Trading Posts Special: Chop Shhhhhop

SallyB2
By SallyB2 Last edited 185 months ago
Trading Posts Special: Chop Shhhhhop
1510.butcher.jpg

Oh our fur! Oh our paws and whiskers! Singing butcher Brian Clapton is facing court proceedings over his cheery morning serenades at his shop in darkest Dagenham (or maybe it’s brightest Barking).

Credit crunch? Credit schmunch! It is this sort of killjoy bureaucratic twattery that is stifling the small businessman, taking the wind out of his sales and the heart, liver and sweetbreads out of his livelihood. Pusillanimous council officials who are incapable of seeing the bigger picture and seemingly sign away their sense of humour at the door of the Town Hall. (Sorry about that – but we feel better now.)

It would seem that a former resident of the flat above Brian’s Meat Market had complained about the early morning chopping noises and sing-songs. And so Barking and Dagenham council have asked Brian to desist, and to sound-proof his ceiling to stop the sound rising.

We say that a) anyone who moves above a butchers’ shop should expect to move with the larks – night owls should find themselves a flat above a restaurant, and b) what the devilled kidneys is wrong with singing at work? How fantabulous to find someone happy enough in his work to express himself thus! Thinking about it, we’ve never seen a sad butcher – they always look jolly, and are traditionally plump, red-faced, beaming souls. Perhaps there should be a National Performing Butchers Forum, wherein we would see filleting fandangos, abattoir a cappella, the rumpba..well, you get the picture. As Robert Browning wrote: “I want to know a butcher paints/A baker rhymes for his pursuit,/Candlestick maker much acquaints/His soul with song, or haply mute/Blows out his brains upon the flute.” Brian – we’re with you.

Happy butcher from tuppus' flickr stream under the Creative Commons Licence.

Last Updated 15 October 2008