We can’t all live in the country.

Life in town is eased by local heroes… Like Mark, this Kettering butcher.

That’s not Mark. Here he is (same pinny}:

He doesn’t display a mission statement, which is a relief, but if he did it would be about nourishing and innovating and educating — all of which he does and more, quietly in Hawthorn Road.

He’s corrected my pork crackling so that it crunches without risking our teeth. He’s taught me the secret of slow cooked beef ribs that melt in the mouth — add dental health to his mission! He saves the tails of fillet steak for our pensioner’s Beef Stroganoff! He has genuine Brixworth pate, smokes his own chicken breasts and has the best parmigiano reggiano in the eastern counties.

He provides employment and opportunity for a whole gang of skilled and experienced ladies to exercise their alchemy. To create pies and quiches and magical scotch eggs, cooked, ready (still warm, crisp on outside and moist and delicious on the inside) to collect on my way home from swimming.

There’s my reflection, drooling, clutching my rucksack of precious traditional Cumberland Scotch Eggs!

Literary Note:

Mark also, like any good butcher, swaps books and shares recipes and novels. Good taste across many arts. I’ve been reading Andrea Camilleri’s Inspector Montalbano novels about crime and food, humble but ethereal, in Sicily — which brings me back to the just-cooked Scotch Egg! Italians don’t have a monopoly on ambrosia.

Here’s to family butchers the world over!