It is felt that the following items may justifiably be located under a heading of ‘now it can be told’ or perhaps even ‘now it must told’.
The former of the terms has without doubt been used before; notably in connection with the struggle for independence in an island across the sea from this country, the latter is occasioned by the inevitability of the coming about of the passing of the storyteller, hence it is important that some things are now shared because; to slightly paraphrase, a well established truth is that ‘thou shalt know not in advance the destined day or the hour of thy passing’.
But in the case of the latter it is known that almost everyone associated with these events has already passed over, and so it is felt to be incumbent upon the author to attempt to perpetuate this story now, whilst time still permits.
It is recognised that what follows is a departure from the usual format for entries - in future this style may be used again.
This story mainly involves two men, it had to be men didn’t it, for in those far off days women did not exist in the true sense of the word, and besides that the antics herein documented bear out the belief that only men could be involved in such a scheme!
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During the years of The War a well known large white pig died on an allotment in the village. The pig had become well known because almost all of the households of the village had given their waste vegetables to ‘the man from the pig’ who discreetly collected them on a daily round. To the householders who had contributed to the feeding of the pig the news was not entirely bad, because their action had put them ‘in line for a bit of pork’ as one of them had it - and were that to come about then the ‘bit of pork’ would have made an excellent and eagerly anticipated supplement to the their diet.
It was rumoured that some person - who shall remain unidentified - but who was then disliked by almost everyone except his mother and who would nowadays be regarded as a ‘busybody’ or a ‘jobsworth’, and whose habitual behaviour was such as to make the rumour believable, had told a local Police Constable of the demise of the large white pig, and it was thought that this would be swiftly followed by a visit from a Government approved meat inspector ‘the man from the Ministry’ - as the diet of the entire population was under the direct control of the said Ministry - with the aim of ensuring amongst other things that food hygiene was applied.
So as was required at that time the death was reluctantly reported to the local agent of the appropriate Ministry of the Government and an inspector attended, with the intended aim of determining the cause of death of the unfortunate animal and certifying the corpse to be fit for human consumption. At least that was the shared understanding of the ‘owner’ or ‘keeper’ of the pig and the local butcher, through whose shop it was intended that the various parts of the late pig would be sold, or in other ways, distributed amongst the local community.
Against expectation ‘the man from the Ministry’ - he whose job it was to determine and then declare the cause of death - said that the animal had probably died of such causes that it would be unacceptable for the meat of the said pig to enter the food chain!
This caused great distress to those connected with disposal of the animal - and to the wider community who had been eagerly anticipating the supplement to their meagre ‘war-time’ diet, that would doubtless become available when the famed pig eventually died and was shared.
Much heated discussion was occasioned by the declaration of ‘the Inspector’, but he insisted that his decision was final - and that the corpse should be buried. And - to make certain that his wishes were carried out - he remained until the disposal site had been chosen, the pig was placed in the necessarily large hole, and the ground restored to the pre-pig state. Only then - did he feel that his duties had been discharged. He went on his way, but those initially concerned with disposal of the pig carcass were far from satisfied, the outcome was not what they had expected.
The discussion between them went on for some hours and continued in the local pub until closing time, when the men went home.
The the erstwhile ‘keeper of the pig’ had by now been determined as the ‘owner’, he and the local butcher were not at the pub that evening and everyone believed that to because they were so upset at the developments of the day - after all they had lost a large investment - it was only reasonable to expect that they were privately ‘drowning their sorrows’, probably at the butchers fine house.
Next morning ‘everyone’ was curious by the ‘spread by word of mouth’ news that ‘in response to the disappointment of the local community’ the butcher and the owner of the pig had gone to great lengths to obtain a supply of a complete pig to replace the one destroyed on the instructions of ‘the man from the Ministry’. In fact it was was said, they had risked the black-out that very night to obtain the animal from a farm some distance away, so concerned were they at the plight of the locals. The ‘word of mouth’ measure was a well established practice within the village - for anything that should be kept within the community - ‘after all’ it was argued ‘the village was just like a big family’ with everyone ‘against the world’ at certain times. Some things just had to be kept private. That ‘deniability’ was integral to the practice was overlooked by those who chose to think about the matter. Perhaps needless to say, the ‘jobsworth’ who had initiated the crisis was not to receive the ‘word of mouth’ message!
In truth the owner of the pig and the butcher had between them, colluded and under cover of darkness and on the pretext of drowning their sorrows, sneaked to the pig burial site [which they had ‘chosen’ - and manipulated the meat inspector into accepting - knowing even at the point that the corpse was lowered into the grave that they intended the disinterment], dug up the corpse, butchered it on site into moveable pieces and taken it into ‘safe’ allotment buildings from where it could be taken into the butchers shop as soon as possible - fortunately it was winter so the meat would not ‘go-off’ so quickly as it would at other times of year, and restored the burial site to ‘near enough’ it’s former state - bearing in mind that few had seen the site as it was so new.
The two men kept their secret until the very last bit of pig had been sold - then the story ‘leaked out’. That leakage was a deliberate bid for notoriety on the part of one of the men, who shall remain anonymous. Let us just say that ‘it was true to form for him to do that sort of thing’.
After the story leaked out, there was the usual amount of sniffiness from those regrettable few who would be expected to display such behaviour, but on the whole
everyone worth bothering about agreed that ‘nobody had been hurt by the pig meat’ - and of course no-one knew if the story was true - or just a figment of the imagination of a well-known local braggart.
Apart from the deliberate leakage - which only happened on a single occasion - neither of the men involved would ever agree that the story was true.
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