The End of Men(75)
Oh, and I didn’t die. That’s also really helped with the promotions.
Back to more important matters. Like crisps.
“They’re an important source of calories in many people’s diets, they don’t go bad so there’s minimal food waste when we make them and people like them. And before you tell me, yet again, that that isn’t a factor, let me assure you, it is.”
The rather serious-looking dietitian with glasses too big for her face sits back. She’s not going to win this, not against Marianne, who looks positively murderous.
“Shall we take a brief tea break?” I suggest before regretting my choice of words. Marianne looks, for a moment, like she wants to cry. The table relaxes and people wander over to the drinks trolley, where a paltry selection of water and squash awaits them. Squash, honestly, it’s like being at a children’s birthday party. If I’d known that tea would run out as quickly as it did, I’d have stockpiled it up to the ceiling.
“I just miss it so much.” Marianne sighs as she comes and sits next to me.
“It made everything better, didn’t it.”
She nods mournfully. “I started looking into the possibilities of tea farming in the South of England a few days ago.” I look at her doubtfully. “I know, it was a long shot. Turns out, there’s a reason tea is grown in India and Africa, not in Kent. I thought maybe climate change might have opened some possibilities but I’m assured that climate change has halted and will likely reverse now that half the planet’s died and taken their poxy emissions with them.”
Marianne is that rare thing: a competent civil servant with a sense of humor. The head of the UK’s Rationing Program and chair of its board of directors. A board I’m also on, hence my reluctant presence in this room of twenty people whose combined mission is to keep the UK population alive and fed. The sooner the global food trade picks up so I don’t have to attend these meetings, the better.
“How did you end up in the rationing program?” I ask, a question I’ve been meaning to ask her for months.
“I started in the service when I was twenty-four. I was a lawyer for a few years before that but it didn’t suit me. I prefer the abstraction of being a civil servant. The policy, whatever it might be, affects thousands or millions of people but you don’t know them. I like that compartmentalizing.”
I nod, the thinking familiar to me. “I’d have been a terrible police officer, dealing with individuals. Nightmare. So how did you end up running this though?”
“Over the course of thirty years in the civil service I built up a reputation as a ‘generalist,’ which is a kind way of saying ‘someone who gets bored easily.’ I moved around a lot and became a ‘fixer,’ cleaning up messes. When the Plague began—gosh, even after all these years it still feels so medieval saying that, doesn’t it—I was working in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.”
Interesting but not surprising. Marianne is one of the most pragmatic people I’ve ever met, with common sense in spades. I can just imagine her taking charge of a disaster and sorting it out without throwing her weight around.
“You came up with the idea for the program?”
Marianne nods. “Yep, and the director general of the Environment Department was an enormous support. I suggested in December 2025 that we needed a rationing program, he told me to set one up, the legislation went through a month after that and here we are. I would tell you that the nutritionist, Donna, is not normally as annoying as she’s being today, but that would be a lie so you’ll just have to get used to her. I just want to clobber her over the head with a stapler, I mea—”
“Donna! How nice of you to join us,” I say, cutting Marianne off with a bright smile.
Donna straightens her glasses and looks at us both resolutely. “We need to talk about the treat ration size. It’s just not right, Marianne, you don’t—”
Marianne sighs and says “Donna” in the same weary tone I used to use when my daughter was being a moron.
“The treat ration is not being reduced. There are a number of factors, as you well know, in the creation of the ration amounts and one—just one—of those factors is nutrition. If you had it your way, we’d all be eating hemp seeds and fourteen portions of raw vegetables a day. The allowance for crisps, sweets, alcohol and cake, fun things with caloric but no nutritional value that help make a day that little bit cheerier, has value in preventing starvation and keeping people happy. Do you want people to be sad, Donna?”
Donna splutters indignantly. “I want people to be healthy, and there’s no reason for so many resources to be used for making cake.”
“Well the board and I disagree with you, so you’ll just have to lump it,” Marianne snaps as I make a mental note to stay on her good side.
“We need a new fucking dietitian,” Marianne mutters before calling the meeting back to order. It’s odd being on this side of the curtain of the rationing program. I remember when my daughter and I collected our rationing books from the local police station. Bright blue, hastily printed in Gateshead, they looked so old-fashioned it was hard to believe we were in the twenty-first century. From January 24, 2026, the United Kingdom officially had a rationing program for the first time since July 4, 1954. In some ways the rationing system replicated the old system, from the Second World War, and in others it had to be wildly different. I think if you gave every person in the UK a basket of fresh vegetables, fruit, meat, dairy and bread now, they’d starve. Our ration books allow us to buy an amount of food each week, which can include processed food like soups and ready meals but must have a mix of carbs, protein, vegetables and fruits. We all get a small allotment of meat and fish unless you’re vegetarian, and everyone gets some eggs and dairy. The vegans went nuts over the lack of opt-out over eggs or dairy but the government made statements about vegan replacements “not being easily available in the UK.” There was a massive marketing campaign to make sure the population understood why we needed rationing and how the allowances had been calculated. It was thought, rightly, that transparency would reduce the risk of anger and unrest. To be honest, I think people were just relieved to have a system in place. Panic buying had set in back in December and the shortages were worrying.