The Problem With Pork

Inspiration

This story was written back in the day when I thought that you basically had to wait until inspiration struck before writing anything. I think this may well be the third story idea that I ever came up with.

Placings

Under its original title of Meat, it was highly commended in the 1993 (yes, really) Ian St James Awards. If I'd realised the significance of this, I would have tried a lot harder to get more stuff published back then. As it was, I was just miffed that it hadn't made the shortlist and I went off in a sulk.

Still under the title of Meat, but heavily re-edited, it was then - rather pleasingly - longlisted in the 2007 Fish Short Story Prize.

After another substantial edit and now under its final title, it won a supplementary prize at the 2009 Bournemouth Short Story Competition.

Notes

This story introduced me to the idea that the theme may be completely different from the subject. Ostensibly, it's a sci-fi story about the results of contamination of the food chain, whereas it's mostly about filial disappointment. I'm not entirely sure whether I'm the father or the son in it; I was probably the son when I wrote it, but I may well have mutated into the father as the years have gone by.

One thing that I had endless trouble with was the name of the ceremony. I originally went with Barbecue, but the trouble with that was that it was very close to Bar mitzvah, and in the context of a story about eating pork at a coming-of-age ceremony, that seemed more than a little offensive. So I switched first of all to Roast (which has acquired some dodgy baggage of its own lately) and finally to Feast. Which is a bit bland, unfortunately, and loses the thing that Barbecue had of being something we take for granted now. There are always compromises to be made, unfortunately.