A Meaty Treat

A Meaty Treat

27th February, 2025

A striped red and once white awning juts out over the butcher’s shop front, protecting the window display from any unexpected bursts of sunlight and excess heat, but mainly used to shelter would-be shoppers from the customary rain showers. On show are the finest cuts of meat, steak: fillet, tomahawk, t-bone, next to prepared kievs, kebabs and wellingtons. Out of sight are the sausages and the offal: livers, hearts, tripe and kidneys, their slick surfaces gleaming, their thick stench wafting under fluorescent bulbs and hissing ultraviolet fly zappers.

There’s a dog outside, beautiful, glossy, its coat a patchwork of black and mottled grey. His lead is looped through the grey metal fence that separates him from the busy road. Tethered, he sits on the damp pavement, slight tremor in his back leg, his un-twitching eyes focused on the door of the butcher’s where his owner has gone in to collect his messages. There’s a queue inside. Three butchers are at work, their white trilbys angled down towards stainless steel work surfaces smeared with blood splotches. Sawdust peppers the floor, ready to soak up any excess, metallic tainted fluids that are spilt during service.

A bell tinkles as the shop door swings open allowing a cacophony of bustling work and high pitched chatter to escape into the street along with a whiff of fresh meat. The dog lurches forward, nostrils trembling as the cloying stench of sweet death seeps outside. Muscled, tattooed forearms clench and flex against striped aprons. There is a distinct divide in the type of skill on display - two different varieties of showmanship. One demonstrates brute strength; cleavers thrust through thick cuts of beef to reveal sinews of beige coloured fat that marble crimson flesh. Pale, now useless, tubular arteries nestle with vulgarity within an otherwise flawless landscape. The other expertise is one of more overt finesse. Trimming knives used to carve and extract every ounce of off-white, viscous, rubbery fat, leaving just the lean, tender meat, which will be ground up into a pile of wriggling tunnels like the trails left by sandworms on a deserted beach.

At last, the door opens and the dog’s owner exits with a bulging poly bag in his right arm and a newspaper tucked under his left. The dog jumps to his feet, sniffs his curiosity, poking his pointy nose against the rustling bag, before returning his full attention to the butcher’s entrance as the door swings open once more. But the owner, retrieving the lead handle begins to move down the street, at a snail’s pace; he battles to drag the ravenous dog away from the butcher’s shop with its pungent offerings.