21st January, 2005

PICTURE: Greg Nicholas (iStockphoto.com)

ADAM KELSALL

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are” – Anais Nin

Day 1
Hi, my name is Bazza. I am a sausage - also known as a banger. If you like, you can call me Baz the Banger. I’m not really sure how I came to be. Some people tell me I was created in the image of the almighty sausage who dwells out there somewhere. Others say I was formed during something called the “big banger” where there was all these ingredients and anti-ingredients which one day exploded and formed the meat race. But there’s not just me, there’s all these other’s that are called hamburgers, steak, and kebabs. Our world is called the Butcher’s Shop.

Our time in the Butcher’s Shop doesn’t last for long. Not really sure what happens to us when we leave. The hamburgers reckon we go and hang with all the other meat somewhere outside the Butcher’s Shop. They say it’s not like these plastic trays we sit around in, and they even say that we wont be in our skins anymore; that it’ll just be our sausage guts floating around somewhere out there beyond the shop. Others say we go to some place called the Barbeque where we get all shrivelled up and sometimes even burnt. There is these things at the Barbeque called onions and they are supposed to be there to torment us and make our life in hell. Whatever that means.

There’s something that I haven’t been able to understand in the short time I’ve been in this shop. Sometimes we sausages, hamburgers, steak and kebabs don’t all get along that well. There’s stories of days gone by where we all used to live harmoniously together in a time called the “meat tray”. All the sausages, hamburgers, steak and even the kebabs dwelt happily together in one place. But something’s different now. We are separated into trays. The older sausages - you know the wise ones because of the green spots that mark their maturity - tell me only sausages hang with sausages, steak with steak and so on. If any of the other meat wants to be in our tray, they have to become like a sausage - even if they’re not a sausage. I don’t really understand but I just go along with it. Wise sausages know best. They tell me just stick to your tray and look after your own. The others can look after themselves and the Butcher’s Shop will be fine.

Day 2
The steaks been getting pretty pushy lately. The kebabs cop it hardest from the steak, largely because they need to use a stick just to get it together. Meat needing help to stay in one place is seen as a sign of weakness in the Butcher’s Shop. Sometimes things get real nasty between the steak and kebabs. Usually the steak wins though because they just remove the kebabs’ sticks and their whole world falls apart. Sometimes it happens to heaps of them and the rest of us meat look on and feel sad for both the steak and the kebabs.

Lately the steaks have been telling us that soon we will all be rare. They tell us they have a fear in their T bones. Word is the Butcher’s Shop is going to be taken over by a new thing called a “vegie burger”. They won’t tell us where they got their information about the vegie burgers from, just that it is very reliable. They call it intelligence - does that mean that what we think isn’t intelligent? I’ve never seen a vegie burger but I’ve heard lots of nasty things about them. They are not even made of meat. If they are not meat like us, they can’t be good. The steak and the wise sausages tell us as soon as these vegie burgers arrive, we should having nothing to do with them. They have no place in the Butcher’s Shop. Vegie burgers scare me. I hate them.

Day 3
Something strange happened today. All our trays got turned over and all us meats were mixed up in one big jumbled mess. None of us were sure what caused it but the wise sausages mumbled something about natural disasters that sometimes make “mince meat” of the Butcher’s Shop. Us sausages were all mixed up with the steak, the kebabs with the hamburgers. For a while none of us cared about what tray we were supposed to be in, or even whether we were a sausage or a kebab or a hamburger or a steak.

We even forgot our hate for the vegie burgers. All we cared about were each other. What was even stranger is that, just for a short time, we all had to help each other out. I even saw steaks helping the kebabs. They were helping the kebabs with their sticks and getting themselves back together. Some of the hamburgers had come apart. While a lot of them were not fixable, there had to be something we could do. Even some of the sausages out of our own tray could not be helped. For a while we felt useless. All the rest of us meat decided that we had heaps of spare fat that we didn’t need. Everyone from the steaks right down to the sausages decided to give up a bit of fat and distribute it among the hamburgers so they could get back to being normal hamburgers again. Even though we were sad about the meat that could not be helped, all the sudden it felt like the old meat tray days were back again.

Day 4
Yay! At last it feels like everything is back to normal in the Butcher’s Shop. We are all back in our trays. Towards the end of yesterday, those hamburgers were starting to annoy me a bit. I was getting sick of feeling sorry for them and wanted to get back to just being a sausage lying in my tray having fun with all my sausage mates. They’ll be right now. Besides, the steaks have just given us a reminder that those vegie burgers could come in at any time. Better watch out we don’t lose our tray spot in the Butcher’s Shop.