Mourning the death of our favourite shop
Posted by Fiona Nevile in Cottage tales | 14 comments
There are many things that send a rippling chill over us all at the moment. But there is one event that devastated us months ago. Back in April, Fred Fitzpatrick sold his butchers shop. Locally, people gossiped and I couldn’t bear to tell you that we’d lose this wonderful resource. It’s the butcher rather than the four grey walls that makes a shop special.
Deep down inside I suspected that this scenario wouldn’t work.
“Well what’s this guy actually like?”
Fred was twisting sausages deftly into threes and gave me a cool glance.
“He’s not a butcher.”
“Is he going to employ a butcher?”
“He’s keen to learn butchery skills so I’m staying six months until October,”
Fred Fitzpatrick is generous. He shared his secrets. Taught me most of what I know about meat. He helped me endlessly with my cooking, explaining the different cuts of meat and the ways to cook them. He let me take his unused sausage skins to use for my salami and tasted the first slice of same. He also encouraged me to cure my own bacon and ham. He sampled The Chicken Lady’s and my pork pies and added tactful tips until we had got the recipe just right.
Perhaps I should fill you in with the characters that made up the backbone of the shop. Fred was assisted by the debonair and attractive John.
“He actually cooks the meat from scratch and knows what to do with it.” Fred told me. “He even watches Master Chef!”
Fred’s sister, Linda, confided the same about Fred.
Everyone loved Linda. She worked in Fred’s shop. Plump and fresh and calm, she was direct and tactful enough to form great relationships. I looked forward to seeing her every week. Her eyes used to light up when she talked about her grandchildren. She had bought them rabbits. There were tales of woe when the family discovered that they were not two females but a pair with babies on the way.
One day she told me about her dream trip.
“I’d love to cruise to the Antarctic and see the whales.”
A few months later she was off to Florida and excited.
“The whales can wait.”
She felt unwell when she got to the hotel, laid on the bed and died of a thrombosis. She was just fifty years old. Hundreds attended her funeral. I often think of her. That was three years ago.
Shortly before Fred sold the business John left England for a new life in Thailand.
Fred had worked at the shop for fifty years. He’d joined as a young lad from school and worked his way up until he owned the business. It was more than a shop. More like a local club. A place where the banter was almost as good as the meat. Fred is an honest man who ran an old fashioned business.. Situated in a poor area of the town, his business relied on the goodwill of other businesses, pubs and restaurants in the area. He didn’t own a computer so internet marketing wasn’t an option.
When the new owner took over, it transpired that he wasn’t keen to learn butchery skills or develop the business. Perhaps that’s why he didn’t make the simple local connections. When he cancelled an old lady’s regular delivered order as not being cost effective he lost the substantial order from the pub, owned by her nephew. He’d never checked beforehand.
Fred stood at the helm but gradually saw his old business flounder. He was vociferous on my weekly visit as fifty years of effort began to evaporate. Eventually he suggested that another butcher should be employed, and left after a brief handover.
We liked David, the new butcher manager who took over from Fred. Together we started to work on a new approach to our home cured bacon. He hung the pork for slightly longer and left some tiny bones in the bellies. Suddenly we were eating bacon with a teeny bit of soft bone. The bacon of my childhood.
This evening we feasted on the last two Rib Eye steaks in the shop. Tomorrow is their last day of trading and the shelves were almost empty when Danny visited this afternoon. The new owner is selling up without announcing the closure. David is lucky. He found a new job almost immediately.
Thank you Fred and John for all the years of great shopping, good craic and advice.
We are really sad and upset this evening.
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Wow,I am so sorry you lost your butcher, they are invaluable they really are. For years now, we have been ordering most of our meat from sheepdrove farm, which is fairly local to us in berkshire, wonderful meat with a recent offer of half a mutton for forty pounds! However a “real” butcher has opened near us (not one of these overpriced pretentious London/Surrey meatshops) and we are keen to support him, particularly as he will get us rabbits for two pound fifty each!
The nature of businesses is to change, to grow and die, but make sure you seek out a good supplier for your meat and support them! Good luck to you, and to the butchers.
What a huge loss, its not an exaggeration to say that finding a good butcher has changed my whole families way of life – our shopping, cooking and eating. I can’t imagine how awful it must have been to see something so good slip away like that, I hope you find another butcher soon. We are lucky to have 2 in the town, but I shop at the college where I work where the butchery students a taught their craft and the meat is sold for a modest profit!! Seeing these boys trained up and the queues out the door in both butcher shops gives me hope that there is a future for them.
That is sad. Fred has been a bit of a star on these pages and I’ve always had a picture of that shop in my mind – complete with sawdust, apron and even smells.
The bit about cancelling the old lady’s order and then losing the pub’s business just about sums it up!
PS – I remember that cut of bacon too?
Hello Fiona
It is such a loss to the community to lose such a valuable resource – because those kind of places are more than just a shop, they are a wonderful source of information and sometimes inspiration too. Perhaps it is a sign of the times where people are so used to buying both the cut and the quantity that the supermarked says they should buy that they can no longer think for themselves. In the village where I grew up, and where my brother still lives, the same family run butcher’s shop is still there – albeit much bigger than when we were children having gradually taken over the other shops on the row as they became available but also now selling the products those shops sold. But the reality is that as long as people are going to live on ding dinners rather than cooking from scratch and with the next generation seemingly totally unable to cook for themselves, just who is going to buy meat at the butchers? I have 3 butcher’s in the town where I live although I still prefer to buy from the market, from the real butcher not the guy with the microphone and the big refrigerated lorry selling several pounds of meat for a fiver. He sells plenty but I’m never quite convinced and I don’t want that much meat anyway. Keep looking, there are still proper butchers out there.
So sad to see a local business drift away. It’s so hard to find a skilled butcher these days, how can it all have gone so wrong when it was all there to be had (with a profit)?
So sorry to hear this. I think of the small local businesses that are left in our area, and worry for how long they are able to stay around. Thanks for relating it though. However sad, it’s a story worth hearing, and nicely told. Best wishes.
What a moving story. So often one hears of this happening…. it brings tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat.
I recently visited the area where I was brought up… it was my life for many years and I realise I made a huge mistake by going back. On my return I needed to pop into a newsagent/everything shop so made my way to where that hub of the community used to be, you know the place where you could buy everything and have a good old natter whilst you were there. To my amazement when I got nearer to what was my everything shop I found it was now a knitting shop!! nothing wrong with knitting but how could that local hub of village life be a knitting shop!!The butchers had gone, post office,hardware stores, fruit shop all gone…. turned into houses, art galleries, estate agents… even the local pub had been turned into flats!!
Guess its sadly whats known as progress…
Jane xxx
So sorry to hear this; Fred sounded fantastic, and he must have been so upset too. What a sad — and sadly typical these days — tale.
Oh what a sad tale. What a waste. I amm so sad for you and Fred’s other customers.
I hope this will cheer you a little – I’ve nominated you for an award – details on my blog.
Oh… I’m stunned… that left a lump in my throat. All the years building up a business and customers chucked in the skip!
It will never be the same, but I hope you track down a new butcher soon.
Celia