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In my butcher’s shop, I’ve no beef with anyone. Select my cow. Bring it out. Chop it up. Give it to the customer. The customer comes back and tells me how tasty it was. And my passion is for live purchase. I buy the cow still on its feet, and then the pleasure of choosing an excellent product, I get to set that out on display just as it was in the field, that’s what I enjoy most in my job.

You’re not unhappy to find out and the information even has the benefit of reassuring you. There is as much satisfaction in recognising death in the living as in seeing life in the dead.

No one likes the killers at the abattoir, people think it’s nasty work, especially when they’re allocated the dirty zone. When I see the young kids who come here, sometimes they stay half a day then turn round and go home, it’s physical labour, to kill you need to be a man.

You’re not unhappy to discover this and, what’s more, the information cheers you up. At the abattoir, it isn’t women who deal in death, it’s the men.

Meat from heifers is younger, so it’s tenderer. When the cows have a calf, they get thinner along the back, they lose muscle mass, everything that goes into the rib-eye and the sirloin is thinner, less juicy. They’ll be eaten just the same except if we’re being fussy about yield and quality, we’re better off with animals that haven’t calved.

You’re not unhappy to learn it and the information even has the power to make you smile. Animals that haven’t calved taste better than the rest.

I choose three-and-a-half-year-old cows, otherwise they’re not mature enough, not sufficiently grown-up. And I only buy females, I don’t go for the males because the meat tends to be tougher. The females are more tender, fattier and better shaped, their finest cuts are bigger.

You’re not unhappy to learn it and the information even has the power to delight you. Females taste better than males.

There are cuts that we sell fresh and others which must first be hung. The outer cuts lose their colour very quickly, the sirloin, the shank have to be sold within six days, otherwise they dry out. Whereas the rib and the roasting joint can be kept almost three weeks. Except if you cut into the meat to take a slice, then you have to sell it quickly otherwise it’ll go off. As long as you keep it in its fat and with the nerves intact, the meat will mature, but you have to keep an eye on it because there’s a point when it starts to turn and a point when it’s rotting.

You’re not unhappy to learn this and the information even has the power to comfort you. There’s a big difference between maturity and going rotten.

My own approach, well, it’s just the way I like to do it, I’m not saying it’s the best way. But what I like is animals brought up almost exclusively on grass. I avoid animals brought up on pellets in their stalls, I don’t go for that. The one I’ll kill for Christmas, the farmer’s keeping her for me, she’s a real beauty, I’ll take you to see her.

He’s going to take you to see her. He’s going to show you the animal he’ll be killing for Christmas.

For good local veal, your calf absolutely can’t have been running around with its mother in the fields otherwise it’ll have been drinking milk and eating grass. If you’re after white meat, not red, the calf has to get a little anaemic, it has to stay indoors and have no opportunity to ruminate.

You’re not unhappy to learn it and the information even has the power to astonish you. Good meat doesn’t necessarily come from an animal running freely in the fields and living in constant contact with its mother. You are losing a little of your naïvety.

The van comes twice a week and brings them to me quartered, otherwise I’d never be able to carry them inside. I take them to the abattoir on Mondays, they’re back with me by the Thursday. Once they’re in the fridge, I can sell the tongue, the tail, the outer meat right away, I have to wait for the rest, I’ve to wait five days before getting to that. It has to settle.

You’re not unhappy to learn it and the information even has the power to encourage you. To be edible, you have to be relaxed.

In the twenty years I’ve been doing this job, it’s only happened once that a client has said I’m not coming next week because it’s my cow you have there and I won’t eat that meat. Usually the farmers who buy their meat from me love to see their own cow in my window, they’re especially happy about it that week and they buy more to keep in the freezer.

You’re not unhappy to learn this and the information even has the power to strengthen you. We eat with greater pleasure and better appetite the creatures that we love.

Your encounter with the butcher changes your ideas about fairy tales and cannibalism. You think again of the animal corpses that you never held in your hands, of the young man hanged in his bedroom, of those you didn’t know how to love. You unlock your doors, you open your gates, you weep less over Cat People and more over your own memories. You are awakening.

You choose to return to your own body and set up your home there. You choose to betray your mother so as not to betray yourself. You are awakening.

You allow images of the past to forge paths into your mind. You let emotion overtake you. You no longer need to be recognised and admired and well-adapted and assimilated and integrated. You are betraying society without a single backward glance. You are awakening.

You think again of all those films that you saw with your mother, and of the way you’ll watch them again now, of those you’ve seen since, of the connections you’ll now maintain with sex, violence and death, of your education in pleasure, in anger, in sadness and in tears, of necessary separations and what they leave behind. You’re no longer afraid, you’re no longer ashamed, you no longer belong to your mother, nor to your husband, you are living your wild life while still being civilised, you speak, you shiver, you sniff, you lick, you bite, you stroke, you eat meat, you listen to butchers, you’re not disgusted, you’re not nauseated, you laugh, you criticise, you sympathise, you love, you stay aware, you’re neither protected nor disarmed, nor imprinted, you don’t mourn your childhood, the golden age, the very beginning, the so-called innocence, you don’t stand against the rest of the world, silence is not your weapon of choice, you accept the idea that reindeer are transported in refrigerated lorries, you don’t believe in Father Christmas, you don’t follow the sledge, age has set you free.