Open Writing

The sign outside doesn't say Johnson, Family Butcher. By long tradition, it says Family JOHNSON Butcher. The name in the middle varies from shop to shop, of course.

There’s always a strapping, grey-tipped man with a striped apron and an armoury of fearsome implements jangling in the scabbard at his waist. He looks the very model of a modern major general, ready to go to war with any intruder. When he talks to you, he addresses you like a military parade ground.
There’s always the tall, gangling man. He’s either the butcher’s brother or his brother-in-law. He carries a sort of predestined subservience. It is, you feel, his Duty to be Number Two in the glass and marble fortress.

He seems to spend his life refurbishing the display counter, the window slab and the rear shelves, with fresh offerings conjured up from those mysterious, walled-away rooms full of carcasses somewhere at the back. You know, the bit you never see if you are The Public. This man doesn’t talk to you. He talks to the person behind you.

Wherever you go, city, suburb, town or country shopping centre, it’s always the same family that miraculously appears behind the butcher’s counter. Somehow, they get there before you and spring up to await your arrival.

There’s always a lady with a permanent smile, hastily painted on her wise weather-beaten facade, and with the remnants of last Saturday’s hair-do beaten up in birds-nest disorder. She is the Mother Figure of the establishment, the Listener, the Sympathiser.

She specialises in serving women, children, and insecure men who aren’t quite sure how to conduct themselves in the sacred precincts. And she seems to have an intimate knowledge of the family history of the woman standing next to you, asking tactful questions about errant sons and wandering daughters while casting Meaningful Glances at other people in the queue.
There is always a boy, a sort of family apprentice, who is the adolescent clone of either the butcher or the tall man or the permanently smiling lady. He must be a son, or a nephew. His hair is short, usually curly, but never trendily styled. It’s the sort of hair that is short enough and sensible enough not to be Disapproved Of by the modern major general.

He fusses, like the rest of the family, wrapping each kilo of slimmer’s mince as if it were a fragile piece of Czechoslovakian lead crystal for your Auntie. But when he goes to the cold, dark back room, he re-emerges with his own height and weight of chops or steaks. The boy does not actually talk. Not to customers, at least. He exchanges secretive comments with other members of the family. Perhaps he is in training for post-apprenticeship conversation with customers.

Sometimes there is a Saturday morning helper, in the form of a muscular man with a stentorian voice and a profound knowledge of the local football team’s abilities and prospects which he shares with the world at large. He talks to the man who is just coming into the door, somehow assuming that you are part of the conversation but accidental to the occasion. When he serves you, he throws your selection into its double wrapping of plastic and paper, impounding it as though it had just been arrested and this-is-for-its-own-good.

Conversation with anyone in the family in the butcher’s shop is not easy, unless you follow football (or cricket in the summer) or wish to hear about someone’s niece’s recent surgery. I did try, once. I asked why one cut of steak was given a fancy name instead of being called by its correct name, buttock. I think the word shocked the entire family into speechless horror; the mother temporarily lost her smile, and sent the son into the back room.

Now there is a whole new breed of butchers. You can recognise them by the wonderful aromas that emanates from their shops — smokehouse, herbs, and spices. The glass-fronted counter displays a vast range of pre-mixed casseroles, Italian sausages, Greek lamb, Indian chicken, Cambodian curry, German meat loaf, a world of culinary delight. These shops are inhabited by an entirely different family, but that’s another story.

© Copyright 2007 Brian Barratt