who likes deathi wish i could explain the importance of my great uncle asking the butcher of west kilbride (possibly one of two)
asking on a tuesday that he should hang chops to be available for weekend consumption my great uncle took up cooking at age seventy or so when his wife well i don't know quite what went wrong with her he and she had lived the life after he invaded iraq as a gunnery officer and was mentioned in dispatches for hitting a bridge he worked as a marine engineer in trieste which is a long way from scotland and was probably then lovely he is remembered as the second richest fellow in the family after the guy who played soccer for scotland and whose wife gave all the money to the old cats' home not a penny to anyone else max the fellow in the artillery and she had no children when i was old enough to know who great uncle max was when i finally took the long slow bus and visited he was living on his own with a woman coming in and he was cooking knowing enough about the subject to ask the butcher to hang meat way in advance of need aged ninety two i recall he called my father who then worked for bp to ask if the latest new issue of shares were a sound long-term investment he died at ninety four my grandfather, his brother was a power station engineer and was thus exempt from recruitment solid in what they called a preferred occupation protected from the first world war but being young he volunteered to join the argyll and sutherland highlanders and was promoted to sergeant which to those of you who are versed in military history is like saying he was with the american rangers on D-day whenever there was an assault to be led they called on the argylls or the irish or the welsh my father went through world war two anxious to join the fleet air arm and fly swordfish against the enemy but instead of chemistry the government required him to study engineering or if he failed an exam to join the infantrythus he defended edinburgh's chemistry building against the luftwaffe's onslaught
with a bolt-action rifle and no bullets if you want to know why i'm quiet on the subject of war it's because someone in my family has already invaded iraq and failed at kut and we've already been wounded in the big push and we've already saluted patriotic songs and somehow lived to ask the butcher to hang our chops im western nichts neues surely if any line needed brushing off for another look this is it ask to find a war that began on the west coast i will show you a modoc or a basque shepherd or michael munk or those who think that sustainment is a more apt term for what will come but me i'll off to the end of the valley to pick up a custom-slaughtered lamb and hang none of it i'll freeze everything chew the chops carefully and count myself so extremely lucky to be out on the edge of where whatever's now at David Ritchie, Portland, Oregon ------------------------------------------------------------------ To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off, digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html