Vet On a Mission by Gillian Hick

Author:Gillian Hick [Gillian Hick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788490665
Publisher: The O'Brien Press
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

The last week before Christmas was a blur. We were up before six each morning, delivering the kids to Granny and to the smell of hot pancakes. At some stage after tea, I would collect the kids and head home to do as brief an evening clinic as I could get away with. Poor Amanda was left with the unenviable job of deciding what needed my attention and what could wait. Friends, home for a few days before Christmas, later commented that they had rung me on my mobile to try to meet up for a chat, but that the phone was diverted to the office and they were greeted instead by ‘the Rottweiler’ as they called her! Meanwhile Donal and his father continued to work late into the evening, preparing the vast quantities of fresh sausage, rashers, pudding and stuffing that the customers would get through over Christmas week. We would meet at some stage late in the evening to grab a few hours’ sleep before starting the whole process again.

The ‘season of goodwill’ has never meant much to me after that week serving behind the counter. Some customers were pleasant and would kindly enquire as to whether the pork crisis had put us out much. Others were incredulous. Why had we run out of stuffing? What has that got to do with contaminated pork? One helpfully suggested we should just sell chicken, lamb and beef although she walked out the door carrying her order in the ‘J. HICK AND SONS PORK BUTCHERS’ bag.

My limited skills were pushed to the extreme, and one lady did complain to Donal that the new woman on the till wasn’t nearly as good as the girls.

The first day we reopened, about a third of the day was taken in giving refunds for pork purchased from the previous week. We courteously handed back the money and apologised for any inconvenience.

‘An inconvenience it surely is,’ one woman assured me sternly. ‘You’ve no idea how much this has put me out. I had friends coming over for a meal, and the recipe clearly stated that the four streaky rashers are essential to flavour the stew.’

I smiled weakly, trying to looking convincingly understanding, as I handed her back her couple of euro.

One caught me by surprise.

‘I wasn’t going to bother you looking for my money back for the pound of pork pieces I bought,’ she told me. I thanked her graciously. ‘But,’ she continued. ‘I did have a problem with them. You see I didn’t want to eat them myself, but I didn’t want to throw it out either so I fed it to the dog and he had the most terrible diarrhoea overnight. Do you think that the meat really was poisoned?’

Gently I questioned her as to whether she would usually feed ‘Tiny’ (her miniature terrier) a pound of pork pieces, conscious of the ever-growing queue.

‘Oh, no,’ she replied, ‘he only ever gets his dry biscuits, but I thought it might be a little treat for him.

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