brief visit to a multiplex in Montgomery reveals that the popcorn trick is indeed common practice among young males. I surveyed young women in their teens, asking if they had been targeted. Almost all answered yes, and one nineteen year old even confessed to having been targeted on a first date.

'I should have seen it coming. He was desperate to get a super-sized carton. I wanted sweet but he insisted on butter, now I know why. Midway through the trailers I went to the bathroom. That's when he must have cut the hole. Then I came back and stuck my hand in the popcorn, and there it was. I screamed.'

In movie theatres across the country, girls happily bury their hand into the carton of popcorn they are sharing with their boyfriend, only to find an erect penis hidden amongst the buttery puffs.

Growing up, I lived in the same valley as a popcorn manufacturing plant. With tremendous foresight, my mother banned both my brother and me from eating it. She rightly claimed it was unhealthy and overpriced. Even when I went to the movies with friends in my teens, I was too scared to disobey her in case she caught a lost kernel in my hair or noticed a buttery sheen on my lips. Any dates who might have tried the popcorn trick on me were quickly turned off by my piety. In adulthood I have been duly seduced by chocolate and alcohol: popcorn feels like the child's option at the movies. But this uproar in Birmingham had me wondering what exactly I've been missing out on.

It's been a bad year for corn crops in America. High temperatures and drought have blighted as much as two thirds of many farmers' yields. This will devastate farming communities, and push prices up on a global scale. I've come to see the corn farmers of Iowa, to see if they agree with the Church's latest theory; has God sent this blight to curb the sinful effects of popping corn?

The Marshall County Corn Farmers' Union hold their monthly socials in an empty barn near Laurel, at the intersection of three crops. Tonight the sky is heavy with storm clouds, which four months ago would have been welcomed. Now, it is a case of too little, too late. The farmers have come to drown their sorrows.

Only one man agrees to talk to me. Louis Nixon seems particularly downbeat, and his liquor bottle is larger than others'. He slides into the front seat of my car and looks straight out the windscreen at the approaching clouds. He could be fifty, or much younger, as his face is lined from the sun but his hair is not yet grey. I wonder if the stress of this season will change that.

I ask him if he's familiar with the popcorn trick. He laughs.

'Sure. That trick's been going since my father's days. I would've thought girls would be wise to it by now.'

I assure him that this is not the case. I ask if he thinks the drought could have been sent by God, as punishment for the sins of corn. Only then does he turn to look at me.

'Well, sure it's been sent by God. But all my corn goes to feed livestock, so I don't see why I should be the one punished if some horny teenagers can't keep it in their pants.'

I soon find that it's not just horny teenagers who are being affected. Mitchell Davis, a truck driver from Des Moines, has been tortured by a shred of popcorn that has been stuck between his teeth for thirteen months.

'I used to love having a bag of caramel corn on the dash of my truck when I was driving. It was a test of my driving skill, to see if I could drive smooth enough to stop the bag falling off. One bag would never last long anyway. But this time, it was a Tuesday, I was on Highway 102 and I was almost done with a bag. Now I used to get bits of it stuck in my teeth all the time. You could usually wiggle it out with a toothpick. But this Tuesday when it got stuck, well it's still never come out to this day.'

Mr. Davis says he has tried everything; he has brushed and flossed until his gums bled, and he has even tried eating more popcorn, in the hope that another piece will dislodge this rogue fragment. But strangest of all, Mr. Davis's dentist was unable to identify the fragment when he visited him in distress one month later.

'Apparently it's quite a common thing; once the thing gets out, you keep imagining that it's still there. But it's a phantom sensation.'

Phantom or not, Mr. Davis continues to be tortured.

'When I'm driving now, I prefer cookies, or even potato chips. Sometimes I reckon the sharp corner of a potato chip could get it out. I can't even look at popcorn now.' For him at least, the poor crop yield is a blessing. He doesn't have to drive long routes along the highways, passing endless fields of tall, swaying corn ears taunting him. The stalks are stumpy this year, which is a comfort.

Thirty-year-old Trudy Lipman also used to love popcorn. For nine years she worked for AshForce Mail Order, who coordinate white goods mail orders across the state. In 2009, Trudy's bosses started using popcorn as a replacement packing material for polystyrene, in an effort to be more environmentally conscious. This soon proved problematic for Trudy, who has been battling popcorn addiction ever since.

I meet her in a diner near her home. She is neatly dressed and bright. I notice a candy corn milkshake on the menu, but she either does not see it, or she has developed enough self-control to only order coffee.

'I had recently started a diet at the time. I wanted to lose thirty pounds before my sister's wedding, so I cut out all candy, cookies and chips and I switched to diet soda. Then they started using popcorn for packing at work. My job was to check the delivery notes that were slid in the top of the boxes. So when I took the delivery note out, I would just eat a couple of bits of popcorn. It didn't seem like a big deal. It's not like I worked in a cake factory.'

But Trudy's innocent habit soon began to spiral out of control. 'Soon, I was craving popcorn all the time. But I couldn't eat it plain any more; it was my replacement treat for all the candy I was missing. At my worst, I took a salt cellar into work and kept it in my pocket. I would sprinkle each handful of popcorn with salt before eating it. I was soon eating five or six handfuls per box. Luckily, you couldn't really notice it missing because they used so much. I was careful, but it did take me longer to check each order. And then I started eating it at home too.'

Trudy continued her subterfuge for two years. The hidden salt cellar went unnoticed, but although she managed to lose twenty seven pounds before her sister's wedding, her blood pressure sky-rocketed. Plain popcorn is hailed as a high-fibre, low-fat snack alternative to chips and candy, but since Trudy was smothering hers in salt, her sodium intake went through the roof. She is now having to beat her addiction if she wants to have a child as planned in the next couple of years.

Addiction specialists say salted popcorn addiction is particularly difficult to beat; the physical lightness of the food, and the fact it doesn't look greasy or bad for you, means it's harder for the brain to compute its dangers. Furthermore, you can often eat popcorn inconsequentially, while you're watching TV, cooking or even vacuuming, making it even more deadly than alcoholism. Addicts crave that puckered mouth feel that comes with too much salt; until they get that feeling, their brain tells them to keep eating. And as the addiction progresses, they're constantly aiming for that saturated feeling, which means eating a lot of popcorn. Trudy says she suffered from terrible dehydration headaches.

'I also had steam burns on my hands from opening the microwave bags too quickly. I was a mess. It was only when I visited my doctor for a routine check-up that I realised what effect popcorn was having on my body.'

She is now on a controlled dosage of one bag per day, provided she drinks plenty of water, as well as drugs to lower her blood pressure. Soon she hopes to make the switch to plain. 'Switching to candy corn for a while is another option, but my dentist isn't so keen on that,' she jokes.

I leave the diner before Trudy, who is waiting for a friend. As I stand at the crossing I watch her out of the corner of my eye. To a stranger, she is just a nicely-dressed woman; she isn't even noticeably overweight. She doesn't have the yellowed fingertips of a nicotine addict, or the bloodshot eyes of an alcoholic. Hers is a hidden addiction, controlled by something thought to be so innocent.

The National Association for Popcorn Addiction (NAPA) has noticed a sharp rise in the addiction in the under-25s. But it's not the salty taste that they crave. NAPA chairman, Colonel Parker, says it all stems from the rise of social media.

'Popcorn has always been associated with entertainment: you're sitting down as a family to watch a movie, so you make a big bowl of popcorn to share. This became the ritual that when a spectacle was going on, like a fight between colleagues at work, you would joke that you would bring popcorn to make the whole thing a real “event”. But what we've found now with young people and the rise of Facebook events and Twitter hashtags and so on, is that they are getting addicted to making “non-events” popcorn-worthy.'

He tells me one mother's story of her fifteen-year-old son, who some days eats a bowl of popcorn for every half-hour news bulletin.

'He isn't even interested in the news normally, but with popcorn he can make it an Event. Young people today just cannot deal with their mundane, everyday existence. They must tag, check in and tweet constantly.'

The most extreme cases eat entire bowls just sitting watching the world go by out of their bedroom window. Colonel Parker says 'they need to imagine they are seeing everything on a screen. The world needs to be watched, and recorded, and put on YouTube, and popcorn helps with this feeling that our whole lives are made of Events that are worthy of sharing on the internet. More often than not, of course, there's nothing exciting for them to witness, but the damage is already done.'

Popcorn only continues to be glamorised; it is the new favourite for experimentation with celebrity chefs and new gourmet flavours are the foodie gift of choice. Critics fear that it's only a matter of time before popcorn becomes the new cupcake. Will they develop new, more elaborate pornographic tricks using salted caramel popcorn, or chocolate and chilli flavour? Will anxious teens build up huge debts through peer pressure to pop the latest variety? Mini popcorn, super-sized, popcorn-flavoured potato chips, popcorn birthday cakes. Popcorn soda and gum. This slide from innocence to addiction seems inevitable, especially if the trend is fuelled by social media.

This year, a man from Illinois was awarded damages of over $7m from a popcorn manufacturer, after claiming that there was no warning on bags of microwave popcorn that inhaling large amounts of diacetyl, found in buttered popcorn, could cause health problems. He had averaged two bags a day for years and had developed so-called “popcorn lung” which has been linked to diacetyl. He is no impressionable youth, but he is another victim of this increasingly lawless world.

His case has finally brought the dangers of popcorn to the attention of politicians. Using this leverage, NAPA has reached out to the government to control the grain nationally. The Republican party say that access to popcorn is a right. I search, but I can find no mention of popcorn in the Constitution. The Democrats, conscious of rising obesity, youth social problems and the cost of dental care, seem more willing to open discussions.

When I interview Iowa State Governor, Mac Percy, he is nostalgic. 'Popcorn symbolises first dates at the drive-in movies, which is a great American tradition. It is important that our children's children still know that magic.' When I ask him if he ever tried the popcorn trick in his youth, he is evasive. If a bill was to be passed, politicians could well fear a new type of kiss-and-tell; teenage dates from their past outing their love of large buckets of buttered.

There is only one place left for me to visit on this quest: my home town, and the root of my popcorn memories. After Iowa, I travel there, to see if I can confront the dirtiest demons left in this deadly chain.

Reed & Core popcorn and candy manufacturers are responsible for the employment of thirty per cent of the workforce in my home town. They produce forty per cent of the nation's popcorn, supplying to movie theatres, theme parks and selling it in stores.

I watch from the parking lot. It's a Monday afternoon, so what I assume is this week's supply of salt arrives in an unmarked truckload. I think of Trudy's high blood pressure and my own rises. From the outside, the factory could be producing anything from fridges to orange juice to paper clips. There is no sign that it deals in the most dangerous form of metamorphosis.

As I am considering trying to get inside, a 350 Ford Mustang rolls into the lot. I recognise CEO Jerry Reed's face from Google, even with half of it hidden behind huge aviators. He has not answered any of my letters or phone calls. Does he know he is a wanted man, responsible for the newest sin of the modern world?

He's young, having inherited the business after his father's death four years ago. He parks in his marked space and waits a moment before stepping out of the car. He's dressed to match it: expensive shoes, jeans, and even a Letterman jacket. His hair is slicked back. He would look ridiculous if he wasn't so handsome. As he steps out, he brushes at his crotch and a few bits of popcorn fall to the ground. Sure enough, he is holding a squashed empty carton. I see him lick something off his lips. Has he been to the movies? Is he monitoring the competition, or testing the quality of his own brand? Did he choose salted, buttered or sweet? I am mesmerized.

I close my eyes; I am at the movies with Jerry Reed. We agree to share a large bucket of buttered. In the darkness of the theatre I brush arms with the Popcorn King, our fingers touching as we reach to fill our mouths with the taste of suspense. It is hot and salty on my tongue. 

 

Block

I am writing a story with characters called Kate, Max, Jane, Andy and Adam. I am bored of this story I think because they all have very boring names. They should be called Melina Belinda Barnaby Kurt Joshua Samson Jesus Sylvia Margot Crawford Bernadette Ralph Cindy Niamh Quentin Angel (boy or girl) Angus Kristin Xander Fenton FENTON! FENTON! FENTON! FENTON! Yolande Isis Victor.

Legacy

Look at what else I am destroying, pulling the treasures made by our children from the dying branches. You stand at a distance, as if you might catch this betrayal, denying them their last two days of Christmas spirit. Each pull deposits a new flurry of needles that you will insist on hoovering up, even though I'll offer. Although that is better because tomorrow when I step on one, it can be your fault and not mine.

You are absently eating one of the last tangerines in the decorative bowl, spitting the pips back in. You do not start to pull the lights off or pack things into the same newspaper nests that have been used again and again, so there is the shape of the ornament pressed into the news stories from January 1999.

At the back I find a chocolate square in foil, hanging on its gold loop. I am in two minds whether to declare it and then have to toss it into your already-chewing mouth, or to slip it into my jeans pocket and remember to give it to Anna later in the dark inside fog of the car with the heater going and other lights blinking. Most likely I will put it into my pocket and forget. It will melt with the heat of my body and the foil will become a shimmer on a full load of washing, like the glitter from the cheaper baubles you bought was it last year when you were tired of investing too much in our festival of joy and peace.

You leave to continue your sulk in another room. I pack everything up, not as carefully as you would do it. Some will be damaged but I will not have to suffer the consequences. Yes I will return the boxes to the loft, but in case you enlist him to help you next year, I will balance them precariously.

*

Torn between putting up un-edited stuff, and keeping the blog ticking over and fairly up to date.

Hemingway at the Cup Final

Just a bit of fun; in our experimentation class this week one exercise we could do was put a writer/public figure in an unexpected situation.  It's similar to the dialogues on here, so I might get on those again soon.

*

Hemingway has secured tickets to the Carling Cup Final, between Liverpool and Manchester City at Wembley. The outside temperature is a decidedly medium fourteen degrees, yet remembering the heat of Pamplona, he has no jacket over his white linen shirt, and he is wearing a straw Panama.

His tickets are in the North End. Eventually he finds his seat, next to a father and his young son, who is on his shoulders. The plastic seat is cold through his khakis. On the other side, a crowd of young men stand, arms around one another, all sipping lager from cans. Hemingway retrieves his wine skin and takes a good slug.

“Dad, what's that man drinking?”

Hemingway wipes the red stain from around his mouth and smiles at the boy.

“Want to try some?”

The boy's father looks at Hemingway suspiciously. “You're alright, thanks. He gets half a shandy at half-time.”

Half-time? How long is he going to have to sit here? The build-up was everything at Pamplona; the drinking, the coming together of friends, the readying of the bulls. Then the main event was fast and bloody.

The speakers are pumping out music with an insistent beat as figures spew out onto the pitch. They look like dancing ants to Hemingway but they have everyone's attention. Are these the sportsmen? He is sure some of them are women; that’s not right. They are moving in formation, certainly, but what’s the music for? He drinks more wine in the hope of making things clearer.

When they have finished moving about, the dancing ants disappear back down the tunnel. Then, the roar of the crowd intensifies. Hemingway feels obliged to stand up like everybody else. The boy is yelling himself hoarse, waving his red and white striped scarf in the air. Out come a team in red, and a team in pale blue. Each player holds the hand of a matching child; this is no place for them! Where will they be when things get bloody? He takes another drink of wine, still standing.

An arm grabs his shoulder; it is one of the lager drinkers.

“Cheer up.”

The man knocks his can against Hemingway’s wine skin, then snatches his Panama and places it on his own head.

“How do I look, boys?”

The friends caw and sing in appreciation. Hemingway decides it is too dangerous to ask for the hat back. All this red would surely spell aggression. Instead he lets the top half of his body sway in time to the chant and opens his mouth to roar for this “Liverpool”.

2012: Not a good year for lobsters.

According to this blog, I began the year trying my hand at poetry and writing a ridiculous essay about 'psychological camping'; a thinly veiled account of the beginning of my current relationship. At the time I considered that thoroughly indulgent and narcissistic. But this morning, as 2012 draws to a close, I wrote most of a fictional third person interview with myself in the future, after the publication of my first book. I can only conclude that 2012 has been a strange year in which I have not learned to love myself any less – hooray!

My little sidebar of statistics tells me it has not been a good year for this blog, post-wise. I've only managed a meagre 14 (now 15) posts, compared to a majestic 91 in 2011! I feel I must explain myself.

In September I began an MLitt in Creative Writing at my Alma Mater (saucy minx). Predictably, this course, and a part time job, and simply hundreds of train journeys have sooked up a lot of my time and energy. And when I have been writing, I have been either re-writing things that have appeared on here before, or writing totally new things...and then re-writing them. I'm hoping this work represents an improvement in my writing; I certainly feel like I'm learning lots through reading and others' feedback and I'm reading lots of other people's work, which is another great help. So whereas in the past I might have stuck something up here at a first draft or just as a sort of fragment, I've become less inclined to do that now. Partly because I've developed a greater respect for the writing process as a much larger beast, and partly because if I want to submit a piece to an online or print magazine/journal, it helps if it hasn't already appeared on the internet.

These are my logical reasons for going quiet on the blog. But, there is one last wildly illogical reason for deserting you.

For my birthday this year, I went out for dinner with a friend to a lovely restaurant in Edinburgh. It was a French restaurant, and its speciality was lobster. Having been working full time for a few months, I was feeling flush, and since it was my birthday I decided to order the half lobster with fries. I was pretty excited, because this was my first taste of lobster. Yes, for 2 years I had had a blog designed around my love of lobsters, and this was my first actual taste of one.

The lobster duly arrived, and it was delicious. I scraped out all the lovely meat from the claws with the little hook. I devoured the homemade mayonnaise and the fries. We shared some crisp white wine.

After the meal, we went to the cinema, where for some reason or another, we saw The Five Year Engagement. Since it was still my birthday, I bought some pic n mix to enjoy with the film.

The film was quite good, if a little long. It was a romantic comedy starring Emily Blunt and Jason Segel. I was already familiar with Jason Segel from How I Met Your Mother, where I regard Marshall as the sweetest and best looking male of the group. I reckoned he had put on a little weight for this film, but he was still great to watch.

However, towards the end of the film, I began to feel a little bit ill. Granted, I had eaten my pic n mix quite quickly, and, at age 24 now, maybe my body was just too old for so many sour cherries. Towards the end there was a close-up of Jason Segel's quite chubby face eating a donut. I took some deep breaths, but I still felt queasy. Maybe it was too hot in the cinema. I told myself I would feel better once I got outside.

Unfortunately, I did not. Fresh air is very good at clearing your mind, perhaps clearing a mild headache or some slight nausea. But if half a lobster has decided to exit your body, no amount of fresh air is going to stop it. Like a good little Glaswegian, I waited until I was in the New Town before I vomited against a lamp post.

Clearly, this was not the fault of the restaurant. The lobster had tasted good, and a case of food poisoning would have required a little more incubation time. Furthermore, once all the lobster had exited my stomach, I felt a lot better. It was clear to me that lobster and I were just not compatible.

I should probably give it another try, just to make sure, but surprisingly I'm not that keen to pay twenty quid for a meal that will probably end with me rejecting all of it violently three hours later. So for now, lobsters are no longer for eating. But they can still function as a metaphor for independence from men. I still encourage you to wrestle your own lobsters; just not if you have a lobster allergy.

So I feel like a bit of an idiot now, with a blog plastered in lobsters. But I can't stop loving them aesthetically, them being all orange and symmetrical and pincery.

Anyway, if I have nothing new to offer you I should tell you what I've been doing elsewhere.  This short story has been rewritten and renamed 'Salt Tooth'. My obsession with Sweden and pickled herring has taken a back seat, in favour of my new obsession with competitive eaters. My tortured ramblings about whether or not a good writer can also be a good eater is yet to be proved one way or the other; I'm still trying to be both. London continues to exhaust and inspire me.

For your reading pleasure, I recommend The Marriage Plot, Morvern Callar and Lonesome Dove (it's a 1000-page cowboy epic – see how my tastes have expanded!). On the internet: Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling, T-rex Trying, and The Paris Review's On Fiction interviews

.

On TV: Community, Inside Claridges (soon to go off iPlayer, so hurry) and Man V. Food. And in your mouth: Jamie Oliver's meatloaf, microwave salted popcorn and gyoza.

I hope everyone has had a varied and tasty year despite these harsh economic times.  I hope you've been fighting against the deadliness of leisure to get things done, however small. It's been great to meet so many new folks, reconnect with old friends and just generally keep doing different things. I'm a lucky soul, so thanks for reading.

MAJOR LEAGUE WEINER EATERS

For a course exercise this week we had to research a topic we didn't know much about and do a short piece of writing about it.  I chose Competitive Eating Contests.

                                                                          *

And as we come to the final minutes folks it is neck and neck between these top gurgitators, Joey IRON GUT Green, current holder of the mustard belt, and his contender, a brand new eater on the Major League circuits

Mr Phillip THE OESOPHEAGUS RANGER McGee,

or should I say Master Phillip, because ladiesandgentlemen the Ranger is a mere eighteen years old, this is his first Major Contest after winning the State of Nebraska and the

NATIONAL JUNIOR GALLON CHALLENGES for the past four years and today we have the privilege of watching him at Nathan’s as he battles against everyone’s favourite in this contest, Joey IRON GUT.

We can see now ladiesandgentlemen that they are both on their SIXTY-SEVENTH dogandbun. Both contestants still dunking those buns as this is still an IFOCE regulated contest, still playing by their original guidelines. You out there might have your own ideas about picnic style and what the independent leagues are coming up with but let me tell you ladies and gentlemen the dunking does help those buns down a whole lot easier and that’s what we want in this contest today, we want records smashed, we want

more Nathan’s Hot Dogs eaten than ever before. And if you’re feeling peckish, you can grab yourself a Nathan’s Hot Dog from the vendors all around the arena. Dunking is optional!

oh ladiesandgentlemen this is shaping up nicely! The Ranger has had a sudden burst of power and he is still forcing those dogs right down. You might say that now, well into the final minutes, is the time to start chipmunking and we can see here that this is what IRON GUT is going for he is getting it all in there as we move into the final minute this man chews up to fifty sticks of gum a day to increase jaw strength and boy is it showing now

but just look at The Ranger, folks! The counter shows seventy! And

MY GOD IS THAT MUSTARD? Yes folks he is

actively!

mustarding!

those last few dogs! Now I’m not sure what this will achieve – that is some firey stuff right there and he really does not want to compromise this lead with IRON GUT doing some impressive chipmunking. He could be trying for a trademark move, I just don’t know. But he runs major risk of reversal at this late stage, major risk. We saw it with Chew Chew Miller in ninety-seven, even IRON GUT has had his fair share of reversals of fortune and folks, this is just

OH WAIT THE RANGER IS LURCHING HE IS GRABBING AT

OH MY AS THE CLOCK TICKS DOWN IT IS NOT LOOKING OH MY YEP THIS IS A REVERSAL FOLKS

IT IS ALL COMING UP OH MY THIS IS JUST A TRAGEDY SO CLOSE TO AN HISTORIC WIN HERE FOLKS THE RANGER IS REVERSING THAT IS NOT PRETTY and he will be regretting that mustard folks he really will as the final bell sounds we have a massive reversal of fortune here at Coney Island as

JOEY IRON GUT GREEN

who could be chipmunking probably an extra six dogs and buns right now, not that it matters now but yes they are confirming his total is seventy two and THAT IS A NEW WORLD RECORD AS THE 2012 CHAMPION MAJOR LEAGUE WEINER EATER SPONSORED BY NATHAN’S HOT DOGS FOLKS.

D.O.L. Dialogues 2012: Stephenie Meyer & E. L. James go for a gold leaf vajazzle

SM has invited ELJ to her favourite beauty parlour for a gold leaf vajazzle. The women have forged an uneasy friendship, since ELJ reached out to Stephenie when she felt lost and adrift in her sudden fame and just wanted someone to tell her she was still “doing well”. Stephenie has tolerated her out of boredom.

*

It's a while into their treatment, and the beautician has been looking worriedly at ELJ's lip.

B: What did you do to your lip? Do you need some intensive balm on there?

ELJ: Oh no thank you, I like it this way. I'm just always biting my lip, y'know?

SM: Why, are you nervous about interviews and stuff?

ELJ: No...it's a sex thing. Biting your lip is just SO sexy!

B: Do you think so? It kind of emphasises my front teeth...

ELJ: It just makes guys melt. It makes you irresistible. Such a simple gesture. I just find myself doing it all the time.

B: It looks quite deep. Doesn't it hurt?

ELJ: Oh a little. But it's worth it, just for how it makes me feel. It's my signature pose now.

SM peers down to admire her vajazzle as it starts to take shape.

SM: Well, I could never do anything like that in public. In case I drew blood. I can't be seen to bleed.

ELJ: Well Steph, you're missing out. I've never felt sexier since I've started doing it. Oh my.

SM: “Oh my”. That's so British. So cute.

ELJ: Did you finish Tess yet?

SM: No, honey. I have just been snowed under reading all the first drafts I get from my neighbours. There's only so many times you can read your own book “reimagined”, y'know?

ELJ: Totally. It's tough being the original.

SM: I just don't want to piss them off, or they'll start throwing pigs bladders at the house again.

ELJ: Well, jealousy makes you do terrible things.

SM: I thought I was in a rich-enough neighbourhood so that wouldn't be an issue, but apparently there is such a thing as “too rich”.

ELJ beams at her newly-minted vagina.

ELJ: “I don't believe that for a second.”

For Douglas.  It wasn't next in line, and it wasn't the subject he suggested, but I was just desperate for someone to get a gold leaf vajazzle.