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Since we are talking about butchers, I had a friend who always eyeing the girls and when the girl was a bit skinny, he used to say "I seen more fat on a butcher's pencil". I never said anything about it, but I've never seen a butcher using a pencil on meat! Perhaps there was a time when they did.
Mark Lacey
“Life is short. Art long. Opportunity is fleeting. Experience treacherous. Judgement difficult.”
― Geoffrey Chaucer
Corporal Jones' butchers shop had a separate cubical for paying so pencil prices on white wrapping essential. Before my time but I do remember sawdust on the floor (blood?) and buying a few items again wrapped so prices on the corners pencilled for totalling and the till. So Butchers always had a pencil behind their lughole. Tripe, anyone?
The pencil behind the lughole would gradually accumulate a crust of congealed fat - hence the expression.
I once read James Herriot's vet books. In one he recounts tales of Mallock the Fellmonger. This guy would slaughter sick or old
livestock and butcher them at his yard for dogmeat/fertiliser/etc.
He smoked a pipe which was caked in hardened gunk. His kids would play in the yard,climbing over piles of bones and general
grisly stuff. Sounds bad, but apparently the family never had a day's illness. Fit as butcher's dogs in fact.