PIG & VAL

As a child Val would hear tales of her Grandmother’s west country childhood delivered in a Dorset accent that never faded despite her early move to London. Her grandmother had kept a pet piglet, tucking it under her arm and feeding it like a baby. The romance of this prompted Val, aged seventeen, to enter a skittles contest to win a piglet at a country fair. She knocked down all the skittles and immediately began considering where ‘Cuthbert’, her new pig would sit on the train home, what she’d feed him, where he’d live. Meanwhile a man had also knocked down all the skittles and a play-off between them determined he was the winner. Hearing him negotiating with the stall holder over what cuts he’d like, chump chops, belly or loin, was a horrible revelation to Val. Three years later Val’s grandmother died. On a shelf in the hallway of her house sat a small ceramic pig, a perfect memento of her grandmother’s stories and a more practical solution to Val’s desire for  pet pig.

21 May 2011