Case #0130111, David Laylow
Release date: August 3rd, 2016
First listen: 5th November, on the walk home. I remember walking past the Rushy Lake wall as the statement was starting.
In which I sat down to start writing, pulled up the episode, saw the title, and walked away to go make dinner earlyā¦ Iām also going over my messages with dodgylogic at the time of the first listen and this one is in her Top 3 episodes.
- So Iāve done a little looking and I was somewhat shocked to see that Dalston is actually in London. Now, disclaimer, country bumpkin here, but itās within the A406 ring road so as far as Iām concerned, itās London. And the fact that Iām shocked, is exactly what I think this statement is going for; the fact that this sort of work is going on so close to major populations. Ok, now, Iām probably going to fumble this, but I donāt think it had computed in my brain, Iāve just always envisioned abattoirs out in the countryside, close to farms and with plenty of room. Or alternatively, the whole process handled by a butcher, because, yes, I grew up in a the sort of village youād expect to see on the front of a biscuit tin and we have a traditional family butchers. They did damn good work during the pandemic, chased out folks whoād driven in to buy up their stock when they have an ageing an immobile population that depend on them. Taylor's Family Butchers, big respect. Anyway, Iām examining this now because historically, yeah, the animals would be driven into town to be butchered and processed in the community they were going to be sold. Makes sense. So I think it may be quiet telling that my brain had just glossed the concept over. Bit embarrassing and stupid really, my university town had an abattoir site until it was torn down in 2014. I think itās a Premier Inn now.
- āI wonāt say which one.ā I get that fear. Thereās been so much I want to write about, about my work. Exciting things, entertaining things, things that need to be muttered into the ears of law makers with all the threat of King Claudiusā poison. But I havenāt and when I do, I keep it vague, although the discerning could probably work it out. Because my employer hasnāt the clearest guide lines on social media use and such and it became a whole lot easier just to not. Which made it all the more galling when the social media teams did put up stuff and got it wrong. Itās not like they had the experts to ask a few offices away, or failing that, the internet to ask, but I will leave that rant for the foot soldiers being kept from saying their piece for another time. But yeah, saw folk higher up the chain posting whatever they want and I was there in the knowledge if I put anything up, it would come down on me like a tonne of bricks, so forget it. Also, my industry is pretty niche and fairly incestuous, and Iāve seen stuff come round to bite folks in the arse.
- āI never did (get a weird vibe)ā¦ Maybe that says something about me, though.ā I work with animals. Have done for near a decade now. And people always ask me how I take the deaths, because there are a lot of them. Iām not sure if Iāve hardened or if my mentality of āEvery day is a knife fight with Godā has solidified, but in most cases, it elicits a sigh and a small swear before I start the process of preparing for our vets to perform a post mortem. Not often does an animalās death impact me to the point I where I grieve, it has happened, but not often. These arenāt pets of mine, theyāre more like strange little work colleagues, that have a natural life expectancy much shorter than my own.
- āā¦every damn animal in that place knew exactly why they were there.ā I can believe. It doesnāt matter how well itās cleaned, but cattle alarm pheromones will stick around and induce fear and stress to other cows. You spook one, you spook the herd. And the herd that comes after that. And the one after that. Thatās before we even talk about the stress of a new environment, noise, travel etc.
- Hearing David talk about the ācasual human brutalityā is difficult. Really difficult. Because you know it happens, not just the abuse itself, but the fact that the observer can become so numb to it. Can disassociate what is happening given time and practise. Iām thankful to say Iāve never witness what Iād consider āhuman brutalityā to animals, but I have seen āunnecessary carelessnessā which has often had me gritting my teeth and saying something. Itās typically down to a difference in husbandry practises. And I try and be civil. And if I couldnāt be civil Iād go get our vet, who is a woman who takes exactly zero shit and has no problem telling the collection manager exactly where he can stick it if he refuses to wear gloves despite me asking him, twice.
- āā¦ just noisy meat.ā prolonged pained conflicted noises
- āā¦you start to kind of see people as meat too.ā I wonder if thatās the case in other professions too. Probably not to such a severe level of disassociation maybe, but do morticians look at people and measure them for a coffin? Do forensic pathologists try and see what would be cited as the cause of death? Do surgeons think about how much pressure theyād need to apply for the first incision?
- āā¦itās hard to believe in any special spark that makes us humans any different.ā Mood. The only thing that makes us special is that we figured out agriculture and domestication of other species. All goes down hill from there.
- āā¦we could turn into a lifeless carcass just as easily.ā The human body is so fucking ridiculous. I am saying this as someone with a first aid level of medical training, I am very much a layman here, but the fact that we can lose limbs, multiple limbs, and pull through is incredible and wild. But you roll over funny and you can say good bye to walking or you hit you head just wrong and itās lights out. Humans are so squishy. We make no sense.
- āI only worked it for a few months, and now I canāt work on any killing floor anywhere.ā Very sensible, good working practise and all, but this is a terrible jump for my brain to make and I canāt decide if itās terribly disrespectful or poignant or both, but I recently learnt about the Sonderkommandos that worked the crematoria of Nazi death camps and how teams were liquidated at random intervals andā¦ yeah.
- Yeah, I need a mug of tea now.
- āOf the people whoād worked the killing floor for over ten years, do you know what percentage went on to commit murder? One hundred percent.ā Iād like a citation of this study please. I would like to read it. But Iāve also done a quick search of more recent studies, and I realise that itās too long since Iāve needed to read any scientific paper with anything more than surface level understanding. And while study David references would have been carried out in the 50s, there are still concerns to this day. A 2021 study, drawing data from U.S., Australia, South Africa, Turkey, Brazil, Denmark, and Ireland, found that there is a higher prevalence rate of mental health issues, depression and anxiety in particular, those affected tended to employ a variety of both adaptive and maladaptive strategies to cope, and there is some evidence that slaughterhouse work is associated with increased crime levels. Worrying, as the U.K. slaughterhouse industry has a 70% migrant workforce, people already vulnerable.
- āThey call it āstunningā, but thatās never sat quite right with me.ā Yeah, thatāsā¦ thatās just lobotomising. more concerned distressed noises
- āThe Bleed Crewā is at once a horrifying concept and a baller band name.
- Tom Haan. Interesting, complicated one. The fact that he is from China and doesnāt appear to speak much English is a good representation of how the U.K.ās slaughterhouse industry relies on an immigrant work force who may otherwise be short on options for employment and are, unfortunately, easy to take advantage of. On the other handā¦ yikes. I have ague memories of this being discussed and Jonny unintentionally feeding back into some unfortunate stereotypes. I donāt know what prompted him to make Tom Haan Chinese, whether it was an honest desire to have more cultural variation in his characters, but he accidentality walked face first into the wall of racist stereotypes.
- āā¦but in practice no-one asks to be moved (from the killing floor). It shows a weakness that most of the people working there arenāt comfortable with.ā Iiiiiiām gonna go out on a limb here and say āmost of the people working thereā are under the influence of toxic masculinity and a protestant work ethic amongst other things.
- āMy feelings werenāt really working back then.ā (Hears this.) Concerned noises.Ā (Remembers my darker days of late 2020.) Concerned noises at half an octave higher.
- āā¦ in perfect English, āYou cannot stop slaughter by closing the doorā.ā Sinister in many ways; the actual words, the supposedly hidden grasp of English, and also, ok he doesnāt specify the accent, but if it IS in perfect BBC Englishā¦ look, weāre the bad guys in movies for a damn good reason. And considering the British Empireās historical relationships with mainland Asiaā¦ yikes.
- Iāve done some jobs where I was able to just switch my brain onto idle and go through the motions. I would find it therapeutic, especially one volunteer role I had at a foodbank processing stock takes. And it was wonderful because it was like reverse retail therapy, I had some semblance of control over something for 2Ā½hrs on a Monday morning because I put the cans where they went on the shelves, and the background was a lovely group of recent retirees and stay at home dads who were happy to be a listening ear to a twitchy early 30s lass who was just trying to get her bearings. The point is, it worked because that trance like state made me very receptive, and thankfully what I was receiving was good vibes, kind advice, and tea with slightly stale biscuits. David is receptive to a circle of hell in that state.
- āIt was the silence that finally brought me back to myself.ā The troupe of āitās quietā¦ too quiet.ā is one of the most unnerving ones for me. Especially when thereās meant to be animal noises about; livestock, bid song etc. Because theyāll know things before we ever could.
- āThere was no clock in that room.ā Is that typical? Or safe? Or is this just for spooks?
- āI surprised myself a bit with how quickly I accepted this situation.ā Another example of someone accepting the situation and dealing and processing it. I wonder if thereās a part of the psyche that realises that realises that whatās being experienced is something eldritch and unknowable and so shuts down logic and reasoning and instead concentrates on survival.
- Ok, so weāve got a labyrinthine complex, our lone hero, and weāve had cows coming throughā¦ Theseus and the Minotaur anyone? Also, sidebar, did you know the Minotaur of legend actually had a name? Asterius or Asterion, meaning āchild of starsā.
- āThese rails would never normally follow the passages of the slaughterhouse like this, and that fact bothered me, though Iām not quite sure why.ā Some little animal part of the brain still screaming āWRONG, NOPE, BADā. Iāll do that, I mean, youāve seen how I try to make the timelines behave when it can so easily be explained with āeldritch fuckeryā. But I think I remember getting real bogged down in the delicacies of the heart surgery in Iron Man 3 that the science of the Extremis procedure completely washed on by.
- āMeat-bone separators, splitting saws, scald tanks.ā Delightful names.
- āā¦ I donāt know how long I wandered. It felt like hours, though.ā Wibbly wobbly ooky spooky timey wimey.
- āThe sky was a dull pink ā the colour of blood being washed into a drain.ā ā¦ Yikes.
- āā¦ and I began to cry. It was like something numb within me had shattered, and I couldnātā¦ I just couldnāt.ā I think itās clear that David had been struggling with his mental well being before the incident took place, struggling and aware as he asked to be removed from the killing floor team. But this emotional and mental self awareness is refreshing in these statements. Especially from a man in an industry as rife with toxic masculine ideals as this.
- ā(The scent of blood) had a strange sort of comfort to it, as it was the smell of the slaughterhouse as I had known it.ā I think the underlying horror of this other place, this abattoir in waiting is exactly that, itās waiting. The threat is there and it hasnāt been actioned yet, itās just waiting.
- āPigs, cattle, sheep, I think I even saw a few humans in the pile, though without heads or limbs itās hard to tell the difference between them and pigs.ā YUP. There a reason pig carcasses get used in forensic science to demonstrate the changes a cadaver goes through.
- āBut (Tom Haan) didnāt make me fire it. I did that myself.ā Ooof, buddy.
- āI wish I felt bad about his death, but I donāt. I donāt feel anything at all.ā Good grief, please seek professional help.
- It got discussed in one of the Q&As that for an Avatar toā¦ ascend shall we say, that a death was typically involved, or at least a metaphorical death. With some Avatars, the deaths have been of others; Peter Lukasā with Jon becoming the Archivit, Jude Perry with her banking colleague, Agnes Montague with her own mother. Tom Haanās death seems to be his own chrysalis, if this is indeed the point at which he ascended from agent to Avatar. Seems fitting, that it should be the case for The Flesh.
- I did a surface level google and couldnāt find an Aver Meats in Dalston, but thereās reason to believe that this London is not Our London, so I might leave it there. It might be Jonny has had to invent a business, it might be that if there is an abattoir in the area, they have a discreet web presence that Iām missing.
- āā¦which I would say are symptoms of PTSD, but he has strongly declined to seek treatment.ā Oh buddy, no, seek help. David was aware that he wasnāt well mentally and heās emotional state was declining. If anything, heās well on the way to the mental state that was so often referred to in the studies done on slaughterhouse work and crime.
- āā¦ he had been renting a house in Clarence Road for almost a decade, and it was in quite a state of disrepair when he left.ā Between this and MAG018 The Flesh really seem to be murder on property, donāt they? Dread to think what the fridge looked like.
- āImmigration authorities are somewhat uselessā¦. No official effort has been made to locate him, and the police were reluctant to open a new case, so we didnāt push it.ā Wellā¦ doesnāt that just make you feel fucking warm and fuzzy on the inside. Oh what? Thatās rage? Oh no, yeah, that tracks.
- āā¦ having trouble retaining builders, four of which have already quit.ā Interesting, considering itās another male dominated field. I wonder if that was indeed Tom Haanās ascension and the transformation has left a permanent scar on the site having it āalready seemed to be way too bigā.
- And I think thereās some very important discussion to be had about the industrialised meat industry. It has gotten monstrously big, and faceless, and removed, and wasteful. That image of carcasses just falling off conveyor belts and into a pit for presumably grinding up, is a terrible, wasteful image, of animal and human life and of the meat as a resource itself. I donāt know enough about butchery to know what sort of percentage of an animal goes to waste when processed for meat these days. I donāt know, I know small scale butchers will work differently but small scale and specialist butchers are harder to find and can be more expensive to buy from. I will buy local from suppliers I trust as best I can, but Iāve got the privilege of living in a market town in a rural area. And while I have the resources now, between working for a charity and the cost of living crisis, Iām having to think carefully, And I have the resources, a lot of folks may not. It grinds my gears how, like with fossil fuel burning and global warming, the ethical guilt of meat, egg and diary production is foisted onto the individual consumer who may have limited access and financial freedoms to chose, when really animal welfare and husbandry should be protected and held to a higher standard legislatively and support offered and research done properly. I know they try but Iāve heard some DEFRA horror stories and a few bad apples, whole barrel, you know the drill. Still not over the hell they put us through during the 2020 AI outbreak. Ok, Iām getting off the soap box, itās gone midnight, Iām ranting with no receipts.
- Iāve done a little bit of butchering in my time. Iāve been part of keeper teams thatās tended tigers and lions. Iāve butchered what I think was horse meat, delivered in blue plastic barrels and thawed overnight. Iāve worn the butcherās gauntlet, got 2 as curios on my bookcase Mum found at a car boot for me. Iāve plucked more quail and gutted more rats than I care to remember. But Iāve only ever had to kill a handful of animals, and that was always as humane euthanasia after veterinary training. Still fucking sucks.
