The Giblet Theory of Talents.
My first paying job was at Jack Barnes’ butcher's shop plucking pheasant, geese and turkeys, to help with the Christmas rush. A fair number of people brought in birds that they had shot themselves, to pick up again for Christmas, dressed and prepared by the butcher.
I would see customers gleefully collect their own personal pheasant, and check to see that everything was in order, that the giblets were there, usually wrapped in greased paper tucked into the body cavity. Occasionally there would be a complaint – a bird with no neck or no liver. The Butcher would apologize for the error, and a quick trip backstage would result in instant correction of the problem.
I suppose it was my first taste of innocuous business dishonesty. The fact is, the likelihood of any bird being delivered with its own giblets inside was virtually nil. But that never seemed to occur to the customers.
Backstage, in the back of the shop, where I and the other lads were plucking all day long, where it was cold, and where the language used shared very little vocabulary with the language used front of house, we worked at a big table with the birds on, and three barrels beside us. One was for the feathers, which got everywhere, one was for the intestines and other useless and disgusting parts of the foul anatomy, and one was for the giblets, the bits of the innards that people wanted – mainly the neck, the liver, and the gizzard.
Pheasant were the most tedious and irritating birds. They would have been “hung” for a while, so that they were at the preferred state of decomposition, considered to give the best taste. This meant that the skin was very easily broken, and so we had to both rush and be careful. Country Gents who considered themselves marksmen didn’t want to show off to their dinner guests with a pheasant that had been ripped to shreds. The pheasant-problem was what got us mad and frustrated backstage, - that and the boredom. Obscenities flew back and forth. And these were, as the day progressed and the barrels filled, backed up with fistfuls grabbed from the intestine barrel. It was great if you could grab a bunch of goose guts and throw them at someone so that they caught just on the side of the neck, then splayed out and wrapped themselves around the target’s head. Watching somebody grabbing at burst intestines and wiping chicken shit off their face before getting back to plucking seemed pretty hilarious to us.
The allocation of giblets to a bird about to be washed and tidied up prior to going back out into the civilized world of dining was just as chaotic. Giblets went into the giblet barrel. Then, when a bird was ready to be dressed for sale, a handful of giblets would be grabbed without looking and shoved into the bird. Some would get a neck and three livers, nothing but gizzards, or other unlikely and anatomically impossible combinations. A lucky chicken might end up with two huge goose necks. We'd check vaguely to see that things didn’t look too ridiculous, but that was essentially how it was done.
So when a customer complained, and Jack, in all his majesty came backstage to correct a “problem”, he’d probably shout out “give me a f****ing liver” or something like that, and whoever was near the barrel would grope around to find one.
I’ve often thought (putting on my vicar-voice) that the talents we are born with are rather like that. It is as if we are all Friday afternoon geese, and God was getting tired, and just shoved his hand into the barrel, dumping a load of talents and weaknesses into us that was, at most, credible.
We spend most of our lives beating ourselves up for our weaknesses, our fatal deficiencies, as if it's our fault: or gloating over some famous person’s tragic flaw, the collapse of the mighty. But it’s all a random mix. I suppose there is no reason why there should not be a perfect musician, a complete actor, an inspired and moral statesman, but it’s pretty unlikely. We assume, like the customer, that we ought to have our own correct and perfectly interlocking parts, but we just don't. So let's not beat ourselves up about the gizzard that didn’t make it, nor even get too proud of our extra necks. It’s all a Darwinian scramble. Make the best of the talents you have, even if you are professional musicians who cannot play the piano, actors who cannot remember lines, brilliant administrators who have no love life, or politicians who need to copulate with everything. Then maybe we can back off a bit from the schaddenfreude offered by National Enquirer. Really, (cliché coming) none of us is perfect, none of us is even complete, and if we wait till we are, nothing will ever happen. Certainly no one would ever have any fun. Just be glad you didn’t come entirely out of the feathers and shit bucket.
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I would see customers gleefully collect their own personal pheasant, and check to see that everything was in order, that the giblets were there, usually wrapped in greased paper tucked into the body cavity. Occasionally there would be a complaint – a bird with no neck or no liver. The Butcher would apologize for the error, and a quick trip backstage would result in instant correction of the problem.
I suppose it was my first taste of innocuous business dishonesty. The fact is, the likelihood of any bird being delivered with its own giblets inside was virtually nil. But that never seemed to occur to the customers.
Backstage, in the back of the shop, where I and the other lads were plucking all day long, where it was cold, and where the language used shared very little vocabulary with the language used front of house, we worked at a big table with the birds on, and three barrels beside us. One was for the feathers, which got everywhere, one was for the intestines and other useless and disgusting parts of the foul anatomy, and one was for the giblets, the bits of the innards that people wanted – mainly the neck, the liver, and the gizzard.
Pheasant were the most tedious and irritating birds. They would have been “hung” for a while, so that they were at the preferred state of decomposition, considered to give the best taste. This meant that the skin was very easily broken, and so we had to both rush and be careful. Country Gents who considered themselves marksmen didn’t want to show off to their dinner guests with a pheasant that had been ripped to shreds. The pheasant-problem was what got us mad and frustrated backstage, - that and the boredom. Obscenities flew back and forth. And these were, as the day progressed and the barrels filled, backed up with fistfuls grabbed from the intestine barrel. It was great if you could grab a bunch of goose guts and throw them at someone so that they caught just on the side of the neck, then splayed out and wrapped themselves around the target’s head. Watching somebody grabbing at burst intestines and wiping chicken shit off their face before getting back to plucking seemed pretty hilarious to us.
The allocation of giblets to a bird about to be washed and tidied up prior to going back out into the civilized world of dining was just as chaotic. Giblets went into the giblet barrel. Then, when a bird was ready to be dressed for sale, a handful of giblets would be grabbed without looking and shoved into the bird. Some would get a neck and three livers, nothing but gizzards, or other unlikely and anatomically impossible combinations. A lucky chicken might end up with two huge goose necks. We'd check vaguely to see that things didn’t look too ridiculous, but that was essentially how it was done.
So when a customer complained, and Jack, in all his majesty came backstage to correct a “problem”, he’d probably shout out “give me a f****ing liver” or something like that, and whoever was near the barrel would grope around to find one.
I’ve often thought (putting on my vicar-voice) that the talents we are born with are rather like that. It is as if we are all Friday afternoon geese, and God was getting tired, and just shoved his hand into the barrel, dumping a load of talents and weaknesses into us that was, at most, credible.
We spend most of our lives beating ourselves up for our weaknesses, our fatal deficiencies, as if it's our fault: or gloating over some famous person’s tragic flaw, the collapse of the mighty. But it’s all a random mix. I suppose there is no reason why there should not be a perfect musician, a complete actor, an inspired and moral statesman, but it’s pretty unlikely. We assume, like the customer, that we ought to have our own correct and perfectly interlocking parts, but we just don't. So let's not beat ourselves up about the gizzard that didn’t make it, nor even get too proud of our extra necks. It’s all a Darwinian scramble. Make the best of the talents you have, even if you are professional musicians who cannot play the piano, actors who cannot remember lines, brilliant administrators who have no love life, or politicians who need to copulate with everything. Then maybe we can back off a bit from the schaddenfreude offered by National Enquirer. Really, (cliché coming) none of us is perfect, none of us is even complete, and if we wait till we are, nothing will ever happen. Certainly no one would ever have any fun. Just be glad you didn’t come entirely out of the feathers and shit bucket.
©2005 AJM
posted by Andrew Massey | Sunday, January 02, 2005
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