I got a little pissed last evening. The label said ‘Vote Responsibly’, a fundraiser. The frozen fish and chips were cooking in the oven, yes, I know the contradiction there. Dancing to Nina Simone, in a way that disturbed the cat, unused to a show of less inhibition. Still, I sang along as best I could, a little hop here and there. I realised I don’t know any fish. A deep hypocrisy overcame me. If you have had cattle, been licked, laughed with, cuddled down in the grass on a tarpaulin belly, watched their eyes going as they dream of clover, legs running while in deep sleep, you ought to know what I mean. We kill these beautiful sentient beings, we betray their faith in our better nature, we expel them from their homes, push them in their shaking fear onto a truck and off to the abattoir. We break their big gentle hearts, their kind watchfulness looking about in terror, shaken from all they have ever known.

Maybe I had too much to drink, but it had been lurking after I cooked lentils for lunch, after I walked my daily heart-clearer kilometres to where the dunes are being carved open for new houses. I was fast yesterday, Cohen in the earbuds, Live in London 2019, and we’re still making love in my secret life. Maybe my age has led me to a morbid remorse, thinking on how my chickens ran to me on returning from work, dancing zig zag in that holding pantaloons way, clucking to me of their day and how they’d waited for feed, in absolute trust of my return to them. I’ve chased a fox over paddocks when one was taken, murder in my heart, despair at the cast-away feathers, ready to inflict any cruelty for unthinking retribution.