A Story For Nick Webb
A Story For Nick Webb, 1949 – 2012
by Gwyn Headley
I was thinking of my old friend Nick the other day, and I decided to write this story for him. I hope he’d have enjoyed it.
Few people outside Scotland know that Fife is actually a Kingdom (or outside Cheshire that it is a County Palatinate; that is what made the Cheshire Cat grin). Our story takes place in Fife, in the city of Perth, the capital of the Kingdom. (I must find out who the present King of Fife is. Is it the Queen?)
In the 1930s Fife was the most heavily forested county, acre for acre, in the United Kingdom. War, and the depredations of the Forestry Commission in the 1950s, led to the virtual desertification of the area, so at the start of the new century the council planned a public private partnership enterprise to encourage tree planting throughout the Kingdom. There were grants, tax breaks, awards, prizes, fairs, celebrations and a myriad of other events across the land.
One food company decided to hold an Eating Contest, perhaps more suited to the American Wild West than a sedate Scottish Kingdom. Of course all the prizes were trees; winners would be awarded a number of trees to be planted in their name according to the amount of food they could put back.
The Scots are nothing if not good publicists, and news of the contest spread internationally.
Steaming in his sauna in Sundsvall was strapping Swede Sven Söderstrøm, winner of multiple Eater of the Year awards and closer of multiple All You Can Eat restaurants across the USA. He read of the contest with interest and although there was no cash prize, the glory and the ecological soundness of the idea tickled his Swedish fancy. So together they travelled to Fife to enter the contest.
Sven fancied the Fish category. Sundsvall had a fish-based economy, and he was a noted ichthyophage. What he didn’t notice was that the Fish category was divided into Freshwater and Marine, and he had picked Freshwater. He wasn’t accustomed to eating carp; he thought it had a muddy flavour. Nevertheless he studied the options. The deal was this: if you managed to eat up to five fish, you got a tree planted. Up to ten, you got two. Fifteen, three. Nobody was expected to be able to eat more than fifteen, but Sven, with a little smile on his huge face, enquired of the organisers what would happen if he downed twenty or more. The horrified committee huddled together and returned their verdict with weak smiles: for every five fish consumed, he’d win a tree. “No limit?” he asked silkily. “No limit,” quavered the organisers.
The day dawned, and the choice of freshwater fish was placed before the contestants. There were tench, dace, carp and bream, all relatively unfamiliar to the massive Swede. Showing no weakness or hesitation, he opted for the tench. With knife and fork buried in his huge fists, he waited impassively for the dishes to be placed in front of him.
He began to eat. An excitable American sitting next to him had eaten three before Sven had finished his first, but had to be carried out halfway through his fourth. Sven ploughed inexorably on. A smattering of applause greeted the fifth fish and the award of the second tree, but everyone was waiting for the anticipated forest.
Suddenly disaster struck. In the middle of the eighth fish, Sven suddenly stopped eating. His eyes clouded over. “Are you all right?” hissed his Swedish fancy urgently. There was no response. Breaths were held around the hall. Finally Sven looked up. “I am buffering,” he announced. Moments later he resumed his implacable consumption. The crowd sighed in relief.
But worse was to come. The tenth fish arrived and looked at Sven with the same expression that Sven looked at it. He swayed from side to side before staggering to his feet, and with a mighty roar he vomited all over the committee as they uselessly scrambled for safety.
Sensation. The hall erupted. Nothing in the annals of fish eating competitions in Fife had ever happened to match this. How they would remember this in years to come! How would they remember this in years to come?
The Central Fife Times and Advertiser scooped the story. They stopped the presses and rushed out a special edition with a big black headline:
WON TWO TREES FOR FIFE: SICK SVEN ATE NINE TENCH!
