The world really is conspiring against you: Food, fashion and film against a backdrop of high finance

Sometimes the illogicality of modern life baffles me; that we’re all going full pelt all the time only to struggle really to get anywhere.

It’s not just big things, like inflation outstripping wages, or the fact that the poor are relentlessly penalised for it, as I found myself describing to Jonah when he asked what finance was, looking at bikes today at Evans Cycles in the sale (which basically just meant they had a limited display of cheaper bikes, rather than any genuine bargains). It’s the little things that really hold us back.

Of course, I can’t yet get a new bike on my employer’s cycle-to-work scheme, because I haven’t been there a year, and yet the bike I ride to get there, a semi-vintage Pashley bought new by my mum as a wedding gift the year I got married, 2005, but has since had its seat replaced, (the lovely leather Brookes saddle got nicked at Broadway Market, so I got a cheap alternative to accommodate my more than ample derriere) as well as two wheels and several baskets (begging the question whether it’s even the same bike) is becoming dangerous. Its brakes are seizing up, leaving me in Liverpool Street traffic unable to pedal hard enough to pull away from irate taxis, lorry blind spots and past immobile buses. Surely an employee cycling safely into work trumps any saving an employer might get delaying benefits, but thems the rules and no one’s gonna bend them for little ol’ me.

Luckily Tom, a banker, can get me a bike on his own company’s cycle-to-work scheme. And because we now have a reasonable amount of disposal income, we can take the hit in one go, rather than paying it off over several months and paying more for the privilege, as I explained longwindedly to Jonah about getting into debt.

Likewise, my own work’s health insurance won’t kick in for a year, so the delay in getting properly diagnosed for IBD is something I’ve no wish to hurry along, despite my symptoms increasing over Christmas when eating sensibly seems to be taken as a festive personality failure. But again, the fact my GP still hasn’t got testing kits (there are cuts, apparently) means I can take advantage of joining Tom’s health insurance scheme at the next window – April – in preparation for supposed lifetime of chronic illness before I get diagnosed, in the face of an increasingly straightened NHS. But by then, my digestive tract might be in a rather sorrier state, no doubt having an impact on my ability to work the long hours prescribed by the media industry. Delaying my chance at treatment seems a little short sighted on the part of my employer. But hey ho. That’s how it goes. A “meritocratic” democracy protects the protected and lets the weak flounder, blaming their struggles on “poor choices” and sheer bad luck.

The choices we have are always negligible and luck is very much the culmination of your particular place in the fabric of space, time, evolution and hierarchy, and the probabilities inherent therein. A simple trip to Cineworld, Canary Wharf demonstrated this clearly today, surely one of the best places in London for observing how the game of life is loaded in favour of money and power.

We went to see Box Trolls, a perfect allegory for today’s climate of disinformation and racial vilification: a tale of the corrosive capability of power, and the fact that those in control tell the story that suits their agenda at the time, with only vague reference to the truth. I enjoyed it immensely and so did the kids, but not before we’d been exposed to a saccharine pre-amble of holiday commercials, a Dora the Explorer infomercials (during which I smoked my e-fag in the cinema’s grubby toilets,) a trailer for Sean the Sheep the Movie and an eye-twitching advert for Peppa Pig, surely the best argument against conceiving another child I’ve come up with yet.

Prior to this pre-feature diet of parental pressure, I’d already grown mildly irritated by the cinema’s attempts to give my children diabetes by making it cheaper to buy boxes containing tropical Calipos, Magic Stars and popcorn when all I’d wanted to get them was a small box of sweet and salt to share. I removed the Magic Stars for later, making myself look like an arsehole in the process, then got narked by the cunning ploy on the part of Cineworld’s upper management to make hapless movie goers pay extra to sit in the central two rows, which they’d coated in leatherette and optimistically branded “star seats”. Given Kids Club movies are fairly cheap – why else would you want to go and sit in a darkened room at 11 a.m. on a Sunday – it seemed, in theory, a small upgrade for a better view, but it meant, in practice, all the families in the vast screening room were banded together in one small section rather than spread evenly throughout, so instead of a perfect view, we got the kids in front chomping and chattering and parents taking them to the loo at every opportunity.

By then, the Diet Coke for which I’d paid a 400% mark up on crushed ice and a penny’s worth of syrup, but the least calorific option for refreshment in the cinema save for overpriced water, had given me a belly ache, and the kids, always hungry after a lazy Sunday breakfast of Bear’s Alphabites (supposedly healthier; still just sugary processed grains) and Tom, grouchy after just yogurt and granola, wanted further feeding. But I, having sat on my backside all morning in an antiseptic, under heated room, really just wanted to stretch my legs.

We fell into Browns on the docks, mainly because it was cold outside and the kids had forgotten to put on coats, but having got shown by the waitress right to the back where the less attractive people and families were lumped, and shown a bready menu that would have forced me into two expensive yet minute starters, or a salad, I was beginning to have second thoughts. Tom pointed out that my preferred option, a lobster sandwich and chips, would have me in an immediate food coma – a side effect of my IBD. He’s right – On Friday, playing the game with my new work colleagues, I ate a burger during a rare client lunch – we’d gone to an upmarket burger joint, and I didn’t want to appear fussy or food phobic by only having a salad. Naturally I fell asleep during the clients’ post-lunch presentation, having fought it for twenty odd minutes, my eyes inevitably began to roll, the makeup rubbing off the stress eczema round one eye (another side effect), making me look as if I had a shiner to boot. It was not the perfect end to my second week in my new job.

Back at Browns, tensions began to surface over going elsewhere: Jonah had already selected a burger, and was rather less enthusiastic about the Carluccio’s breaded chicken Milanese which had been proffered as an initial option, now chips were in the offing. But I by then was resolute. I didn’t want to be drowsy for the whole rest of the day, as has happened on multiple other occasions when I’ve thrown diet caution to the wind. Jonah stormed out in an embarrassing huff, and Carluccio’s was naturally full when we got there, by which time Tom was beginning to cluck.

We eventually compromised on Byron burgers- at least there, I could go bunless and not feel resentful that I was missing out on half the food I was paying for. When our meals arrived, all was chain restaurant fine, but, on the draughty top floor of Cabot Place shopping centre, it was cold and I was still basically eating salad alongside with a poorly chosen frosted glass of beer. The kids’ menu, always the cheapest option – and the least nutritious, for all its token helping of carrots and cucumber, an effort to persuade the kids to eat alongside burger and chips – always comes with a pudding, although you pay extra for drinks and feel stingy ordering tap water. Two white chocolate brownies and a lemonade to share later and the kids were hopping off the walls with Jonah complaining once more of belly ache.

For once, I felt pretty okay after my carb-free meal and wanted to go to Topshop and buy some clothes that might project professionalism where my body, face and hair (and sometimes personality, if I’m honest) often let me down. I selected some natty monochrome ankle length trousers, a neutral crochet top, and a black and white swimming costume (we have a week in the sun booked in September and my tummy’s not currently for revealing) that was rather unfortunately the least flattering combination of wrong: too small at the bottom, and too big on top.

Nonetheless, I left spending the best part of two week’s worth of loose change on looking the part for the next two weeks, until something inevitably frays, a button falls off, I gain or lose ten pounds, fall off my bike and splatter it in mud; or monochrome (my mid 30s fashion default) goes hopelessly out of style in trendy Shoreditch where fashion – cheap and disposable if you’re conditioned to care – moves a million times faster for its modestly paid office workers than for Tom’s well-compensated city-based compatriots down the road, where office wear has remained inert and unchanging – expensive and unremarkable – for the best part of a century. Hence the proliferation of purveyors of fastidiously fine, but ultimately dull goods and accessories – Thomas Pink, Paul Smith, Tiffany’s, (yawn, darling) in Canary Wharf’s upmarket shopping centre, Cabot Square so its workers can become as much a cliche of themselves as the average beard-wearing Shoreditch twat.

Modern life is but a series of contradictions and we are all buffeted in its wake, always wondering whether there isn’t a better way, if only we could move up to society’s next echelon, or opt out completely and go somewhere warmer where a simpler life might be possible, knowing all the while that leaving the rat race will only complicate things further in the long run. In this dog eat dog world, the higher you climb, the more you’re propped up by the system; and the further you fall the more likely you are get caught in its traps in a logical fallacy none of us can fight.