An earnest plea

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!

Cuckoo

There are not many occasions when I am lost for words. Speech comes very naturally to me, and I can generally find something to talk about. Should there not be a handy human with whom to share my thoughts, I can happily prattle the hours away in discussion with the dog, or a tree – even rocks have their conversational moments.

I have always maintained that my tongue is the fittest part of my body, as it gets the most exercise. I would describe myself as a multi-subject conversationalist, though the less kind have been known to say that I am a chatterbox, while those who wish to impress with their knowledge of the English language would call me loquacious or garrulous.

Whichever, it all means that I talk a lot! However, Kate and Nancy have also been blessed with the gift of the gab, to when we are together it’s not surprising that the conversation purrs along at a good rate, and covers a multitude of topics.

The three of us were sitting chattering like budgies on a perch, with Pete at the end, providing a sensibility factor to our flights of fancy. For no particular reason the conversation turned to The Great Hereafter, and Kate expressed the desire to come back as a dog similar to her own, sleek and streamlined, and capable of breaking the sound barrier. Nancy, who owns a cat which can trace its forebears directly back to the sabre tooth tiger, went for the feline option. I gave the matter great thought; ‘I’m going to be a cuckoo.’ I announced.

Seeing a look of blankness on their faces I explained: ‘A cuckoo is a protected species, so less likely to get shot. It overwinters in nice warm Africa, it oversummers in nice green England, and it has no parental responsibilities – it simply dumps its egg in someone else’s nest, for them to run themselves ragged bringing up the chick!’

I thought I had made a good case for the cuckoo, a bird that has adapted marvellously to the Me culture of no responsibility – in fact as I see it the only improvement it could make would be to persuade RyanAir to provide a free Bird Class service so that the tiring bi-annual flying bit could be undertaken on its behalf by an aeroplane.

I could see my logic impressed them. At this moment Pete, who had been sitting quietly wearing an air of superiority and a yellow shirt, said ‘You’d never be happy as a cuckoo.’
‘Why not?’ I countered defensively.
‘Because you’d only ever be able to say the one word – cuckoo!’

Ouch! How the truth can hurt!