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The clock had just struck midday and in Farmer Fred’s, Julian knew the writing was on the wall. Big business had been slandered, acquaintances had been shaken-down, social media accounts had been suspended – apparently, labelling photographs of rare tropical skin diseases as cases of ‘bulgur wheat-withdrawal’ and ‘flesh-toxin syndrome’ broke some kind of copyright law. Ultimately, Julian’s efforts had barely made a dent. With all legal and / or practical solutions gone, there remained only tactic left available to him: Barricading himself into his office.
The filing cabinet now heaved across the door, Julian rolled his two swivel chairs alongside and began to load one of them up with the wads of A4 paper for the printer. This wasn’t going to be pretty but thankfully, he was no stranger to a sit-in.
Back in the days of his eco-terrorism – when it was still fashionable – he had been known as something of an expert in the art of ‘sticking it to The Man’ through disruptive lounging. Site occupations to show you wouldn’t just accept the research and conclusions of any-old government-appointed, scientifically-backed, official body. Chaining yourself to things to highlight issues that the majority of society weren’t overly-fussed about. Generally, causing a nuisance for about a month and then drifting off to gripe about something new. Those were the days. Had it not been for the tragic emergence of his mould allergy, he might even have turned pro.
Setting down a cheese plant on the seat of the second wheeled-chair, Julian fought to steady his nerves ready for the inevitable confrontation. The situation was dire. Today, any form of non-violent protest to make the debt collectors think twice was an option – with the exception of a dirty protest; proven effectiveness aside, it wasn’t a variant to use on your own premises, and particularly not so when you had already made the cleaning lady redundant.
Replacing the plant back on the bookshelf, Julian sat down and looked about him. All around were the things that had been listed on the repossession document. The till. The weighing scales. His laptop; he would set fire to that rather than turn it over – the hard drive, at least. The revolving leaflet rack, complete with its selection of heavily-vetted, sustainable recreation activities. And, of course, all of the stock.
He couldn’t let them take the stock. Did they have any idea how upset the impoverished farmers in the arse-end-of-nowhere would be if they discovered their hard-grown crops had fallen into the hands of a faceless corporation and then been sold to people who didn’t appreciate the absolute agony they had gone through to pass the array of checklists so that ethical businesses – like Farmer Fred’s – could sell them on for a five-hundred-percent mark-up? The poor souls would be sobbing themselves to sleep in their mud huts.
DING! The bell sounded back out in the shop.
Julian kicked himself. Drat! Should have locked the door! Oh, well. He was holed up in here now – plus so was anything worth taking.
He remained silent. Was it the debt collectors? Maybe they would think he had loaded up his van and driven off – actually, in hindsight that might have been a better plan? He listened.
“Hello! Hello! Is anybody home?”
Recognising the voice, Julian rolled his eyes. It was that woman with the prematurely-grey hair – one of his very few regular customers. The one who was more cartilage than flesh. At least he wouldn’t have to speak to her today – to listen to her boring recollections about whatever obscure anti-vaccination article she had read recently.
“Julian!” came her voice. “Are you here? Are you open?”
He scowled. With ninety percent of the things from the shelves now rammed into his office, the place was very obviously not in a normal state of trading.
“Hello?” she pushed. “I need my elderberry and echinacea tea! If I don’t get it, I could have one of my frightening episode—”
TWANG!
CRASH!
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!”
Julian gritted his teeth. What the hell did she think she was doing behind his counter? Also, the tripwire! The one connected to the bag of Fire In The Hole-brand chilli powder that he had balanced on top of the air-conditioning unit that he swore to all his crusty customers that he never turned on.
In what he genuinely believed was in full-compatibility with his planned peaceful protest and indeed the business’ core values, Julian had installed organic, fair-trade, theoretically-non-lethal and therefore vegan, anti-personnel devices all over the shop. It was very simple: If you weren’t somewhere you shouldn’t be, you didn’t get hurt. There was nothing unethical about that.
“Aaaaargh! Aaaaargh! Aaaaargh!” CRASH! “Heeelllppp!” CRASH! SMASH!
Julian winced. Goodness knew what sort of mess she was making out there.
DING! The door opened.
The screaming faded.
Silence.
Julian swallowed. She would be fine. A few eye baths. Maybe a trip to the hospital if her vision didn’t completely return within four or five hours. It would be interesting to see how long her objections to cows’ milk lasted today. For a moment he sat thinking; dare he step out and reset it? Clearly, it had been effective. He looked to the pile of furniture against the door. No, the repo men could be here at any time.
His palms were now tingling and beneath his arms, his shirt was damp. He took a deep breath then turned towards the corner. Not normally a religious man – despite looking like a cargo-panted version of the Messiah himself – it seemed an appropriate point to cover all the bases. The time can come for a quick ‘insurance’ prayer.
Scooting over on his wheelie chair, Julian stopped just in front of the small split pea-based shrine he had set up on top of the unopened boxes of headed-notepaper – the old version where they had substituted ‘organic’ with a visually-similar but far less-suitable word and which he still needed to get around to recycling.
He cleared his throat. “Oh, Len-til!” he chanted. This felt ridiculous. Thank God the place was empty. “Oh, mighty Len-til – independent vegan God of Fibre.” He lifted a bag of wholegrain flour and was about to throw a handful but then looked to the carpet and thought better of it. “I ask you today to deliver a miracle – like you did with the avocados, but not so much the coconut oil. I request you prevent the repossessions by the evil, capitalist, carnivorous bank and its flesh-eating infidels who taunt us with their pudgy faces and pleasant dining-experien—”
DING! The doorbell sounded once again.
Julian dropped the bag of flour, accidentally knocking the sacred split-pea offerings into the gap between the carpet and skirting board. It was ok; if Len-til was so capable, he would be able to get them out. He listened, his heart in his mouth. Was it the debt collectors?
“Hello!” A man’s voice echoed along the corridor. “Hello!” came the voice again. “Mr Farmer Fred?”
Julian breathed a sigh of relief. Definitely no one capable of holding a position of authority, even if that position did just entail putting things from a list into a van.
“Hello!” came the voice again. “I’m here about the article!”
Article? thought Julian. He frowned. Which article?
“I think I’ve got an organic couscous-shortage complex!” came the voice. “My feet are incredibly itchy and they’ve got little red spots on them. It’s worse when the weather’s hot and when I don’t change my socks. Hello!”
Julian looked down at one of the bags-for-life he had stuffed with five-hundred-gram, faux-brown-paper plastic packets. For a second, he contemplated going out there – a sale was a sale, after all. He looked to the filing cabinet. No. He would never get that dragged back into place – his shoulder would already never be the same as it was.
He held his breath, listening.
“Hello!” came the man’s voice again. “He-llo!” The voice cracked. “Please! Pl-ease!” It cracked again. “H-elp me! I don’t th... think I’ve got lo... long le... left! PL-EASE!”
Julian began to think. What to do? Suddenly, it came to him. The chillers – they were still full!
“Ahem!” He cleared his throat. Crouching down, he pushed his face as close to the door’s keyhole as possible. “Hello, deficiency-experiencing customer!” he boomed.
He waited.
“Hello?” came the voice. “Hello? Where—”
“This is Farmer Fred!” called Julian.
“Far... Farmer Fred! Oh, thank goodness!” By the sound of it, the man was now crying. “I’m so relieved to hear from you. I urgently need cous—”
“We’ve sold out of couscous!” called Julian. “That foot condit er... terrible affliction of yours is taking over the town. You can see the state of the shop – I’ve locked myself away so I don’t catch it.”
“N...o! No, you ca... can’t have!” the man blubbed. “You have to help me! You have to!”
“Ok!” shouted Julian – hopefully quickly enough to stop the man from flooding the place. “Luckily, we do have an alternative therapy for athlete’s fo... um... couscous-deficiency syndrome.”
“Shortage-complex!” came back the man. “My symptoms look like couscous short—”
“Um... are you certain?” shouted Julian. He had posted so many of these things it was hard to keep track. “One’s benign and the other’s malignant. You don’t want to underestimate these things.”
“Oh, Jesus!” came a gasp. “Ok! Yes, let’s assume the worst one, then. What... what do I do, Doctor?”
Julian looked thoughtful. “Go to the chiller, the one on the end. The one near the Last Resort essential oils stand.”
Julian waited, swinging himself around on his seat as he did so.
“I’m there, now what?”
“Blow out the candles in the burner and then carefully lift down the buckets of hot sesame oil – incidentally, very rich in antioxidants and phenols – then move away the stepladder and the cardboard boxes and then pull off the ‘Danger Radiation’ packaging tape. Watch out for the low-in-whichever-LDL-is-the-bad-one imitation butter that’s smeared near the top of the stairs. There are scissors in the drawer by the wall if you need...”
Light banging and scraping began to sound in the shop.
A moment later and the voice came again. “Ok. Now what?”
“You see the tofu on the second shelf – the extra firm, silken variety?” called Julian. “That contains the same active ingredient as the couscous – but unfortunately in a much lower concentration. Ok, how many packs are there?”
Julian leant over and lifted a packet of macadamias from a box.
“Thirteen!” shouted the man.
“Oooosh!” Julian opened the bag and popped a nut in his mouth. “That’s...” CHOMP! CHOMP! “...pushing it a bit. It’ll be ok if you’re only about five-foot-tall. How um...?” CHOMP!
“Six-foot, six!”
Julian gritted his teeth. Hopefully this guy would succumb to his disease before he worked out this was a scam. Oh well, in for a penny... “Ok, to be on the safe side, I would take some of the cartons of smoothies as well – probably five or six for a larger chap like yourself. Seven if you really want to be sure of not having a relapse.”
“Ok! Oh, what flavour?”
“Um...?” Julian racked his brains. What flavours were there? They definitely all contained stuff you definitely didn’t want to liquidise and then drink. “Broccoli’s a good start,” he shouted. “Er... cabbage, spinach, aubergine? Oh, and take the ones closest to the sell-by-date; age naturally concentrates the er... anti-riboflavin vitamin J,” he looked around, “stapler, in-tray, cheese plant complex-compound ring binder-active... um... ingredients.”
Some more banging sounded out front. “Ok, got it all. Thirteen tofus and ten smoothies. What do I do? Take them all at once? Rub them on my feet?”
Julian slid a giant calculator from the desk then held it towards the keyhole before noisily rattling his fingers over the buttons. “Ok, sir. That’ll be,” he waved his hand playfully in the air, “two-hundred and thir... fifty pounds and fifty... nine pence. Cash-only, I’m afraid. Our card-reader is,” he looked at the tangle of wires alongside him, “down.”
“Ok,” called the man. “Now wha—”
“Hold the notes up to the corner near the door,” called Julian. “There’s a hidden camera in there.”
“Ok!”
Julian waited, pretending to watch. “Ok, good – they look real. Now put them in the top drawer by the counter. And um... put a bit of the sparkly mostly-obtained-from-a-sustainable-forest wrapping paper over the top.”
“Ok. Done it.”
“Great!” Julian grinned and shook his head. “So if I were you, I’d run home as fast as your diseased appendages will allow and guzzle that lot like there’s no tomorrow – which for you, there may well not be. Improvements hopefully within the next twenty-four to forty-eight months. If you’re still alive, come back next week for your repeat prescription.”
“Um... my change?”
“Sorry, how long did you say you’ve had this for?” called Julian. “Have you heard of the term ‘metastasise’?”
“Ok, ok!” Footsteps squeaked over the floor. “Thanks, Doctor! Thanks for every—” DING!
Julian stuffed in another handful of macadamia nuts then spun around on his seat. Another satisfied customer! Who said advertising on social media was ineffective!
Suddenly he focused on the window which looked out into the alleyway. Outside, a large van had just pulled up and now getting out of it, were several men dressed in the same grey overalls as the repo man from this morning.
Julian looked to the clock. 12.10.
He took a deep breath then tilted the blinds.
It was time for the occupation to begin.