Carnivorous Cow

Carnivorous Cow asked Bronstein to decode. "Why is the intelligent media reporting on falling population in Europe, while the tabloids are shrieking about 'Britain's youngest mother at 11!'?" she asked. "It strikes me as a mixed message. Either they want people to breed, or they don't."

"Ah," muttered Bronstein, "it's all about _who_ they want to breed! Warning the Guardian readers that it's their moral duty to procreate so that there'll be someone around to pay Prezza's hefty pension with their taxes isn't contradictory to warning tabloid-junky dole-bludgers off creating a further drain on the system! We need more of the former, less of the latter, even if we don't want to spell it out so crudely!"

"Right!" nodded the Cow. "And the Conservatives? Are they allowed to breed, or not?" The Cow was still smarting a little from some Conservative fossil complaining to the manager in the Pheasant about her public snogging. Particularly as it had been very restrained snogging, too.

Bronstein chuckled. "Whether or not they're allowed, they don't go in for that sort of thing. Rather, they wait for senile dementia to nudge people to their way of thinking - have you noticed that The Telegraph is always the paper closest to the incontinence aids? You often have to hunt for the Guardian, but that's OK because Guardian readers are clever enough to find it."

This was true, the Cow conceded. She somehow couldn't see the average Telegraph reader bending down to pick up their favourite read from the bottom shelf without their home carer to pick them, and their Zimmer frame, back up again.

"But isn't it self-defeating?" she asked. "Guardian readers, surely, are also intelligent enough not to _want_ to breed, irrespective of what the media tells them they ought to be doing? Surely those are the people most likely to be popping down to the clinic for some help in preventing accidental pregnancy?"

"Precisely!" agreed Bronstein. "Which is why the BNP is winning votes over the immigration issue!"

It was all too much for the Cow. She needed a drink... preferably from a pub whose clientele didn't have an issue with snogging.

Bronstein asked the Cow if she'd heard the news on The Beeb, which of course she hadn't. "There's this man been living on roadkill for 30 years," he told her, "and he's planning on bringing out a recipe book!"

After noticing the propensity with which pheasants commited suicide in front of oncoming cars, the Cow wasn't altogether surprised. In fact, what surprised her was that hunters continued to use guns at all. But what did intrigue her was that the man in question included other forms of roadkill, such as rabbit, badger, deer, weasle, hedgehog and fox. A bit like Jamie Oliver let loose in the Disney studios, it seemed.

She'd seen a deer roaming around the streets of Ingleton, but no one was mounting pavements in 4X4s to run it over to eat, and mostly, when a rabbit ventured into the road, traffic halted to let it cross safely. What was more of a concern to her was the huge hole in the stone wall which scattered stones into the road, suggesting a break-out attempt by the local cows. Would byway beef classify as roadkill?

Though, looking at the size of the cows, it would be more likely that they'd walk away with only the slightest bruising, leaving the driver maimed or expired on the road. "Do you think," she asked Bronstein, "he'll have an Arwin Meiwes chapter for such instances?"

Carnivorous Cow turned over on the soft spring grass and gazed wistfully at the cloudless sky. Bronstein, Gramsci's English cousin, neatly dodged her bovine bulk and continued with his argument.

"It's not really about whether or not Prezza, like any other testosterone-laden politician, can be trusted to be faithful to his country if he can't be faithful to his wife - that's so a Tory argument - it's about consistency! If a policeman could face a disciplinary enquiry for shagging on duty - a waste of the taxpayers' money - then surely Prezza should be subject to the same?"

The Cow was struggling to see the difference. That, as far as she knew, was also an argument put forward by the Tories, aqnd she thought the Deputy Prime Minister had been punished enough. After all, he'd had his work responsibilities taken away from him, despite keeping his salary, his perks and his title.

"At least the secretary spoke highly of him, describing him as a considerate lover," she remarked. "uMalume's extra-marital dalliance, on the other hand, resulted in accusations of rape, and the evidence presented at the trial suggested a profound knowledge gap of considerate lovemaking."

"Ah yes," conceded Bronstein. "But JZ drew heavily on notions of culture and tradition to justify his behaviour. Prezza, on the other hand, was behaving decidedly unBritish! In fact," Bronstein's voice rose an octave, "his behaviour was dangerously French!"

The Cow mulled over that. She was dying to know what "British" behaviour was. She'd seen "traditional British values" invoked by some education official or other as the secret weapon to counter the spread of "Islamic terrorism" in young people, and wondered how Morris Dancing was going to lure curious youngsters away from the fascination of building a shoe bomb. After all, so many of them wore such ugly shoes, blowing them up seemed a logical thing to do.

The Cow trundled down the conveyor to Gate 8, and dropped her bags next to the Internet kiosk. It swallowed her £1 coin, and denied her access to her UCT email. She GMailed Gramsci instead. "I'm finally here," she wrote.

The machine timed out. No more £1 coins, and last time the machine had not liked her SA credit card. She wondered briefly if she could confuse it with a new R5 coin, similar enough in weight and size to £2, but thought better of it when a queue formed behind her. They'd know who broke it, and the Immigration people were close enough. Not a risk worth taking.

Getting through Immigration had been a business. She wondered if she was still on a wanted poster from the last time she'd set of the alarm with her underwear, given the thorough search of her laptop bag - and the half-hour she'd wasted repacking it once they'd done - and the grilling the humourless Immigration man had given her. She thought she'd be bounced for risking a joke, but luckily they finally let her through, once she'd given her life history and several contacts at home and in the UK who could vouch that she had her distemper shots as a calf, didn't carry foot and mouth, and had no intention of wondering off into an English field and seeking asylum.

She didn't need to seek asylum, anyway - Valkenberg was close enough, back in Cape Town, after all - and was concerned that news of her mental health had spread so far, so fast. Still, she was very relieved that this time around the grilling was not quite as overtly racist as last time. White people were also harassed this time, not just black people, though she couldn't help noticing that they were still allowed through, whereas the "wait here, and yes you'll miss your connecting flight, but we're not satisfied with what you've told us" group were all black - Asian and East Indian, mostly.

Perhaps after "Black Wednesday" the week before, they felt they needed to be careful what colour the allowed in, she wondered.

The Cow was getting worried. Having been told by the nipple owner that he had the hots for someone - someone scary - she was concerned for his mental health.

It was true that this someone scary was not afraid to use her sexuality to get what she wanted. Flirtation, the Cow had noted long ago, was a very effective tool in managing upward. But it required a strong stomach, in most cases - something the Cow, despite allegedly having four - lacked.

The scary person didn't. And so, she often got her way. And, it seems, the interest of the nipple owner.

The Cow was prepared to write it off as a masochistic manifestation, or something deeply linked to issues of power and control, or some perverse attraction like the call of a cliff to the wild lemming.

And then, he told her about his dream.

In this dream, the nipple owner was talking to this person. And then... the person morphed into a cow. Not just any cow, but... the Carnivorous Cow!

The Cow wasn't sure what to make of it. Was it a comment on the scary someone becoming more bovine? Or was it a comment that the Cow was somehow interchangeable with the scary person?

The Cow had often heard of people rushing to speak to therapists about their dreams, but she had never heard of someone rushing to a therapist to speak about someone else's dream. But this had her really worried.

Gramsci was less concerned. "Let her turn into you," he suggested to the Cow. "Then at least you won't have four weeks' backlog waiting for you when you get back."

It did seem sensible. She just hoped that the scary someone didn't know the PIN code to her bank account, too...