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Butcher

Bagshaws Butchers

Radworth Ringway, Plot R8

White painted brick over two storeys and a slate roof, and across the front an oxblood fascia eleven and a half metres long, lettered in gold: FAMILY BUTCHERS, then BAGSHAWS, then GAME IN SEASON.

The front of a butcher's shop: an oxblood fascia lettered in gold, FAMILY BUTCHERS, BAGSHAWS, GAME IN SEASON, over red-framed windows and double doors, with white painted brick above.
Family butchers. Game in season.

Behind the windows there is a glazed serve-over counter of six units and a till, open at the back with room behind it to work. Four rails of meat hooks hang behind the counter and two more in the walk-in cold room, twenty-four hooks in all, waiting. Out the back there is a butcher’s block, a band saw, a mincer, a knife rack, a sink, two display fridges, a chest freezer and a set of scales, and the cold room has a proper insulated door.

Michael works there. His badge says Michael · Bagshaws, he lives round on Foundry Close, and he is in at seven every morning and away at six, usually by way of the Slag & Slurry.

It sits where it sits for a reason. There is no dwelling within two hundred and fifty metres of it, it faces the ringway rather than a street, eighty-one metres from Radworth Roundabout, and the nearest bus stop is twenty-six metres from the door. It is a quiet place to arrive at, and a quiet place to leave.

It is, if you have something to sell and no questions you want asked, the shop that will buy it. GAME IN SEASON, says the fascia. It doesn’t say whose.

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