And He Resigned Himself

This is the story of Harry Webber. Did you ever hear the story about the deaf chicken that crossed the road and was sent up in a flurry of blood and feathers? Poor little thing. Well, Harry was that chicken.

            And the operative word here is was. I knew him a fair few years, and I’m surprised he lasted ‘til thirty-two, to be honest. You see, Harry was a man of impeccable moral uprightness – but also of impeccable logic.

            Harry was a vegetarian from the age of twenty onwards. He’d make soups, vegetarian paella, seafood salads, baked salmon, Spanish omelettes – but every now and again, he’d go home and his old mum would give him a big bag of goodies, and in this bag of goodies he’d find sausages, bacon... you see, if he were given animal flesh he wouldn’t let it go to waste; waste was a bigger evil than carnivorous extravagance, he thought. So, when he’d go to dinner parties, if he hadn’t asked for a vegetarian option, he’d eat what was given him on the plate.

            Harry also loved hemp – what an amazingly productive material! Strong, it could be made into clothing, furniture, recyclable plastics – it was crucial in 16^th century ship-building. Only, he didn’t own any hemp clothing – his family would always buy him clothing from Debenhams, Next, George: all clothing made mostly from nylon, all clothing that used fossil fuels in their production. But never mind – maybe one day he’d meet some vegetarian friends, people who, unlike his family, cared enough to buy him such things as hemp. And he could return the favour – oh, what glorious days! The salad days, the salad days would finally come – and after the meat days!

            But no; he waited, and waited, and waited, but no one came; maybe they were all at dinner parties or at home, resigned to the fact that unfaulting logic would always get in the way of their aspirations.

            Harry was a keen supporter of renewable energy – energy for the here and now: tidal, wind, geothermal; he’d even heard of gyms in which the equipment powered everything or clubs in which the kinetic energy of dancing would be transferred to electrical energy and power the lights and equipment – and just wait for fusion! Give it ten or twenty years... but that was too far ahead and the technology was too uncertain. He’d learnt all of this in an evening class.

            Despite this, however, Harry resigned himself to nuclear and coal-fired energy: nuclear was good enough, wasn’t it? And it was safe – enough. And coal? Well, the public didn’t care – stations were running down in England, anyway – but China, on the other hand.... What could be done? It was out of his hands. So he’d champion tidal and other innovative forms of renewable energy, but his heart lacked the passion of resistance.

            At the age of thirty-two, Harry killed himself – but it was quite accidental. You see, after one dinner party talking about the sanctity of life, how no life form is qualitatively better than any other, he cooked some underprepared chicken and contracted E. coli. Despite all he knew about microbial biology and the dangers of certain bacteria, he never consulted a doctor. His case became serious, and by the time his family got him admitted it was too late – he was dead within two weeks. I heard through the grapevine they comforted him, brought him grapes, fruit juice, fresh carnations, and his mother brought him a plate of sausage rolls – which he ate.

            And so, on March 23^rd 2011, at the cage of thirty-two, Harry Connick Samuel Webber died from immune-deficiency complications. And who are you? I hear you ask. Well, it doesn’t matter who I am. This is Harry’s story, and I am just an old friend. But there is one final twist to the story: I found a diary the day after his death when clearing out his apartment, and I started reading it. The things I’ve relayed are based on his thoughts and musings. Halfway through the diary, I read of his wishes to be buried in a wicker casket when he toddled off life’s short plank, and I saw to it that his family was informed.

            I read all of this in his diary – in his leather diary that his mother bought him for his twenty-fifth birthday. Harry was too young to go, and the world was far too much for him to fathom. Like two diametrically opposed dishes piled onto the same plate, steak and kidney pie served with a mozzarella and basil salad, he came into the world, and in the same fashion he left, resigning himself to the obscurity of life’s palette, and the deafening logic of propriety.