Butchering allowed Clive to give school the chop

AS a student in Davitt College, Castlebar, Clive Lavelle from Keelogues, Ballyvary, could not wait to quit the educational scene, writes Tom Gillespie.

He admits: 'I hated school.' So the offer of a summer job in a butcher shop was his ticket out.

Clive, who now runs Clive’s Burcher Shop at Lower Main Street, Foxford, explained: 'Butchering was just to get out of school. My father was friendly with John Brogan from Station Road and I asked him would he ask John for a summer job.

'That was back in 1999 when I started for the summer. Then I did the Junior Cert in 2000 and the plan was to get out after that.

'I was doing exams in the morning and I was going to work afterwards or I was going to work in the morning and doing exams in the evening. I was doing the exam just to get results, just to get them done.

'My brother is an electrician. He left school after the Junior Cert. I said I wanted to leave after Junior Cert as well. I was told by my parents I could if I had a good trade under my belt.

'The butchering was just a summer job and next thing I was beginning to like it. My report card always said: ‘He has potential to do better but has no interest’.

'The day the Junior Cert finished I started full-time with John Brogan. I was with John for four years and then I moved to Anthony Lenihan on Linenhall Street.'

Clive continued: 'In 2006 I won the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland (ACBI) all-Ireland competition for young butchers. I was only 22 when I won it outright. At the halfway stage Anthony was told that ‘Your buck kinda has it’. But he didn't tell me. I got a phone call telling me I had won it.

'They brought me to Belgium to the European championships and to the Scottish young butcher competitions.'

Two years later Clive and 15 of his class-mates emigrated to Australia. 'We went to Brisbane. I went into an agency and they put me into a meat factory. I hated it. We were doing trimming and light boning. It was monotonous.

'I saw a job in the paper for a German butcher shop. I started there but I was really thrown in at the deep end where the boss's son was leaving in two months. I had two months to learn everything. I was out the back doing about 40 different types of sausages, cold smoking, real old school that you would hear butchers on about 20 years ago. It was a real old school and I learned an awful lot there.'

Two years later he returned to Ireland. His cousin was running Staunton’s filling station in Ballyheane and wanted to put a butcher shop beside it and he asked Clive to run it for him.

He continued: 'I ran it for about a year-and-a-half when I took it over myself. I was out there for five years. I was living in Foxford, where a shop came available. I put a small offer in. I said if I get it, I get it. If I don’t, Ballyheane was still going so I wasn’t too bothered. I got the building in Foxford and I am two years there.

'I was travelling to Ballyheane every day and now I am less that a kilometre from the shop in Foxford. It is a great area. It is outdoing Ballyheane, which was doing very well. I had a fellow part-time with me in Ballyheane and he is running it now.

'I specialise in good quality meat. I am buying a good few cattle from local farmers. I am still doing the old school. I am still boning the carcass, which many are not doing any more. They are all buying in box meat. I am still buying my animals on the carcass every week.

'I have my own specialised products, all Irish. I do a few different types of sausages. I have done well with them. I was runner-up in the all-Ireland last year with traditional pork and apple and black pepper and chilli sausages.'

During the summer Clive makes a wide range of barbecue foods - chicken with sweet chilli and lime, three different burgers - lamb beef and turkey - as well as homemade stuffing for different roasts.

He added: 'I have a good long-term project in Foxford. It is important that I build a good name. It is all thanks to my wife and my loyal customers. What is important to me is building a good name.

'It is only a small shop and I have no intention of making it any bigger than it is - huge to me is huge headaches!'

Clive played football with Parke but injured his knee in 2007. Since then he has taken up running and has completed five marathons.

'I miss the football big time,' he admitted. 'That is way I took up the running. I cannot do the twisting and turning but I can run in a straight line.'