Animal. Equine. Metal-shoed beast of burden and co-star of so many John Wayne movies. (See also under ‘Silver. Hi-Ho’, ‘Rum. Red,’ and ‘Ed. Mister,’)
This is the cowboy’s four-legged friend that so many Britons find perfectly acceptable to ride, bet on, hire to pull their Cockney friend’s coffin to church, hunt foxes with and force to jump Aintree fences far higher than its safety parameters and the Earth’s gravitational pull permits.
However we still find it totally unacceptable to eat the damn things. (Even though we eat practically everything else that lives on a farm – except of course for the rats, dogs, swans, farmer’s wife and the front axle of the tractor).
Meanwhile, ‘the pig’ (swine) – that does practically nothing in its lifetime but eat, sleep and give birth, wallows in sh!t all day and offers nothing to the world other than a thinly-sliced accompaniment to one’s fried egg and mushrooms – most definitely is!
Even its hairy skin is oven-baked in its own deep fat until it is as hard as a bullet and burned to a crisp. Then, and only then, is it served with apple sauce and swallowed practically whole – just to ‘get it down’ and talk about ‘mum and the old days of beef dripping’.
That all having been said, the knowledge that any meat has been allowed to be pumped full of drugs before human consumption and that our government has been fully aware for months that this deception has been going on is a far more serious issue.
It’s just as well dear old Bernard Matthews is dead or he might have discovered that even some of his name-brand products were becoming more ‘bute-e-full’ than even he desired.
But sadly, the vomit-inducing thought that us Brits have just been tricked into eating ‘Black Beauty’ in our Lasagne suppers ‘blinkers’ us all to the british government’s obvious cover-up and our European neighbours’ evil deception – just as much as the ones worn by the racehorse in the ’3:10 at Newmarket’ ‘that gave himself four furlongs from home so that we might eat’.
‘Hi Ho, Dinnertime!’
