The truth about sausages
Gerard Smith reveals his life-long phobia of sausages in his own humorous way in his latest WordSmith column...
We’re never too old to experience life’s firsts. Like last week, for the first time in my life, I ate a vegan sausage-roll. It was eaten with a mustard accompaniment, and I must say the spicy tang added to my enjoyment of the plant based faux-sausage-roll.
As a child I was a fussy eater, which I grew out of. Now, I’ll eat anything – except meat-based sausages, of which I remain suspicious. There’s a reason for my sausage aversion, and like most lasting aversions, it’s rooted in my childhood. Herewith, I shall share my sausage story in the hope it may help others with similar sausage related trauma.
It was a glorious day in Cavan, a whole Summer of adventure lay ahead. My sister Maria and I were sitting in woodland by a pooling waterfall, enjoying the beauty of our surroundings.
This quiet idyll was shattered when our brother, Dermot, raced by us and jumped into the pool. He’d returned from St Patrick’s College abattoir wherein he’d taken an active part in his very first slaughter; a job he’d taken to like the proverbial duck.
Standing in the pool, he began to regale us of tasks the manager had assigned him, “Right – I helped him pull out all the guts, and there are these slimy things like massive snakes called intestines. Right – and they’re full of all the cow’s sh*t. Right – so he told me to drag em over to the hosepipe. Right – he cut em open and I helped clean all the sh*t out of em, so it was just the slimy skin left. Right – cos that’s the skin they put sausages in – right.”
I spluttered, “Stop winding us up; they don’t do that. Sausages aren’t cow guts.” I looked to Maria for affirmation that Dermot was lying, but when none was forthcoming, I gently coaxed her, “Maria, do sausages really have cow pooh in them before they have sausage in them?” She shrugged, “I don’t see why Dermot would lie about that.”
To say the truth about sausages sickened me would be an understatement. That Saturday evening in town I struggled to eat my ice-cream cone; for I’d once had a penchant for sausages, and kept thinking of all the pooh-skins I’d eaten in my past.
The following morning I woke with sausages on my mind. All through Mass, they were all I thought of. Because after Mass, uncle Frankie’s breakfast beckoned.
Uncle Frankie’s mighty- meaty Sunday breakfast was legendary. Rashers smothered the range, alongside mounds of fat sausages, all framed by slices of fried brown bread.
I averted my gaze from the pooh-beasts, selected two rashers, a slice of fried bread, and took my seat at the table. Conversely, Dermot grabbed a fork and violently stabbed a sausage, which retaliated by spurting a torrent of fat in his face. The hot fat didn’t faze my brother; he wiped his face and went straight for the kill, biting off and devouring the beast with not a thought for pooh.
I sat sandwiched between uncles Michael and Peter; savouring the salty bacon and crunchy bread from Frankie’s breakfast buffet. I was about to relish my second rasher when uncle Michael spoke up, “You’ve no sausage, Gerard.”
Alarmingly, my eye caught sight of him impaling a sausage and aiming it towards my plate, “Here, have this one,” he said, releasing it from his fork. I watched the offensive missile launch itself at my plate, scoring a direct hit on my remaining rasher. “NOOOOO!” I hollered, causing my relations to halt their eating and look at me, mouths agape.
“What has you screeching?” asked Granny. I stared at the sausage, settling on my beloved bacon, and opened my heart, “I can’t eat rasher when it’s been touched by sausage!” Granny raised a concerned eye, “Why not?” I loosened my tongue and spilled the truth, “Because before they’re filled with sausage, they’re full of sh*t!”
My relations swivelled their heads and continued with smiling chews while uncle Michael exclaimed, “A bit of cow sh*te did no one any harm.” He retrieved his meaty missile from my plate and bit into it with relish.
I recall thinking how Michael’s addition of the letter ‘e’ to the offending word ‘sh*t’ somehow made the sausage seem less pooey, more palatable. But still, I wouldn’t go there. Sausages were off my menu for the foreseeable – and remain so today.
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