Dave The Meat

I never knew what his real name was, that was just the name on his van. Dave The Meat. It was Shirebrook market on a Friday morning and he was beautiful. And I saw him looking down at me from that big high van.

‘Come here darling’, he said, ‘look at this. I’ll give you a leg of lamb for a fiver. And not only that but I’ll throw in a lump of pork, a pound of sausages, and just to prove I’ve totally lost my mind this morning, how about a pack of gammon steaks. Tell you what, call it four quid. And I’ll do you a chicken too. And three pounds of bacon. And some liver’.

And as he was saying this I was walking towards him as though I was transfixed. And the nearer I got the more meat he kept putting in front of him. He wasn’t really looking at what he was doing, he was just looking at me. And I was looking at him. And I reached up, and he smiled and put all of the meat into a big blue bag. And I handed over my four pounds, and I didn’t know what to do, or what to say; so I just said ‘Thank you’, and walked away carrying this bag of meat. But he didn’t seem disappointed, you know. Not at all. I glanced round and he had this gorgeous smile on his face. And that night I cooked all of that meat. Every single bit of it. And I put it on the table, and I called on all my neighbours, and we had this big feast. And when they asked me what the occasion was, I said it was a present from Dave The Meat. And that night was the best night of my life. Everybody was happy. And we all loved each other somehow. I don’t really know what I mean but it did feel like that. Like we loved each other, and we really cared for each other, and if anyone of us was hurt in any way that it would be a truly terrible thing. And for the rest of that week I just couldn’t sleep. I was just thinking that this man is the most perfect man I have ever seen.

And when I went back to Shirebrook market the next week, ready to talk to him; to ask him about who he was and where he lived, and if he was married or had any children, or wanted to spend some time with somebody he had never really met before, he wasn’t there. There was another meat van. Porky Pete’s, or something like that. And when I asked about Dave The Meat he looked at me as if I was mad and said that he’d never heard of him. That he’d always been on that spot; that it was his pitch. And nobody else had heard of him either. So he couldn't have been real you see. He couldn’t have. Dave The Meat must have been an angel.

by Andy Barrett