Day 1: Going Grey

Dedicated to: Julie Miller


It’s lunchtime in the world without colour; all around, children in grey uniforms giggle and play with their cauliflower cheese and rice pudding. (It’s plain noodles for vegans today apparently – they taste only of salt, but I’m hungry enough to eat them anyway.) As it is November, even the sky doesn’t offer much variation – it’s the same off-grey as a fading bruise.

Audive sits down, a protective hand over her swelling stomach. I see she’s chosen purple cabbage as her side for the day – it looks good. Being on lunch duty means you get to have a coloured vegetable or fruit, for now anyway. With the Vibrancy Tax set to rise again, I wonder how long it will last. I chose a satsuma, but ended up giving it to a sickly looking year 4 – Dylan Johnson. It matched his hair. With the fees his parents must have to pay for his unfortunate locks, it’s no wonder he’s a bit undernourished. I don’t know why they don’t just shave his head and spend the money on broccoli.

Asmira has carrots. “I wanted tomato” she complains, “but they haven’t had anything red in for ages.”

“They’ll be saving red and green points for Christmas now, so we can use holly in the displays and the year sixes can still make those biscuits.”

“Waste of points, dividing them like that, if you ask me. The year sixes know the colours – they learnt them before the tax came in, although some of them have forgotten the more expensive ones. I was trying to teach colours to my year twos today and someone had actually taken the red and green blocks out of the cupboard so I couldn’t use them. I mean seriously – how would the LA actually know if I had? They can’t have eyes everywhere. In the end I just taught them how to write ‘red’ and ‘green’ and said they’d have to wait ‘til Christmas to see them. But how are they supposed to understand?”

It’s now that I realise Audive is crying – she’s doing so silently, looking down, either because she is contemplating her bump, or so the children around us don’t see (perhaps both). “Hey…” I put my hand on her arm, “it won’t be like this forever”. I say this as much to reassure myself as her. I don’t know what will happen really. “By the time your little one is at school, there’ll be a new government – people won’t keep voting for this lot, they can’t. Not since fees have gone up again for us younger people.”

“The older generation will. And there’s always more of them because they just keep going and getting older – so long as their hair and eyes aren’t getting taxed and while we all pay for their medical care with every buggering move we make. I don’t see colour coming back any time soon. Jack always wanted to buy his first baby an Everton shirt, but we could never afford that shade of blue. Our child might not even know what blue is – they’ll have found a way to tax the sky soon.”  Now she’s really sobbing. Some of the children are watching – the ones from her class look worried.

“There’s always holidays” suggests Asmira.  Audive snorts. Nobody can afford to go away these days. It’s not that the prices of travel have gone up too badly, but the constant taxing of all things bright and beautiful is sucking everyone dry. And I could swear sometimes they plant things, just to catch us out. My boyfriend walked through the same concrete park every day to and from work for four years, and it was always as colourless as life itself. Then one day eight weeks ago, out of nowhere, sprang some daffodils and he stopped to look at them. He was caught on camera and the next day, bam! A fine arrived. Although we fought a bit about it, I eventually had to admit I’d have stared at them too. Aside from the fact daffodils in autumn would be an event in any time, nobody except the mega wealthy has seen flowers for years.

“Can you save what you’d be spending on the MRT until the baby is born? You could buy a football shirt with that, or at least something blue.” I suggest. (As usual, women have it worse than men economically. MRT stands for Monthly Red Tax.) Audive just shakes her head. “I was behind on my payments anyway. I’m just clearing the debt while I’m pregnant.” She takes a deep breath and composes herself, before shovelling in the last mouthful of cabbage. “I swear it tasted paler today”, she muses.

I think sadly for a moment about my satsuma, which Dylan is thoughtfully sharing with his friends. When I was little a satsuma would have been discarded, and sweets a cause for celebration and sharing. I contemplate that now nobody can afford sweets, surely at least dentist bills must be lower. Then I reflect that this probably means dentists are going out of business, and sweet manufacturers for that matter. It makes me sad.

Unable to face another mouthful of nothing noodles, I put down my fork. The bell rings anyway, signalling lunch is over.


Word count: 875