Title: Dr. Sellout or: How I Learned to Stop Writing About the War and Love the Price of Dairy

Author: Charlotte Simmonds

In: Sport 41: 2013

Publication details: Fergus Barrowman, 2014, Wellington

Part of: Sport

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IV      Abstract Concerns about the Consumption of Halal Gelatine

I worried that, being stuck in the attic for so long, my main concern would not be lack of privacy, lack of stimulation, it would be things like, ‘Oh, Becks has bought us Fresh’n’Fruity yoghurt again!’

‘What’s wrong with Fresh’n’Fruity?’

‘Nothing, nothing, I love it, it’s my favourite,’ I’d mumble, shuffling round the attic sideways, and of course, bent in half on account of the low ceiling.

It would be things like the yoghurt containing halal gelatine, and so I’d start carrying on this dialogue in my head that went, but why should I care about halal gelatine? I can’t eat that, I’m Jewish. But I’m not actually Jewish. Well, it depends on how you look at it. But I’m not religious. But I don’t want to eat it. And I’m a vegetarian. But I eat gelatine anyway. Yes, but not halal gelatine. But I shouldn’t care if it’s halal or not. But gelatine’s not an ingredient of yoghurt to start with! The real ingredient is cream! They’re just trying to sell us that fake Greek yoghurt without the Greek yoghurt fat content! All this proves is that it’s cheap yoghurt! But why should we have to get this stuff? Because there’s a war on, we’ve got no money. If I want to go out there in the street and get myself shot for being an almost-Jew when there’s a war on and I want some yoghurt, go ahead, be my guest. Okay, maybe I will. But why do we always have to buy the halal yoghurt? Because Hakim’s a Muslim. Be more culturally sensitive. But he’s not a real Muslim. He was born a Muslim! He can’t change that. But Hakim’s GAY! He was born gay! He can’t change that. So we have to buy halal yoghurt now because this gay Muslim who doesn’t go to page 112 mosque still won’t eat non-halal? I don’t even eat kosher! But I’m not even Jewish! But why do we have to buy yoghurt with gelatine in it anyway?

And on and on until I started completely flipping out and going all schizo on Len and Hakim, and I wouldn’t be able to own up to either of them that actually, as a secular, erudite, pinnacle of left-wing education, 21st-century, multilingual, emancipated technophile, I didn’t want to eat halal gelatine just for no damn good reason except it made me feel uncomfortable, especially when outside a war between the whole country and the 2% of the world’s population that were the true rationalists and atheists was raging, so I’d have to make up an excuse and I would have to say that I didn’t want to eat this yoghurt because gelatine isn’t a real yoghurt ingredient, and I disapprove on points of health and traditional yoghurt-making and vegetarianism and they would all remark, see, see, see what culinary snobbery our cushioned western lives have brought us to. That’s what started this whole war. Oh, I am feeling foolish about this already and the war hasn’t even begun.