The definition of offal

“We’re confident of retaining the ‘fresh meat’ clause in its current wording. There just isn’t any enthusiasm for the ‘stomach, blood and entrails’ clause, it’ll never get through. The proposed definition is sloppy and would allow unsafe meat-products into the food chain and pose a serious health risk. Besides, it runs against Commission Decision 2011/163/EU and there simply isn’t the political will out there to overturn it.”

 

Simon Ashton found that lying to journalists came natural to him, as if that was what journalists were there for, to be lied to. After all, they clearly serve no other useful purpose.

 

Though a lawyer, Simon had become the main spokesman for the Offal And Fresh Meat Clarity Coalition, which sought to retain the current definition of offal under EU legislation. He’d been employed by Pete’s Meats, Europe’s main producer of offal-based products, to critique the proposed new clauses, but had proved so effective at countering the proposals that he had become de facto political lead.

 

Whilst that had been a boost to his career, and a lucrative source of income, it had taken up every second of the last two years, during which time over 147 different drafts for the clause had been proposed, some of which were as long as 14,000 pages, and all of which had to be opposed line by line, and then the criticisms reduced to a one-page summary that even MEPs and journalists could understand. And a one sentence summary for those MEPs and journalists that couldn’t understand the one page summary, because reading a page of writing is a really difficult thing when you’re a busy person like an MEP or journalist.

 

“Great press conference Simon. I’m really glad you’re so confident.” This was Peter Meter, the CEO of Pete’s Meats. “Frankly, I’m beginning to have concerns,” Peter’s voice dropped to a whisper, even though they were safely secured in Simon’s sound-proof office, which was swept for bugs and other listening devices thirteen times every day, which meant that if the other side found out what they were discussing the only possible suspect was the bug-sweeper man. “I’m hearing that our support is proving less than firm.”

 

“It’s fine. I’ve got the situation under control. I’ve spoken to every single MEP, many of them several times, and we’ve got backing for the current definition.”

 

 

 

“How much backing?”

 

“Enough. A majority of three.”

 

“Three! That means if just two MEPs are lying to you then you haven’t got a majority at all.”

 

“Oh, I’ve factored that in. Thirty-seven MEPs are lying to me, I’m not naïve Pete.”

 

“No, but what if you’re wrong. What if there are thirty nine MEP’s lying to you? Or what if one changes his mind? I mean, how many MEP’s have changed their mind since the campaign began.”

 

Simon said nothing.

 

“Don’t you even know?”

 

There was no point lying, it would be too easy to check. “All of them. All of the MEP’s have changed their mind at least once, some of them several times. It’s the nature of politics.”

 

“So you can hardly be sure.”

“Pete, the one thing I’m sure of is that if we give up now we’ll lose. The only certainty in politics is that there’s an entire world’s worth of offal lingering on the EU’s borders, desperate to get in. But we won’t let it in Peter. The clause will hold. I’ll fight ever word the Campaign For Free Movement of Offal tries to wrangle into the legislation.

 

 

“Let’s have a look at the list of supporters. You’ve got two UKIP MEPs here. You can’t believe them surely, their party are notoriously against any restrictions on trade.  That’s it, your majority blown, we’ve lost. All our work for nothing. I might as well give up on Pete’s Meats, get a job with Tesco.”

“Relax Pete, I can vouch for both of those, personally. Brian Sedgefant has an offal rendering plant in his constituency, it’s one of the biggest employers, and he’s a close friend with the owner of the plant, one of his main donors. And when you’ve witnessed Kevin Phillips guzzling a plate of liver and kidneys for breakfast you can’t doubt his enthusiasm for the cause. You should see him splutter at the suggestion of his offal becoming anything other than 100% pure British.”

 

“Well, if you’re sure, I’ll trust your judgement. But the ‘fresh meat’ definition has to hold, if blood and intestine are allowed to seep through as miscellaneous meat products then the future of our industry is bleak.”

 

“As black as the blackest black pudding.”

 

“Really Simon, whilst your metaphor is entirely appropriate, your attempt at humour isn’t. An entire industry is at stake, not just Sedgefant’s rendering plant, but thousands of jobs across the UK, maybe the entire meat industry. The loss of profitable offal could the straw that does for meat production.

 

“Can you imagine it. A future where when you sit down to a breakfast of black pudding, you have simply no idea where that black pudding has come from. Not only might that black pudding not be genuine pig-blood, it might not even be British not pig blood.”

 

“It’s the nature of international trade, Pete. You can’t hide your black pudding away from the realities of the world. But I’m confident that the current definition will hold.”

 

Peter Meter left Simon’s office reassured.

 

Simon Ashton was good at lying to journalists. He was equally good at lying to his employer. Pete was right. It was too close to call. The whole campaign, which had cost several million euro, hung by the whim of a UKIP MEP who, a lifelong pro-smoking campaigner, had defied his party whip to support a Europe-wide ban on smoking in cars, because on the day of the vote he had been hit by a cigarette butt thrown from the window of a passing car.

 

One of Simon’s policy team had worked on that particular campaign and he knew that the MEP had been given a cruise on the tobacco company’s yacht, sporting tickets worth hundreds of thousands of Euros and a gold lighter worth a year’s salary. All of that campaigning, all of that effort, tossed away by fate, like a cigarette butt tossed from a passing car.

 

The next month would be hell. Firming up already firm votes, last minute attempts to win over new support, fighting off attempts for a ‘compromise’ wording to the legislation, that would effectively do everything his opponents wanted, but with a different set of words. His two Lib Dem MEPs were particularly vulnerable to this tactic, owing mainly to the fact that they were incapable of reading anything longer or more complex than a restaurant menu, preferably a Cornish pasty restaurant rather than anything in French, and preferably a menu with just one item on it, otherwise they would sit there for hours in centre-right perplexity, mulling over the options until the restaurant closed and threw them out hungry.

 

The next month would be crazy, so Simon had insisted that his diary be kept free this weekend to allow him a couple of days in the mountains before a final four-week blitz before the vote.

 

He’d actually booked the cottage for the full week, back in the glory days of spring where he looked on course for a clear majority, before the dubious deal between the Portugese government and an African offal consortium, which guaranteed a lucrative contract for Portugese production of ‘bladder sausages’, ‘black meat pies’ and ‘blood-rich-ready-meals’, which had secured the loss of all the Portugese MEPs and a couple of Spanish politicians with strong trading links with Portugese companies.

 

He drove to the cottage late on Friday night. He was all alone. He had friends, but they were all campaign friends, lawyer friends, not real people. He’d slept with a few secretaries and PR people over the last two years, but hadn’t had a relationship. There simply wasn’t time. Offal would get in the way.

 

The next morning he woke early, as was his way, donned the expensive walking kit he had purchased a few weeks previously, and set off into the mountains.

 

From the mountains he could just make out Brussels, the bane of his life, the centre of his life, his home for the past two years.

 

It was nice to be free from it.

 

He’d switched his phone off. Before doing so, of course, he’d spent several days making hundreds of calls explaining that his phone would be switched off, but it was worth it.

 

Silence.

 

Walking was harder work that Simon had imagined. He’d forgotten the effort involved, for the past two years cars had ferried him everywhere, had been waiting for him when he finished meetings at two in the morning, and had been there when he woke up at six thirty, waiting for him to leave the house, with a freshly-collected coffee.

 

Here on the mountainside there was nobody to fetch him coffee. But Simon liked that. It made him feel free, wild, exposed to the elements. Besides, he’d brought a flask with him, made fresh by the machine in his cottage that morning.

 

And so Simon walked. It was amazing to think, he thought, that this was his first time away from his office in the two years since the campaign began. Of course, this would be the making of him, especially if the campaign won, but even if he lost he had made contacts and connections that would set him up for life, every MEP going through divorce or caught with his hand in the till would turn to Simon for legal advice, and, knowing the MEPs as well as he did, that would provide a life-long source of work.

 

Or he could run another campaign. There were thousands of them, every industry, every issue, every theoretical concept was badgering to get addressed by the EU, there were campaigns for and against every one of these issues, and there was money, vast sums of money, the sort of money generated by the largest trading block the world has ever known. He could become as rich as life

 

And yet …

 

Walking up the mountains, Simon felt a peculiar mix of serenity and loneliness. The peace, the quiet, the lack of offal, it is heaven. But he notices the lack, the gap, the absence. Maybe if he had a normal job, an 80 hour a week job like a teacher, or a job with even less hours than that – were there such jobs?

 

He should start a family. Meet the girl of his dreams.

 

Or something.

 

He didn’t really know.

 

He sat down to enjoy a mug of coffee. Even out here, away from the universe as he knows it, a form of civilisation remains, liquid civilisation, almost piping hot, black, caffeine-rich, Columbian, definitely not fair trade. He is happy.

 

He gazed down on Brussels, or what he believes to be Brussels, visible in the distance and is surprised to see it covered by an immense black cloud, like something from the newsreels of yesteryear, a mushroom cloud, or a typhoon.

At this distance it didn’t seem real, couldn’t possibly real.

 

But of course it could. A terrorist attack on the European parliament, a prime target, of course it was possible.

 

Or worse, it could be the start of a war, the Ukraine crisis spiralling out of control. And a war with Russia would be the fully Monty, war with a nuclear cherry on the top, another war to end all wars.

 

Or it could just be a cloud. An unusually large and dark cloud, but clouds happened. Simon supposed. He didn’t really know about clouds.

 

He took out his phone, to call some people, to google the word cloud, but nothing, no signal.

 

He got up and started back down the mountain, intending to return home, to find out what had happened. But then he had second thoughts. Either there hadn’t been a bomb, and he’d be cutting short his break for no reason, or there had, and he’d be driving back to a city where every single inhabitant was busy wishing that they were sat up on a mountain looking down on events from a distance.

 

He couldn’t walk on, though, not with this on his mind, with Brussels gone, vanished, missing beneath a cloud.

 

He gazed up and down the mountain, seeking fellow walkers, perhaps better-equipped walkers with superior internet facility, but he was alone. Totally alone. It was as if the weekend had only happened for him.

 

Instead he returned to his cabin. He’d hoped to get a phone signal, or to find out what was happening on TV, but there was no TV signal, no phone signal, he was cut off from the world. Even the radio didn’t work, though to be fair he hadn’t listen to the radio for decades and had no idea whether there even were radio stations any more. Surely not?

 

He had no way of knowing whether this was the beginning of the end of the world, or just heavy rain in Brussels.

 

With no TV, no radio, no internet, no friends, he was isolated, afraid, and, most importantly, bored. Driving back to the city might be suicidal, but at least it would be interesting.

 

There was nothing to do. He was alone in a cottage with zero facilities. He had deliberately left all his paperwork behind him, so there was nothing to read. There is, he discovers, a CD player, but there are no CDs, because this is 2015 and who on Earth would have a CD in 2015?

 

The sky darkens with the approach of nightfall. He becomes desperate, his desire for rest, for a break, replaced with desire for something to do. Anything to do. Even a book. He searched the cottage, because every holiday cottage has a bookcase of random books left by previous inhabitants. But not this one.

 

However, he came across a banjo, in a cupboard in one of the spare bedrooms.

 

Once upon a time, in a part of his life he’d long abandoned, Simon had played the banjo. He’d been a member of an all-banjo Bon Jovi covers band, called Banjo V.

 

He picked the banjo up, tuned it as best as he could, and plucked away on the strings, the chords of ‘Living on a Prayer’.

 

He played the song again, better this time, and sang along, with as many of the words as he could remember.

 

He played long into the night, every tune he could remember, until he eventually crashed out asleep on the sofa, banjo by his side.