THE PIGS ARE DEAD. The night before killing day, Sunday, Victoria and I sat with our John Seymour and Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall books and read about blood puddings, offal, quartering heads, brawn, chorizo, scalding the skin, butchering, salting and all the rest of it and found the whole thing mightily daunting. Because we haven’t got a clue what we’re doing.
In the morning the phone rang. It was Mark, who was coming round with his friend Andy to kill the pigs and get us started on the whole process of converting them into edible stuff. At first I was hoping that he was ringing up to cancel so we could put it off for another day. But no, just confirming that they were on their way with tractor and trailer. On arrival, Mark and Andy backed the trailer up top the pigs’ gate. I distracted them with a bucket of food while the gate was opened. They were hungry as we’d not fed them the day before.
Eventually we enticed them into the trailer with food and water, and then drove them round to the yard. There Mark loaded a pistol and gave it to Andy, who calmly and paradoxically lovingly shot one in the head. Andy stroked the second pig behind its neck and put a shot to its head. Again, it seemed only stunned. They were dead. It is difficult to describe the experience. It is not exactly sad in a sentimental, pet-dying way. But it is intense and you want to thank the gentle pigs for dying so peacefully and giving their bodies to us. Maybe we will go vegetarian in the coming months, who can say. But certainly this is the most humane method of killing pigs: better than the slaughterhouse because there is no travelling, no waiting, no foreboding of what is to come. Certainly I could never buy bacon from the supermarket again.
We strung the pigs up by their ankles on the tractor and hoisted them into the air by the back legs. I got ready with a big bucket and Mark slit their throats. We collected the blood. He then eviscerated the animals and cut off one of their heads. I helped cut off the other. Victoria began stirring the blood in order to make blood pudding: you have to get the clots and the stringy bits out. She put the still warm livers of the pigs into the fridge. Andy said that the pigs were enormous and would weigh about 180kg. There was about an inch and a half of fat as we cut into them. I carried a head indoors: just the head alone weighed a good deal. My hands and boots were covered in pig blood.
All this makes far more hardcore, by the way, than Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, who just sends his pigs off the the slaughterhouse and then has them butchered. We killed them ourselves and butchered them ourselves.
We then dragged the pigs into the dairy and pulled them up onto large hooks which Andy had just screwed into the dairy ceiling. Now came the hardest job of all: removing the thick black bristles from the pigs’ skin. Over the years, Andy and Mark had developed a technique using a wallpaper steamer. You hold the steamer over the pig’s skin and then work over it with a knife, pulling out or chopping off the bristles. Two hours later I had barely de-bristled a ham. Well, Mark and Andy made their farewells and refused any kind of payment. Top blokes.
That evening Victoria and I stayed up till two in the morning making blood puddings and liver paté. There is no choice: you have to make these things there and then. As we speak there are 20 Spanish-style black puddings in the fridge, made with rice, onion and smoked paprika. Right now we don’t really feel like eating them. I was imagining frying up some for breakfast the next day, but when it came to it, I decided that I only wanted a bowl of muesli. Too much blood.
The next day I spent on further attempts to de-bristle the pigs. I was getting nowhere with the steamer method so I switched to blowtorch to burn the hairs off. Burning is the method recommended by William Cobbett: he puts the newly dead pigs on a bed of straw and sets fire to them two or three times. John Seymour by contrast recommends scalding: pouring bathloads of hot water over the pigs and then scraping off the loosened brsitles and a layer of skin. I also tried to saw the heads up. But this really was too much, and we decided to give this job to the butcher, who is also going to mince up the sausage meat, with which we’ll make chorizo.
I made some progress with the blowtorch, but it created a hell of a stink on the house, I also simply held a match to the longer hairs.
But when Simon - a top chef - came with his knives to do the butchering, he said that the skin was still too bristly. So as he cut the meat, I took pieces to the kitchen where I poured hot water over the skin, then scraped, and finally we shaved the skin with safety razors. What a blimmin palaver. I think next time we might try the Cobbett method.
So Simon and I busily set about chopping up the pigs. First we sawed them in half longitudinally. Then we hauled the half a carcass onto a trestle table which we’d set up in the dairy. Off came the trotters, the hams and the collar. Out came spare ribs, pork bellies and back meat for salting. We kept the book open in front of us all the time. We managed one pig on the first day. The bits variously ended up in salt, in the freezer or in a bucket of brine. I carried the huge bucket of innards to the vegetable patch and buried them in a ditch. Good food for the soil.
ENDS
From Tom Hodgkinson, editor of the Idler, comes How To Be Idle, an antidote to the work-obsessed culture which puts so many obstacles between ourselves and our dreams. Hodgkinson presents us with a laid-back argument for a new contract between routine and chaos, an argument for experiencing life to the full and living in the moment. Ranging across a host of issues that may affect the modern idler - sleep, the world of work, pleasure and hedonism, relationships, bohemian living, revolution - he draws on the writings of such well-known apologists for idleness as Dr Johnson, Oscar Wilde, Robert Louis Stevenson and Nietzsche. His message is clear: take control of your life and reclaim your right to be idle.
The Idler’s Companion, an anthology of lazy literature.
50 Tales of hell on earth. Crap Holidays brings together 50 cringe-making tales of what happens when the dream holiday turns intoa nightmare - painfully funny stories of family dysfunction and fall out, inedible food and exotic illnesses, gruesome injuries and ferocious arguments, etc.
Today I’m digging Lord Byron’s famous love poem, “She Walks in Beauty”. Byron, we remember, was the only member of the Houses of Parliament to stand up against the frame-breaker’s bill, which made being a Luddite - ie, smashing up the new machines, into a capital offence. Love and freedom, then, were his passions.
She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes:
Thus mellowed to that tender light
Which heaven to gaudy day denies.
One shade the more, one ray the less,
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face;
Where thoughts serenely sweet express
How pure, how dear their dwelling place.
And on that cheek, and o’er that brow,
So soft, so calm, yet eloquent,
The smiles that win, the tints that glow,
But tell of days in goodness spent,
A mind at peace with all below,
A heart whose love is innocent!
Today’s poem is another Edward Lear favourite, The Owl and the Pussycat, that delightfully romantic ballad about running away together and dancing by the light of the moon. It is nice, I think, that it is Pussy who proposes to the Owl, when convention might have suggested the other way around.
I
The Owl and the Pussy-cat went to sea
In a beautiful pea green boat,
They took some honey, and plenty of money,
Wrapped up in a five pound note.
The Owl looked up to the stars above,
And sang to a small guitar,
‘O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,
What a beautiful Pussy you are,
You are,
You are!
What a beautiful Pussy you are!’
II
Pussy said to the Owl, ‘You elegant fowl!
How charmingly sweet you sing!
O let us be married! too long we have tarried:
But what shall we do for a ring?’
They sailed away, for a year and a day,
To the land where the Bong-tree grows
And there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood
With a ring at the end of his nose,
His nose,
His nose,
With a ring at the end of his nose.
III
‘Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling
Your ring?’ Said the Piggy, ‘I will.’
So they took it away, and were married next day
By the Turkey who lives on the hill.
They dined on mince, and slices of quince,
Which they ate with a runcible spoon;
And hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,
They danced by the light of the moon,
The moon,
The moon,
They danced by the light of the moon.
On a heavier note, I think everyone should read this article about the people who run Facebook.
TH
Dear Beloved Forum Contributors
This is a big apology to the lovely Annie and everyone on the forum for the cruel and heartless way we pulled the forum down.
The end of the forum is meant as part of a wider campaign against the substitution of digital networking for real life (we’re also withdrawing from Myspace) and in no way meant as an insult to you all. I’ve personally enjoyed reading the witty and incisive contributions to the forum over the years.
The archive is still up there and I’m sure you can all find alternative ways of keeping in touch.
With love from Tom
I am going to start posting the odd poem on this website, to help us cope with the dreary days and long nights of winter. As I am currently going through an Edward Lear phase, we will start with his classic poem, The Jumblies. Lear, I think, is one of the masters when it comes to expressing the sadness of love and the desire we all have to run away. The Jumblies also represent the triumph of the dreamer: it seems hopeless to go to sea in a sieve, but when they come back, all those who had doubted them change their minds and decide that they too want to go to sea in a sieve, and visit the Lakes and the Torrible Zone:
They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter’s morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!
And when the Sieve turned round and round,
And every one cried, `You’ll all be drowned!’
They called aloud, `Our Sieve ain’t big,
But we don’t care a button! we don’t care a fig!
In a Sieve we’ll go to sea!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
They sailed away in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they sailed so fast,
With only a beautiful pea-green veil
Tied with a riband by way of a sail,
To a small tobacco-pipe mast;
And every one said, who saw them go,
`O won’t they be soon upset, you know!
For the sky is dark, and the voyage is long,
And happen what may, it’s extremely wrong
In a Sieve to sail so fast!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
The water it soon came in, it did,
The water it soon came in;
So to keep them dry, they wrapped their feet
In a pinky paper all folded neat,
And they fastened it down with a pin.
And they passed the night in a crockery-jar,
And each of them said, `How wise we are!
Though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long,
Yet we never can think we were rash or wrong,
While round in our Sieve we spin!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
And all night long they sailed away;
And when the sun went down,
They whistled and warbled a moony song
To the echoing sound of a coppery gong,
In the shade of the mountains brown.
`O Timballo! How happy we are,
When we live in a Sieve and a crockery-jar,
And all night long in the moonlight pale,
We sail away with a pea-green sail,
In the shade of the mountains brown!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
They sailed to the Western Sea, they did,
To a land all covered with trees,
And they bought an Owl, and a useful Cart,
And a pound of Rice, and a Cranberry Tart,
And a hive of silvery Bees.
And they bought a Pig, and some green Jack-daws,
And a lovely Monkey with lollipop paws,
And forty bottles of Ring-Bo-Ree,
And no end of Stilton Cheese.
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
And in twenty years they all came back,
In twenty years or more,
And every one said, `How tall they’ve grown!
For they’ve been to the Lakes, and the Torrible Zone,
And the hills of the Chankly Bore!’
And they drank their health, and gave them a feast
Of dumplings made of beautiful yeast;
And every one said, `If we only live,
We too will go to sea in a Sieve,—
To the hills of the Chankly Bore!’
Far and few, far and few,
Are the lands where the Jumblies live;
Their heads are green, and their hands are blue,
And they went to sea in a Sieve.
TH
"The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live."