Sent: 2nd May 2005 • To: Mattessons Head Office • Subject: Mysterious Metal

Dear Mattessons,

Recently, while serving one of your usually very well received smoked pork sausages to my two year old son, he was good enough to point out to me that there was something embedded in one of the slices I had just put on his plate. Something shiny and metallic. Upon closer inspection I have come to the conclusion that the substance is either A) a small piece of metal, or B) a filling from the teeth of whichever unfortunate piggy went into this particular serving of "succulent cooked sausage". You don't use teeth in the recipe, do you? Jesus, I hope not. Do pigs even have teeth? That's something for you to find out.

Naturally I abandoned the sausage and gave him something else, but not before he'd eaten two or three slices, which I can only hope didn't contain any materials of a hazardous nature. I dread to think what would have happened had he eaten the contaminated slice. Or if I had, for that matter. My job on occasion calls for me to travel by aeroplane, and had I consumed the metal filled piece of smoked pork sausage I would almost certainly have triggered a security warning when I passed through the metal detectors. Do you have any idea what they do to terrorist suspects these days?! No, nor do I, but I'm betting it's no walk in the park. "House Arrest" just means "no-one can see what we're doing to you behind closed doors", after all, so to think that is the fate which could have befallen me had I eaten your sausage chills me to the bone.

Or what if my son had failed to spot the metal and had instead swallowed it, only to later pass in the proximity of an enormous, powerful magnet? It's happened before, we've all seen it, and it is solely due to his powers of observation that my son was not involved in a hilarious yet ultimately terrifying Wile E. Coyote type scenario. That's a huge responsibility to place on someone not yet capable of reaching a light switch, Mattessons. What were you thinking?

I have kept the remainder of the sausage in case you should want it back for further investigation. Or to eat. As I mentioned, usually your smoked sausage is a goer with my otherwise picky eater of a son, but I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable now with him eating something which may or may not contain shrapnel and/or pig's fillings.

Please let me know where to return the product for you to figure out what's in it and how the Hell it got there. Oh, and while you're at it could you also explain this sentence from the packaging of the product itself:

"Airholes in outer packaging do not affect product quality."

Why in God's name does a sausage require airholes?? Is there something you're not telling us? On balance I probably find this even more disturbing than the fragment of metal, and can't help but wonder why something made of 84% pork and "Filled into Non-UK beef protein cases" still needs to breathe.

I look forward to your response.

Regards,

Baz@rr