Sucking Pig

Bloggit again. Granny should do what nice Deepak suggests and write the post on line. She didn't and has just lost it. Here she goes again..(She'll select and save it all this time for sure.)

Squeals erupted a little while ago from behind the bright blue water butts on the far side of her land, perched just above the wall. A man appeared, followed by Dionisio, carrying a small blackish pig, wriggling so furiously as well as screaming that he had to stop and shift it every now and then to get a better hold. They all walked along the donkey wall (made for donkey carts, still useful for people) descended to the road and disappeared behind the house where the squealing stopped - maybe it was smothered. Shortly after Dionisio reappears alone and the business is repeated, except this little pig is mottled and wriggles even more energetically; he's forced to put it down after a bit, he takes it by the hind legs and walks it along the wall like a wheelbarrow. The pig stops squealing. Either it prefers this method of locomation - or else it has no breath left.

Back behind the house again. Shortly after a van drives off, plus piglets presumably. (In which case they're lucky. The last piglet Granny saw collected was shoved unceremoniously into the boot of a car and the lid slammed down on it.) Two possibilities here - the pigs have been sold to be reared by another family, or same family is celebrating something this weekend with a feast of sucking pig. First is most likely; in the case of the second, a) it's Lent, b) Granny suspects Dionisio would have sold them already slaughtered; he's all set up for this in the white garage just beyond along the dirt track dignified by the name of Camino Las Peladas. Evidently there are no laws here against slaughtering your own stock. Or maybe there are; but this is an illicit - or at least not legal pig farm to start with, so the family has no choice.

Life in the raw in rural Lanzarote. Not cruel though here - not really. Dionisio held those pigs almost tenderly as if they were children. He's such a nice man - perhaps they are his children. Granny doesn't know if he's even married. Certainly in this so-called family co-operative he has to do most of the work. The piglets must feel like his own. They look like his own.