What's your beef?

Beef featured prominently in my life last week, literally and idiomatically.

On Tuesday night, after our er second glass of wine, me and my mate H started on the state of British farming through no fault of the farmers. At one point, I wailed, “Why oh why do we have to trace every beef burger back to one animal? Or even one farm? As long as we know it’s British beef, we know it’s reared to a sufficiently high standard. Just get the beef to the butchers and let them do what they want with it. It would cut costs all along, literally, the food chain.”

“Some beef is better than others,” H reminded me. “Belted Galloway is just one example.”

“Well let them market it as beef from a breed known as Galloway then, not beef from a cow called Gertrude.”

That’s when the thruppenny bit dropped.

What if, I mused, retailers offered the consumer a choice: beefburgers made from meat traced back to the one animal and costing £2 each, or burgers that are only known to be British, and cost 50p. That way, farmers, retailers and consumers have a choice. Bet your bottom dollar that the monied would opt for the first option and the lower incomes would plump for the latter. A voluntary tax on food that benefits everyone, according to their needs and preferences. Kerching!

So at Friday supper somewhere in deepest, darkest Berkshire, down mile after mile of narrow, bumpy, unlit, unsighted country lanes, I was pleased to see beef on the buffet table. The previous buffet I’d been to was a lunch in deepest darkest Milton Keynes, along mile after mile of bland, soulless, roundabout-interrupted streets. At that buffet, I was confronted by quinoa and buckwheat, lentil and tofu, cauliflower and some sort of paste. Yeuch, I said, standing there dumbfounded, and hungry but beginning to feel nauseous at the vegan vulgarity. I hoofed it over to the canteen for a bowl of spag boll.

Back to Friday evening and the better buffet. Before we all sat down to eat, we enjoyed drinks on the lawn and fed the lemurs. As you do. I had a beef with the charming gentleman I’d been introduced to when I first arrived. The conversation was pleasant enough until he advised that he worked in aviation. That’s when the idiomatic beef kicked in. He was all for reducing carbon emissions and other pollutants from jet engines because then we could fly more planes sustainably. To which I reminded him that that would mean no reduction in carbon emissions because lower emissions per plane multiplied by more planes means no overall progress. Ah but, he said. Yeah well, I countered. And it was all very jolly. More of a carp than a beef.

Then on Saturday, I slogged up to deepest, darkest Leicestershire along mile after mile after mile of, well, just miles. My phone-that-was-my-sat-nav ran out of battery two miles away from my destination and that’s when I got lost. Eventually I arrived, just before another mate who’d driven even further than I had. We had a blast chatting to the like-minded and enlightened before a delicious lunch of, whaddya know, beef. Then the guest speaker spoke eloquently, informatively. So edified and edifying was he that I didn’t feel compelled to challenge him on anything. I can’t remember the last time that happened. A high profile cancel-ee of many years, he has since been vindicated on many fronts. Hero.

And so the day continued, until supper when, oh look could that be beef again? I’m not complaining – can’t eat beef without drinking red wine.

On the way home, I'd remembered to plug my phone in so that I had directions all the way. I still took three wrong turnings. All at roundabouts or junctions or interchanges that were so large, complicated, poorly lit and signed. The second time it happened, I ended up going the wrong way on the A14. Not clever. The third time, I ended up on the M1. Oh s-d this, I thought; at least I know my way home from here even without sat nav, and carried on regardless. Thinking about it, the next junction was Milton Keynes anyway so no point turning round and coming back like I had to on the A14.

The next day, it was lunch in highfalutin Cambridge. Luckily I know the way from start to finish without sat nav, and the journey there and back was uneventful. The College Master had a beef with me when I didn't get to my seat quick enough and had to hover half way there while she said grace. I was too busy catching up and scheming with yet another mate. And lunch was … sea bass. Oh. Mind you, I did have some beef, with the fennel. It wasn’t cooked properly and when I tried to secure it with my fork and cut into it, I nearly shot it across the table into the lap of a Chemistry professor. Everyone seemed to be having the same problem.

The lecture afterwards was about space and the Milky Way but I'm not quite sure beyond that, because I nodded off. No not the wine at lunch but all the driving and partying over less than three days. I’m not as young as I used to be.

One more beef that day. As soon as I got home, Hubby asked me when I was cooking his dinner. He's now toast.