Signs & Portents: Who is Mincing Your Meat?

Who is Mincing Your Meat?
What the hell is that supposed to mean? I drive past this sign several times a week and every time I see it I am more and more confused as to what the company are trying to infer.
Obviously they are purveyors of quality meat derivatives to the discerning customer. I understand that much.
But 'Who is mincing your meat'... why did they decide to have that emblazoned across a sign by the roadside at (what I assume must have been) some reasonable expense to themselves.

It seems quite innocent at first glance...but think about it they haven't said, 'is your meat being minced by people who adhere to industry standard hand hygiene regulations'. They said 'who is' not 'How is'. Are they inferring that a certain type of people are preferable as meat handlers. Which type of people are they talking about. Are they a bit racist?? Do they mean that my meat is guaranteed to have been minced only by stout hearted remain voters. Or only by conservative party members who can recount their ancestry back five generations, or only by good Catholics?

This question has been puzzling me for a while during my morning commute to work. I found myself humming a little tune about it which I have transcribed below for your amusement:-

[to the tune of something rousing and patriotic, to a marching band with snare drums and lot of brass]

Who is Mincing Your Meat?
Whose making it GOOD?
Are they the hands of an honest tommy
or the filthy paws of some foreign johnny.
Is your meat being manhandled by a card carrying commie oh
Who is Mincing Your Meat?

Anyway, I don't know who is mincing my meat. It come from Aldi so it's probably being minced by a huge machine where cows go in one end and then a 'mercy button' is depressed and mince comes out in shiny  packages at the other end. Who is pressing the button? Probably some nameless corporate drone working for minimum wage. Maybe I should email Foxholes farm and Shop and apologetically explain that I (like most people) am not on first name terms with the person who is operating the mincing machine.
Suggestions in the comments please.

Trying to Drive in Poland

Polish Drivers are fast. My family went to Poland on holiday this year. Great place, great people, great beaches. As usual I opted to do the majority of the driving as I felt that my blood pressure has had it too easy of late and needed a good run.

I had used a left hand drive hire car before but on that holiday we were fortunate enough to have an air B&B next to the most incontinent birds in the whole of Portugal. These birds had eaten bad fruit or something and we were parked directly below their favourite toilet tree. This resulted by the end of the week in a car which was so totally caked in crap that any slight blemishes to the bodywork were undetectable even to microscopic examination.

On this years holiday we had no such luck and the cost of additional insurance was so astronomically high that I decided to forgo it and trust to prayer and blind terror. This was before I knew about the normal custom and practice of Poland’s drivers.

There was huge tourist  banner at Gdansk airport showing a grinning Polish soldier atop a wartime tank. The headline (in English) read ‘Poland: First to War’. Having now experienced Polish drivers I can well believe this. Probably the polish allied tanks were screaming up behind all of the other drivers and sitting at 80 miles per hour never more than three millimetres away from their back bumpers until they pulled into the slower lane in fear of their lives & watched the Poles swish by.

Now we do have this behaviour in England but it is largely limited to Audi Drivers (which is understandable. Anyone who purchases a car whose very symbol is four conjoined butt holes is giving you a pretty clear indication of their road habits). Usually it only happens a couple of times a journey & I usually start gently pulling over as soon as I see an Audi in the rear-view mirror in order to maintain my calm.

But in Poland this behaviour is not just limited to Audi drivers but appears to be normal custom and practice for everyone. As the motorways are all just dual carriageways, it has become the normal method of overtaking.

After a week or so of this I had somehow managed to bring our shiny hire care through unscathed but then disaster struck and we ended up stuck in airport hire car purgatory. The barrier letting us into the airport drop off car park dutifully dispensed a ticket when we rolled up for our departing flight around 5am. Sadly the parking machine then ate said ticket leaving us stuck between to impassable barriers with my family growing ever more frantic as the time of our planes departure drew nigh.

In the end (after risking death by driving the wrong way down one way systems a couple of times), my wife made a tearful and impassioned plea to the airport staff for help. The sincerity of her message was undermined by it’s having to be relayed through the crappy barrier intercom and furthermore by the fact that there were no staff available at that ungodly hour of the morning.  In the end I took drastic action & dumped the car in a likely looking layby near the airport. We then route marched the children to the departure gate.  From the gate we could view it through the glass; rocking gently on its suspension as Polish drivers whipped past it at speeds approaching mach 2.

When I returned home I wrote a sickeningly nice email to the hire company who (hungry as they must have been for compliment letters to feature in their annual report) waived any punitive charges. My memories of Poland are very positive however. We attended a Polish wedding whilst there which was totally insane. I am used to partying with Brazilians and thought that they were hardcore but they have nothing on the Polish. The wedding band at our venue was hired to play from 5pm to 5am. Even my wife (who is an unstoppable dance floor machine) had to politely retire to our hotel room around 2am in order to prevent her legs falling off. I think at that point they were serving course 125 of the wedding feast. Phew….what an experience. I would recommend it to everyone (but maybe get the extra car insurance deal if you are planning on driving there)!

Failing at the National Anthem

Today I attended my wife’s ‘Naturalisation Ceremony’ (sounds a little sinister doesn’t it). A very proud moment for our family. This magically turns her from an unnatural foreign devil into a nice natural English lady. All that she needed to do to affect this transformation was to swear allegiance to the monarch and then sing verses one and three of the national anthem.

I personally was not aware that the national anthem had a third verse and was at something of a disadvantage to everyone else there as I did not have a printed copy of the words. I was therefore forced to ‘busk it’ and come up with some legitimate sounding lyrics on the fly. This was the result:-

(to the tune of God Save Our Gracious Queen)

She has a lot of dogs

She cleans up after them

She’s good like that

She’s got a pile of dosh But she keeps her old socks

She likes collecting clocks

God Save the Queen!

 

I mumbled my way through this with a look of patriotic devotion fixed on my features and I don’t think that anyone noticed. One dude had his hand clasped over his heart and there was a military guy there who insisted on saluting through the whole thing which was different.

There were some speeches from dignitaries about british history and what it means to be English and then my wife was presented with a colour printed certificate and three baby jars of English jam and other preserves. This concludes the naturalisation and we were left to take some selfies in the nobby council chambers and then go home and eat our jam.

 

It does make me feel proud of our nation. I hope that my wife does not now stop wearing clothing that matches or have retroactive dentistry to make her teeth snaggley and weird. I have suggested that she now needs to viciously defend her position on brext (it doesn’t matter which position she takes. The important thing is to then have no empathy at all for anyone who takes the opposing view no matter how near you were to voting that way yourself before you opted to vote as you did).