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Today I learnt that Mogford had died. That’s to say, the short story competition about food I had entered for five years running had stopped.
So, a story comes to mind about Mogford liberated from food. More about a person, a boy. Food doesn’t enter, except to say he was heavy; that may have been from food, but more likely just from life, as the fat was distributed evenly. You could say he was strong or muscular, but I prefer to think of him as fat.
So my thoughts take flight, free from food, more about this person of the same name as the prize. He would be old now like me, and like me he may have heard the news, being a clever literary fella, that this prize had passed on; and like me he may regret not bothering to enter this year, and ponder on the loss of the prize that bore his name; but this is unlikely, as such a coincidence is rare.
So, about the Mogford for whom food was just fuel (let us suppose). Although he may be just the man now to think about food every minute or so and plan his meals or ingredients like a chef; but that’s unlikely, as he had no special regard for food as a boy, and one would have expected that inclination to occur along with stubble and a low voice, which certainly did appear well before any of the rest of us.
Also unlikely is that said Mogford is sharing this space to ponder such things, him being a dull sort of fella, not literary at all or clever, but just the mind of an ordinary boy living in an ordinary house that faced onto the main road but set back so it was quiet and dark enough for all of them to sleep soundly at night, even when the cars passed with full beam.
For sleep, rest, and joy I say this Mogford was undeserved, undeserved I would say many times – undeserved as we all knew him, or at least I knew him, to be a cheat and a bully, with just enough body weight to crush us and make us like him, or so he thought; because, as I said, he didn’t ponder on anything; he just did things like win or succeed or get prizes or get As when we got Fs.
This Mogford could blow a trumpet and use the word syncopation, and when Jan asked his sister to show her knickers, he hit him, hit him like a cowboy on the jaw in front of his sister and her friends while we waited for the bus and all applauded as Jan cried not in pain but from injustice – as he hadn’t any interest in his sister, nor any sister, but only in Civil War cards and country dancing.
This particular Mogford was supreme, like the fiercest, bravest trooper splitting the throat of the Confederate officer toppled from his horse. He rose and rose, and he knew economics and debating before anybody else; he could talk in words that lifted him high, despite his weight, which by now was clearly in part to do with a diet too rich in things that make you grow outwards as well as upwards. Jan made dance his defence, not the wisest choice; and this earned him many split throats and other injuries.
Has our Mogford continued to grow as a man, untroubled by Jan’s dancing, which despite its bucolic roots took on a cynical tone when he struck it up as he struggled to his feet having tumbled from his horse for the fifth Tuesday in a row? Does he write stories about food, or just eat without writing as most of us do? I believe he does both; after all, writing nourishes
the soul, and he will need that now that he might be just a soul, his body being no more than a competition that has stopped.
January 2, 2023