Buying a rabbit

WM Vicars & Son, on West Street was the only butchers’ shop in Reading where you could buy game. I think it closed in 2014 so this is now an extinct sound. Buying meat there and witnessing the ruby red blood droplets in the sawdust underneath the hanging deers and pheasants was a more visceral experience than buying a polystyrene tub with anonymous lumps of flesh in it, wrapped in clingfilm, from the supermarket. I bought rabbit often as it is a lean meat which is guaranteed to have had a great, wild life; we have a surplus of wild rabbits running about the countryside; and it is cheap. The sound of the butcher deftly jointing the rabbit was a necessary part of my eating it, and whatever meat I eat in my life, somewhere someone has cut it up. Like so many small and local businesses, the butcher was unable to keep going in Reading and to compete with the prices set by the supermarkets for produce.