Will Self - Grey Area

Snow is talking to two pop academics. I can tell this with some certainty, because one of them is too well dressed for a politician, and the other too badly. Like a dentist with mass appeal, Snow is getting down to extracting the truth from this duo. He cants himself towards the badly dressed, froggy-looking one.

‘Now, Dr Busner, haven’t we been hearing for years now — from you and others — about the possible effects of such a bottoming-out?’

‘Quite so,’ says the man called Busner, ‘although I’m not sure that “bottoming-out” is the right expression. What we have here is a condition of stasis. I’m not prepared to hazard any long-term predictions about its duration on the basis of the sanity quotient figures we currently have; but what I can say is that the Government’s response has been woefully inadequate — a case of too little, too late.’

He falls to rolling and unrolling the ragged strip of mohair tie that flows down over the soft folds of his belly. He does this extremely well, with one hand, the way a card sharp runs a coin through his fingers. Snow now cants himself towards the other man, a virile sixty year old, with intact and ungreying hair, wearing a sharp Italian suit with the narrowest of chalk stripes. ‘Professor Stein, a case of too little, too late?’

‘I think not.’ Stein steeples his fingers on top of the console. ‘Like Dr Busner, I would reserve the right to comment at some later date. The evidence we have at the moment is sketchy, incomplete. But that being noted, even if the conditions today’s report draws our attention to are fully realised, it only points towards the non-event I am certain will not occur.’

‘So, contrary to what you have said in the past, you now think something may well happen?’ Snow is delighted that he has caught Stein’s double-negative.

‘That’s not what I said,’ Stein fires right back at the lanky television presenter. ‘I appreciate the implications of this data. It is bizarre — to say the least — to have so many people apparently experiencing a lengthy period of climatic and seasonal stasis; but we must bear in mind that, as yet, this is a localised phenomenon, confined to a discrete area. It has only been this way for some six weeks — ‘

‘More like two months!’ Busner cuts in.

This gives Peter Snow the opportunity to try and knock the discussion down, so he can drag it somewhere else. ‘How-can-you-Doc-tor-Busner’ — he is in profile, Struwwelpeter-like, fingers splayed, elongated, nose sharp, rapping out the words in a dot-dash fashion, letting his pentameters beat up on each other — ‘be-so-o-certain-about-the-ex-act-time-the-stasis-began?’

‘Well, I admit’ — Busner, far from being cowed, is invigorated by Snow’s tongue-tapping — ‘it can be difficult to ascertain when nothing begins to happen.’ His plump lips twitch, he is sucking on the boiled irony, ‘But not, I think, impossible.

‘Take events — for example. How small does an event have to be before it ceases to be an event?’

‘Yes, yes, that is a very interesting question.’ This from Stein. The three of them are now all canted towards one another, forming a boyish huddle. ‘I myself am intrigued by small events, matters of the merest degree. Perhaps I might give an example?’

‘Please do.’ Peter Snow’s tone has softened, it’s clear that the idea interests him.

‘Can we have the camera in very tight on the surface of the console, please?’

‘Pull right in, please, camera 2.’ Snow makes a come-on-down gesture.

The camera zooms right down until the veins in the grey vinyl of the console are rift valleys. What must be the very tip of Stein’s fingernail comes into view. I can see the grain of it. It pokes a little at the vinyl, dislodging a speck of something. It could be dust or a fragment of skin, or mica. But the speck is both very small — less than a tenth of the width of Stein’s fingernail — and very grey; as grey as the console itself.

The camera zooms back out in. The three middle-aged men are beaming. ‘So there we have,’ says Peter Snow, addressing a portion of the nation, ‘a very small event. Thank you, Professor Stein, and you, Dr Busner.’ The two pop academics incline their heads, slightly.

The camera moves back in until Snow fills the screen. There are some fresh newspapers, interleaved by his elbow. ‘Well-that’s-about-it-for-tonight-except-for-a-quick-look-at-tomorrow’s-papers.’ His hands pull them out, one at a time, while he recites the headlines, ‘The-Times: “ No-New-Developments-in-Stasis-Situation”, The Guardian: “ Government-Ministers-Knew-that-Nothing-Had-Happened”. And- Today- with-the-rather-racier: “We’re-in-a-Grey-Area!”.

‘Jeremy-Paxman-will-be-here-tomorrow-night. But-for-now, this-is-Peter-Snow-wishing-you-good-night.’ The grey man on the screen smiles, picks up the pile of papers from the grey console in front of him, and shuffles them together, while the camera pulls up and away.

I pull up and away, and go next door to the bedroom. I take off my dressing gown and hang it on a hook behind the door. I take my nightie from beneath my pillow and put it on. I get a fresh pair of underpants from the chest of drawers and wriggle into them. I set the alarm clock for seven-fifteen. And I get a new sanitary towel and place it in the gusset of my underpants.

My period might start during the night.

You are holding in your hands a folder. The hands cannot be described by me, because they are yours, but the folder can. A shiny, white thing, the standard A4 size, it has sparse, expensively embossed, blue lettering on the cover, together with a corporate logo. The first line of the lettering reads: ‘Cryborg Pharmaceutical Industries’ and underneath it says: ‘Inclusion, a Revolutionary Approach to Anti-Depressant Medication’. Beneath that there is the corporate logo, an odd thing that looks somewhat like a pineapple with wavy lines radiating all around it. Whether or not it expresses some attribute of Cryborg Pharmaceutical Industries is moot, or merely obscure, depending on how interested you are. Depending on how far you are prepared to include the marketing brochures of pharmaceutical companies in your life. Give them head-room.

If you open the Inclusion folder you’ll find what you expect to find. Namely, that the marketing budget didn’t quite reach to laminating overleaf, and further, that the two sides of the folder are equipped with diagonal pockets — pockets that house on the right the Inclusion marketing brochure and on the left a miscellany of order forms, sheets covered with corporate information, information on other Cryborg products etc., etc.

So, you ease out the marketing brochure from its pocket and start to flip through. The paper is creamy and textured, the type is artful and elegant, the photographs and illustrations are composed, if a little arid. Of course, initially, it’s amusing to see that anti-depressant drugs are marketed in exactly the same way as lingerie, or cars. But it’s an amusement that soon fades to a faint wryness and then winks out altogether.

On page two a photo shows a young couple with a toddler. The man is laughing and holding the child — who’s also laughing — up in the air. The woman is looking at him with milch cow eyes, slopping over with admiration — there will be no crying over this spillage. The photo caption reads: ‘Once a patient is being treated with Inclusion, he can be maintained indefinitely at a constant, regular dosage. A lifetime of positive engagement lies ahead.’