Free There's an Egg in My Soup by Tom Galvin Page B

like colic, botulism, flatulence, piles, ulcers, gripes and so on. Mysterious visits to the toilet in the middle of the night can only be a result of Butcher Nephritis and her handiwork. Again, it’s a difficult one to prove, but I have a gut feeling about it, as they say. Butcher Nephritis’ shop looks and smells like a lepers’ graveyard. But Butcher Nephritis is really a kindly old soul, a typical country butcher, and perhaps only for this have the tools of her trade not been confiscated and herself locked away in a walk-in freezer for a minimumsentence of ten years.
    What did I survive on? As time went on, things got better. Some of the shops even began to bring in self-service – like that delicatessy, for example. No more queues! The town was transformed, but over the course of years, not weeks or months. Occasionally, I would strike gold in this delicatessy store – perhaps discovering some tinned beans in tomato sauce, a rare and valued commodity. I also ate a lot of eggs, fresh as daisies, many still decorated with feathers and gick. However, concerned for my cholesterol level, I eventually cut back a bit on my egg consumption. As for milk, the milk you could get in cartons here was UHT – you couldn’t drink it straight or you’d be as sick as a pike. I tried drinking two cartons a day when I was told I was losing weight and began to grow extremely pale, developing huge circles like eclipses of the moon under my eyes. If you wanted ‘fresh’ milk, you were really taking your life into your own hands. Fresh milk, until EU hygiene tests came in, was never pasteurised and came in plastic bags. Putting milk in a plastic bag is an idea that must have flown straight past the main door of the logic department. You hold the bag under your elbow and cut the corner off it with a scissors and the stuff shoots out all over the table. I mean, have the Poles never come across bagpipes?
    The milk was dodgy stuff anyway, causing ripples in the bowels. It failed all the EU hygiene tests when theywere eventually initiated, despite the fact that one farmer proclaimed, ‘What’s wrong with it? You can see with the naked eye that it’s perfectly all right.’
    I ate hamburgers for a while, until I began to feel unwell. At fifty pence for ten I wasn’t too surprised. They were made from tails, bones and teeth. I know that’s a fact, because a friend of mine worked in an abattoir and told me that whatever was left on the floor at the end of the day went into the burgers. Feeling another animal’s tooth in your gob is an experience that lifts your hair by the root.
You’re
supposed to be eating
it
.
    My suspicions regarding the meat would later be confirmed. In 2003, prior to EU accession, the European Commission warned Poland about standards at meat processing plants. Only sixty-six of the country’s 3,300 red meat plants were passed and given permits to export their produce within the rest of Europe. I survived anyway, so I must have been getting my meat from one of those sixty-six.

Vodka Crush
    Thankfully, the chance came after a couple of months to sample a real cooked meal in a Polish restaurant. Teachers’ Day had come around. It is a communist tradition to have days held aside to honour anyone and everyone, from teachers and doctors to mothers and their children. It keeps them all happy, giving everyone something to celebrate, and is used as a general distraction from more serious concerns.
    Teachers’ Day was a pleasant surprise for me that first year, as representatives from all the classes presented me with flowers, chocolates or bottles of beer. It was a fairly moving experience, since I wasn’t used to being given flowers. Of course, other teachers got flowers as well, but not all. I realised that day that a teacher’s popularity with the kids could be gauged by the amount of flowers they received on Teachers’ Day.
    As well as