The F-Plan Diet



Poor Harry. He isn’t very well, although a lot of it is in his mind. I’ve tried my best with him, some folks are strong, others aren’t. Harry, he’s what you might call a weedy sort, kind enough, but more or less your average wimp. Nothing like the husky young men who advertise cars or furniture on the telly. I’ve never heard him sing in the shower, he sort of creeps into the bathroom and locks the door. As for leaping out of bed to tug a crisp white shirt over a naked torso; why, Harry wakes up more tired than when he goes to sleep!
We’d been married four years, Harry and I, he’s a good husband, doesn’t get in the way, no popping off down to the pub for a drink, I should know, I work there! Not my Harry, he likes it at home, he lived with his mother before he met me, so he was already well trained before we got married, nice and quiet, not the restless type at all.
We met at the job centre or rather outside it, he was staring at the job cards in the window when I went in and still there when I came out.
“Still here then?” That’s me I’m afraid, always talking to strangers. My mum used to say I’d get my throat cut one of these days, god rest her soul.
He was ever so sweet. He blushed.
“Errr…yes…”
“Find anything you fancy?”
“Errr…no….” He kept his eyes glued to his feet. Shy.
“You should go inside and see the lady, there’s loads more jobs inside.
“Oh.” He looked at me, real quick, then back to his feet, his face getting redder and redder. Thanks,” he mumbled.
“Well, tara then.” I walked off, but I hadn’t gone five paces when I heard, “Miss! Miss!” I looked back and he was still stood there, face as red as a beetroot. Shy, you see.
“I…I…I wonder can I buy you a coffee…” His eyes were so pleading, I didn’t have the heart to say no, and that’s how we met. So you see his mother told a black lie when she claimed I picked him up on the street; she’s only jealous.
Harry was such a nice boy; well, he is a nice boy, seeing as he’s still alive poor soul. Ever so sweet natured. What wouldn’t he do for me? Not strong mind, but very kind.
Anyhow, over coffee, it turns out he already has a job, he’s a clerical assistant at the council, he was only looking down the job centre to see if there was something better , see, fishing like, you know.
“Well, snap. I’m a working girl myself,” I told him.
“Oooohhh. What do you do?”
“You guess…” I told him.
“Are you a nurse?"
“No, dear (me, a nurse? If pigs could fly!) “But I do work nights.”
“A doctor?”
I laughed. “No!”
“A teacher at night school?”
“Bit warmer…”
“Work nights…” He wrinkled his brow, “Are you sure you’re not a nurse?” You see that’s Harry in a nutshell. Not a great deal of imagination.
I patted his hand on the table. “I help out old Mr Jones down at the Purple Cow”
“Oooohhh” his eyes grew round with wonder, absolutely amazed, he was. “Then what were you doing down at the Job Centre?”
“Just looking for a daytime job, as a temp or something. I want a fake fur coat for Christmas, so I could use the extra few pounds every month for a bit…”
And that’s how it started, but the twist to that tale is instead of a fake fur for Christmas, I got Harry! Yes, we married late in December. Not without some problems, especially from his dear old mum who made awful remarks like I was old enough to be his mother, she’s at least ten years older than me. Jealous cat.
So he moved into my flat, I had room, it wasn’t any bother, he didn’t have much stuff, just a few shirts and trousers, I made room in my wardrobe and he kept his small suitcase under the bed; it was a great help, someone to share the rent and the chores. Somebody to come home to on a night. Someone to make breakfast in the morning. Every morning, even now, he’ll bring me a nice cup of tea and toast, and leave me a bacon sandwich in the fridge. A sweet boy, my Harry, ever so kind.
Anyway, it would have been about a year ago, I noticed he looked ever so seedy. He’s not what you would call an athletic type at the best of times, more sort of your average wimp, not a lot of sparkle. But about a year ago he looked really down and out. And then there was all this stuff on the telly about allergies and what have you, so I thought maybe I’m feeding him the wrong food.
I saw a programme on food, they ground up all the nasty bits of cow and made a sort of slurry which they poured into a machine, and then out the other end comes burgers and beefsteaks and ribs and chicken nuggets, all reformed. Well, I got to thinking, he likes a bit of a fry up, my Harry, burgers and sausages and that. On Sundays we’d even have one of those restructured reformed roasts, then the rest of the week it would be fried this and fried that, or restructured niblets with restructured potatoes. Nothing real.
I bought some real frozen chicken, and proper lamb, not cook from frozen, but he didn’t like it, said it had a taste, a funny taste he didn’t like. He didn’t look well and when he wasn’t eating, I got quite worried. Awfully pasty he was too, and weak as a kitten. He couldn’t do his husbandly duty either, you know, he’d try and try, but nothing would happen and he’d be upset.
“I just can’t, Bev,” he would whisper, cheeks wet with tears. “Look, it won’t move.”
And he was right, it wouldn’t.
“Don’t worry about it dear, you’re probably just tired. You get some sleep love, and we’ll try again next week…”
He’d fall asleep, like a babe in my arms, he was . Poor Harry. But by next week it still wouldn’t work.
Actually it was the telly that gave me the idea. I don’t care what anybody says, I acted in good faith, I was honestly doing my best for Harry, poor soul.
There was one of those programmes where people write in, and this one lady, she asked the producers, was it not only dog food worth eating on the supermarket shelves seeing as how everything else is filled with enumbers and preservatives? You see? I thought, well I’ve tried everything else, why not?
Anyway, the next day while Harry was at work, poor dear, I popped down to the super store and bought some; you know the sort with big meaty chunks in a rich gravy. It didn’t smell wonderful, but I heated it up with some frozen veg and put it in a pie.
Well, that night Harry ate up every scrap of that pie. He loved it. He never touched the potatoes, just the pie.
“Are you sure you won’t have any?” he kept asking. “It’s delicious.” But I just couldn’t, not with knowing what was in it, you know, the thought just put me off.
That night I went to get ready for work, he came to watch, just like he used to in the old days; when we first got married, the sight of my uplift brassiere and garter belt gave him such a thrill1 Anyway, this night he’d had the special pie, I was at the dressing table, he came up behind me while I was doing my makeup, and gave me a bit of a squeeze , he leaned against my back and blow me if I couldn’t feel something hard in his trousers. I didn’t even mind the fact that I’d only done one eyelash, we just did it right there on the bedroom floor, and it was super, well worth waiting months for. At work all my regulars noticed I more cheerful than usual.
So that’s how I started Harry on what I called my F-plan diet.
He was just wonderful at first, absolutely wonderful. Much more get up and go, you know, from all the added vitamins and minerals. You could see a real difference. I know bright eyed and bushy tailed sounds a bit cheeky, but I can’t think of a better description. And ever so amorous, quite a big change in that respect.
There were a couple of drawbacks, I mean I had to force him to have a bath, towards the end, I had to bathe him myself, he hated washing that much. And then he’d get a five o’clock shadow at noon, and have to shave more often and grumble about that, and as for body hair, well I like a nice hairy chest as much as the next girl , but a hairy back? That’s something else. You’ll be thinking, why didn’t I take him off the F-Plan diet, but the changes were gradual, I can see everything very clearly now looking back, but I couldn’t see things quite so clearly at the time.
And he was ever so randy, it made up for the other things, a girl loves to be loved, you know what I mean? If you don’t use it, you lose it. It was as if he’d been asleep all his life and suddenly woke up or maybe that part of him had been asleep, and now had a life of its own. That bit of him was definitely different, not just for my benefit either, everywhere we went we had to look for a gents, even sat at home he seemed to go every fifteen minutes. I suppose there must have been something in the meaty chunks that made you go more often.
He was a little bit funny with it though, I was in the bath one Sunday and he pops in for a quick number one and blow me if he doesn’t cock one leg up on the cistern while he does it. Just a little tinkle, mind you he doesn’t wait long enough in between times to get a really good flow going.
“What d’you do that for?” I was surprised.
“Do what?”
“Put you leg up like that, Harry?”
"Oh," he said, as if he hadn’t noticed.” Just feels more comfortable, I suppose.”
One day I went into the bedroom and there’s this big black tracksuit on the bed. Black sneakers on the floor with black socks beside them. I usually bought his clothes he hated shopping; this was unusual.
“What’s this, Harry?”
He was sat on the floor by the radiator. “I’m taking up jogging,” he said.
“Jogging? When d’you decide that then?”
“Well, it’s boring here when you’re out.”
“You’ve never complained before.”
“I’m not complaining…”
“You’re not going jogging at night?”
“Yeah; best time of the day, night.” He laughed a bit. See the change? Even making jokes.
“Harry, it’s not safe in the dark, love. You might get mugged."
He gave me a funny look. “D’you reckon?” He smiled slowly. “Take a very fast mugger to catch me.”
After that, every night I went out, he’d go out too, off jogging. He was ever so polite about it, never left the house before me or anything, and usually back home by the time I came in. It didn’t do him any harm at all, he was stronger and looked lovely with all those muscles. I had to tell him to put that jogging suit in the washer dryer himself, sometimes the state of it was terrible, not just sweaty (stink out the kitchen, it would, if left overnight) but with mud caked about the tracksuit bottoms, but he didn’t mind, he’d do that, a thoughtful boy, my Harry.
The jogging habit could get a little annoying if we went anywhere together, like to the park on a Sunday afternoon. Before he was on the F-Plan, he’d just want to sit on the nearest bench and I’d really have to convince him hard to come with me to the duck pond.
“The fresh air will do you good, love,” and he’d argue black and blue there was just as much fresh air on the bench, so I’d have to coax him.
Now he’d started the jogging, we’d get to the park gates and he’s just disappear and not come back for ages, I’d call and whistle but he just wouldn’t come back, too full of vitality, had to burn off all the added vitamins and minerals
He got really adventurous too; looking back someone must have been slipping him dirty books at work, because he wanted to do it in all different positions and even giving me a thorough licking down there first and things like that. Once I was having a tinkle in the bathroom and he rapped on the door and bounded in.
“Don’t bother to flush, Bev, I’m desperate!”, and blow me if he didn’t kneel in front of the loo, smelling and sniffing at it before he got up and peed a bit as well. Poor Harry, you see he was definitely getting a bit odd, about wee especially.
I told him off one day, he really showed me up. You see we’d gone to the park, and I couldn’t find him, I looked everywhere calling and whistling as usual, and a lady said to me, “Mine won’t come back either,” so the two of us walked along for a bit together, me calling “Harry! Teatime!” she calling “Charlie! Din-dins!” Soft or what?
She said to me, “They’re just like children,” so I did think she was looking for her husband too, and then she said she could hear them, mind you all I could hear was a lot of dogs barking and yelping, then as we cleared the crest of the hill I saw my Harry playing with a whole pack of different dogs down by the trees at the bottom.
He tossed something in the air, and they went wild scrambling and jumping, trying to catch what ever it was and bring it back to him. Imagine my horror when I saw he was tossing a dead squirrel.
“Harry!” I shouted. “You come home at once!”
The woman turned on me in a fury. “You think you should allow your son to tease the dogs like that?” she snarled, before striding off to retrieve some flea bitten mutt from the pack.
I took Harry firmly by the hand and led him back up the hill.
“What the hell do you think you are doing?”
“Just playing, Bev,” He was panting slightly.
“With a dead squirrel/ Are you crazy? Do you want to be arrested?
He looked sheepish. “Sorry, Bev…” Then he smiled. “But it was fun! The poodle found it and we all thought up the game.”
“We?”
“Yeah.” He shrugged. “Me and the lads. You know.”
“The lads?”
“My friends.”
“But there wasn’t anybody there! Only you and some mangy dogs! Playing with a dead squirrel! I mean to say, Harry! You make me feel ashamed. What is it with you these days?”
“You’ve never complained before,” he rumbled, putting his arm around me and deftly tweaking my breasts.
“Stop it!”
“Thought you liked it.” He nuzzled my ear, and put his other hand up my blouse at the back. “I was working up an appetite…”
“Harry stop it, we’re in public for heavens sake!”
“I’m only kissing you…”
He was much stronger, I couldn’t push him away; he slipped one hand down my waistband at the front.
“Hey!!” This was a public place, we could get arrested.
“Aw, c’mon Beverly, I just want to put my finger in, please, no one’s looking…” I could feel the heat off him.
“Look, just my finger, I’ll put my jacket round us, no one will see, only my finger then I can smell it all the way home…”
“Ooohhh1”
“There you see…” He lifted his hand to his nose. “Mmmm. Scrumptious! “Beverly!” He looked at me, eyes shining. “Shall we do it here under the tree?”
“Please, let’s go home” my breath was coming in short little spurts, I’m not made of steel you know, I was as randy as could be.
I raced him back home, we did it in the front hall then afterwards he took off his clothes and lay in front of the fire in the front room parlour while I fetched him a huge bowl of tea. He fancied a bowl in them days, said a cup of a mug didn’t hold enough for a real thirst.
So you see those really were grand old days, the F-plan worked a treat. I’d say he was a real man in those days, poor soul.
I suppose the first really bad thing that happened was that he lost his job. The letter said a number of things, unpunctuality, declining efficiency, unreliableness, untidy appearance and so on. I suppose with not having a bath so often especially with all the jogging he did smell a bit funny, but I couldn’t help feeling he was being victimised.
“Harry, it says here you’ve been warned several times.”
“Mmmm” As usual, he stretched himself out naked in front of the fire.
“Why didn’t you do something about yourself then?”
He got up and looked at me real candid. “it wouldn’t have made any difference, Bev,” he said seriously. “not after the office Manager found me asleep in the broom cupboard.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Napping.”
“I’m serious, Harry!”
“Oh, don’t worry about it, I’ll get another job,” he said easily. “Something outdoorsy, not in a horrid fusty office filled with silly bits of paper. I can’t sit cooped up behind a desk when outside the wind is dancing with fallen leaves; I could work on a farm with dogs, with sheep, yeah…” He stretched out again on the hearthrug, and went on dreamily, “with sheep and dogs and the scent of rabbits and foxes…”
“But Harry dear,” I protested, “We’re right in the middle of a town, there’s not a farm for miles.”
“Or a park,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken, "or the woods. Or even a beach. Somewhere I can see the sky and feel the rain. You know…free?”
He was crazy; we were nowhere near a beach. Marshland, that’s what we had near us, marshland and industries. He’d want to work on the moon next.
Well, he did find another job, as a dustman. It as curious him liking that job so much, he was an educated man, even had some O levels, yet every morning he’d set off gay as a lark with his boots and uniform, and come home bright as a button at tea time, full of tales about other peoples dustbins, a treasure trove he said it was , a goldmine. In the cupboard under the stairs he stored bits and pieces of junk he brought home from the tip in his pockets.
He’d been working as a sanitary engineer (I’m no snob but it does sound better) for a few months when he started sleeping badly. I thought the hard work of lifting heavy dustbins all day was simply too much for him, ‘cause at night he just couldn’t lay still, twisting and tossing in the bed, ever so restless. Talking in his sleep too, no real words though, just sounds like whining and yapping.
It was at the same time as all the news about the attacks and the rapes, not that I thought my Harry had anything to do with the rapes, he wasn’t like that, poor soul was as gentle as a lamb, and anyway , he got all he wanted in that department from me, didn’t he, I never refused him once, he’d come home from his day at the waste disposal, I’d give him a bath (ever such black fingernails you get doing dustbins) then we’d do it when he was nice and clean, after that I’d feed him, then get ready for work while he had his nap. He got some every day, so you see, he couldn’t have been out raping anybody. Your average rapist, well, he’s sex starved, isn’t he, he can’t get it in the normal way so he has to force a woman when he can’t bear it any longer. Harry was getting more than enough at home.
No it wasn’t the rapes that frightened me. It was the sheep. I first heard about it down the pub. Some farmers had come in to borrow from the bank, and they were going on and on about the attacks on sheep, it was happening all the time apparently, different cases from all over the place , sheep found with their throats torn out, or else so badly savaged they had to be put down. There was a rumour somebody’s pet was left behind while they went on holiday and was having a rampage round the fields, and the usual stuff about a big cat escaped from the zoo.
I even saw it in the paper, ‘Fears over Killer Dogs’. I was terrified, my heart went all cold; an instinct told me Harry might be involved in it, I kept remembering him in the park with the pack of dogs and the dead squirrel. I tackled him not long after..
“Harry dear," I 'd just given him his pie which he'd gobbled up in two seconds flat, “Where exactly do you do your jogging?”
He was already dressed in his black tracksuit, newly washed and tumbled dry from the day before, gulping down his bowl of water. He looked at me.
“Oh, round and about, is there any more biscuits?” he loved a couple of biscuits with his tea, the saltier and crunchier the better.
“Very far away, dear, or round here where we live?"
“Oh, everywhere…” he crunched noisily on the wholemeal crackers, showering crumbs. “You follow the smells you know…”
“Harry…” I had to go carefully here, I didn’t know for sure so I couldbn’t accuse him directly, not just for a gut feeling. “Harry, it says in the paper somebody’s been worrying sheep.”
“Mmmm” He licked the crumbs off the table.
“Now, you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
He looked up. “Not really…"
“Not really? What do you mean?”
“Well, I’ve heard about it, and we think we know who’s doing it…yeah, I’ve heard about it, certainly.”
“It’s going to be pretty dangerous out at night on the farms, they’ll start putting down traps and if they don’t catch anything, there’ll be vigilantes out there with a shotgun hunting a rogue animal. Farmers get really angry about any animal destroying their stock!”
“Oh Bev, you are silly!” he laughed. “Why would anyone shoot at me, they’re looking for a wild dog, right? I’m a man!” He flashed me a lively wide grin; it didn’t help. I still felt uneasy. His eyes just didn’t look honest somehow.
I should have taken him off the f-plan then, honestly I should with feeling so uneasy and everything, but I wasn’t thinking straight, the truth is he was so nice in every other way I just didn’t want to. When he was home and all cleaned up, he was a sweet as pie, following me from room to room, even to the loo, I had to lock the door, and he’d just sit there quietly on the landing waiting for me to come out, like a great big hairy shadow he was. And his juicy young body, splendid and randy, he could have been a male model if not for the hair.
It was the girls body found at the tip that woke me up, I mean; that was the last straw. You remember, the big case that went national and was on the telly all the time. It was just a little too close to home, I knew I had to put a stop to things.
You’ll probably remember the headlines about Maniac Rapist and Animal Attack, and the chief constable saying on the telly he found the sheer savagery difficult to believe, too inhuman, she’d had her insides torn out and bits of her chewed off, and forensics had discovered the bites were human, not animal. All that stuff about come forward if you know anything, and anyone harbouring such a dangerous criminal should expect a similar fate sooner or later.
You see, that night, the night it happened, I heard him come in, he must have sneaked out again after we’d gone to bed. I heard the washer drier go on as usual but what really surprised me was he went into the bathroom and ran himself a bath, which was a shock because as far as I knew he never bathed on his own any more so I wondered what he was up to, I thought maybe he’d worked up an appetite for a bit of the old how’s you father, but he hadn’t, he slid into bed beside me clean as a whistle and was asleep in two ticks. Next thing I know there’s all this stuff on the box about a psychopathic killer.
I never asked and he never told, but I took him off the F-plan straight away. To this day I don’t know if he was involved in any of that malarky or not. He didn’t eat for four days when I changed his diet, just said he wasn’t hungry when I served the tea; his appetite’s not right yet. And the shedding! We had hairs everywhere, in the bath, on the carpet, on the furniture.
Poor Harry. He didn’t have the energy to keep on with the dustman job, he lost a lot of weight what with being off his food and sort of shrivelled up, always tired, couldn’t really cope with heavy dustbins, so for the last few months he’s been out of work sitting listlessly in front of the box. He’s gone ever so grey as well, aged overnight, poor dear, and ever so morose in bed because he can’t get it up.
“Don’t worry, dear,” I tell him, “it’s all in the mind.” The only good thing that’s happened is he’s given up jogging.
I wish I could make him feel a bit happier, maybe I should take him to the doctors and explain a bit about the F-plan and see if they can’t tell me what vitamins and minerals and added supplements might help him feel more on top of things. The thing is , they might give him tranquilisers which would be disaster, he’s too tranquil already.
Or maybe…. You know the other day I found myself looking at cat food…