To Everyone

If you should see me in Mercadona hovering near the chilled meat section with a vacuous expression on my face will you please take me by the arm and lead me gently to a place of greater safety, such as Household Products for instance. Or better still, cake and bread.

Here’s why:

I like the delicate flavour of rabbit, but I don’t like the bones. It seems to me that the bone-to-meat ratio is far too high. Also many of the bones are so thin and flimsy that separating them from their covering of meat is so fiddly and time-consuming that the effort involved is not commensurate with the reward.

Thus I don’t buy rabbit. However, on this fateful day while roaming the chilled meat in my usual vague and unfocussed way I came across Conejo Troceado. I snapped smartly to attention – Ha! Chopped up rabbit! No bones!

I swooped on a pack, turned it over a few times just to be sure. Yes, nice little chunks of rabbit meat, just ready to be cooked and eaten.

It wasn’t going to be eaten now, so I decided to freeze it. My freezer is quite small, and the plastic containers that the meat is sold in are quite big, so if I want to put more than four items in the freezer I have to re-package them into freezer bags and employ the squish method of packing.

Calmly I ripped the plastic covering off the container and reached in to take out the first chunk of rabbit.

As my hand contacted the portion my calm disappeared a great deal faster than dew in the morning sun; my fingers grasped bone!

I wasn’t exactly furious, but I was displeased. I felt the labelling was misleading – Conejo Troceado implies that the contents had been carefully jointed by a suitably qualified person with a plethora of NVQ certificates and Health and Safety awards, whereas it looked to me more like it had been Troceado’d by a drunk in the dark!

Nevertheless I persevered – I’d paid good money for it, I wasn’t going to admit defeat and throw it away. I removed one bony piece after another until I reached the bottom of the container – and there, looking at me was an eye!

I recoiled, but the eye continued to stare at me with a disconcertingly steady gaze.

I know my own limits, and eyes are beyond that limit. I fetched some kitchen roll, wrapped up the head complete with the offending eye, and binned it.

So, if you see me in any danger of buying rabbit again, please stop me! It’s for my own good!