Waiter - There's a Horse in My Soup

  All the current fuss about horsemeat takes me back to once upon a time when I acted for a client, let’s call him Mr Orson Cart. (I stress, of course, that any resemblance to anyone alive or dead of this name is totally coincidental.)  Mr Cart was a polite and distinguished gentleman whose marriage had descended into a difficult period following the birth of a fourth child. When I first met him, he complained that his wife who was a lover of all things equine was forever putting her horses before the Carts. He had repeatedly asked her to sell them but to no avail. A meeting or two later, I detected a sense of paranoia when he told me that the horses had disappeared. I assumed that his wife had finally sold them but Mr Cart was not so sure. It transpired that his wife had organised a barbecue two or three days after their disappearance and, when he’d commented how good her homemade burgers tasted, she’d done no more than smile.  The next day he had awoken with a severe case of “the trots” and realising that his wife may have referred to filly steak as opposed to fillet, he was convinced that he had been poisoned. He duly visited his GP, who sympathised and advised him that he should watch what he ate. I asked Mr Cart what action he wished me to take concerning the matter. However, he told me that I would have to wait for further instructions because, on doctor’s orders, he was going to Epsom to watch The Derby!