Low life | 16 December 2006

It must be very dispiriting to be born into this world and find that you are an intensively reared hen. But maybe, if a representative of the human race explained gently to you in chicken language that human beings are the apex of creation, and chickens commodities, and that this, in a roundabout way, accounts for your breasts being so heavy your legs can’t support you, you might think to yourself, as you hang upside-down waiting to have your six-week-old throat slit by a youth on piecework listening to drum and bass on his iPod, ‘Hey, it’s been fun. Glad to have been of service.’

But if you learnt instead that your breasts, instead of nourishing a human being, will be fed to a domestic cat, you’d probably want to register a complaint somewhere. The widow next door to us, a pensioner, subsists chiefly on chips, supplemented at this time of year with Brussels sprouts, which she eats raw. Yet she feeds her cat, a smelly, insufferably arrogant creature, possibly evil, exclusively on top-quality chicken breasts. Now, cat breasts fed to chickens I would allow, even encourage with tax breaks. But the other way round to my mind is obscene.

She rang up the other day in a bit of a state. The gales have been so strong for the past few days, she said, she’s been unable to go out. If this sounds a bit far-fetched I should explain that she’s a tiny, bird-like woman. And in front of our respective houses is a sheep field, a 300ft cliff, and then nothing but sea and sky as far as the continent of Europe in one direction and North America in another.  So when the wind blows it can knock you about a bit.

What with this wind we’ve been having, she said, stifling a sob, she hasn’t been able to make it to the bus stop to go shopping in town.