Carnivorous Cow

Carnivorous Cow sat at the keyboard, enjoying the bandwidth bonanza that Oslo wifi offered. She was emailing Gramsci while Skyping Bronstein and surfing the Net. Trying to describe the blue of the midnight sky to Gramsci proved frustrating, which gave her just a little sympathy with Tony's endeavours to find something vegetarian to eat in Oslo.

That Oslo is a city of carnivores can perhaps be guessed from the huge tiger in the square at Oslo Central Station. And the whale meat in the supermarkets. But Tony persevered. It was quite clear that fish was regarded as a vegetable, but that didn't stop him. The Cow admired his resolve and his optimism, but wondered why he didn't just switch to a sensible diet like ice cream and chocolate.

But, while carnivores were plenty, cows were not - except on the menu of McDonalds. Which was why the Cow was so surprised to see, on the wall opposite the Schous Plass Trikk stop, a herd of happy cows.

She just hoped they were destined for something a little better than a future as a happy meal.

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Tony thought it was a DHL conference, but the Cow thought manicurists more likely. But they ought to have known better. American accented voices calling each other "sister" as the moved around the breakfast buffet in pairs should have provided a clue, but it took Google's assistance to work out that it was a Jehovah's Witness event.

But deliverance was indeed at hand. The Hand on Rådhusetgata, to be more specific. Ingvar liberated a bicycle from the row behind the medieval fortress, and the GPS took off. Midsummer Night in Oslo had begun.

"Can I ask you something?" the woman at Immigration asked the Cow. Uh-oh, thought the Cow, but it was fairly innocuous. "So what's the difference between SAA and BA?" the woman asked. The Cow was due to fly out on BA, but had previously flown to London once with each. "Personal preference," she shrugged. "The SAA flight map gets interrupted with irritating cartoons of in-flight exercises to avoid DVTs, while the BA one doesn't?" She was perhaps not the best person to ask, on reflection.

But so much came down to choice. Like discovering she and Andrew had been assigned the same seat. No one had asked either of them if they chose to sit on each other's lap, and she suspected that Andrew, being tall, would want his entire seat to himself.

Then there was the in-flight meal choice - how would you prefer to die? Bird flu, or Mad Cow Disease? Even the vegetarian option was potentially hazardous, with luminous green caterpillars racing out of the lettuce leaves.

But sometimes choice was impacted by other factors too - like choosing Mexican dishes off a Norwegan menu at Mucho Mas, and wondering whether one's capacity in Spanish or Norsk was more up to the task... But luckily, at times like this, the Universe intervened, and threw a curve ball. "I wonder what aubergine would be like on a quesadilla?" mused the Cow, knowing she was about to find out....

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It is commonly held that a mere six degrees of separation can be traced between any two random people. So that someone you know knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows someone who knows this other random person. Which is rather mind-boggling at best, but positively terrifying in a place like Cape Town.

The Cow was often tripping up against this. In fact, she was beginning to feel she shared a "contacts" list with the Nipple Owner. Disturbing to think what glimpses he might be gaining through the cracked lenses of her multi-faceted acquaintance assortment.

And then she read that Andre Brink was marrying again. Fifth time. She tried to suspend her cynicsm at the news, but couldn't help wondering to what extent six degrees of separation was moderated by five decrees of divorce....

It wasn't a debate on African Essentialism. It was the Kgotla Winter Concert, and the Cow - and everyone else - was advised to wear one colour only. The trouble was, being naturally clad in pied leather, her wardrobe reflected this tendency. The only colour in which she could attire herself completely, was black. But was black a colour?

"Black is the absence of light, and therefore the absence of colour!" pronounced Gramsci. "Assuming, of course, one is working within an additive paradigm - colour as light. White light is thus the composite of all colours - red, green and blue." The Cow rolled her eyes dramatically. This wasn't helping.

"Of course, if one is working in a subtractive paradigm - colour as pigment, say - then white is the absence of colour and black the composite of all colours - cyan, magenta, and yellow. Technically, it's more of a messy grey, which is usually why printers specify it as the CMYK system, the K being for real black. So yes, black is a pigment, black can be a colour, in that paradigm."

The Cow decided to abandon the attempt. She wasn't about to engage in elaborate discussions about paradigms with people dressed as woodsprites at the door. Instead she arrived colourfully clad in multiple hues.

"Are you colour co-ordinated?" asked the woodsprite. The Cow wasn't sure. "Ah, yes!" cried the woodsprite. "There's pink there" - in her jersey - "and there!" - her fishnet socks. In she went.

It was clear some others had had less reticence in engaging the paradigm debate, but black was by no means universal. An ambulatory marshmallow in radioactive pink glowed from across the hall, and various green ensembles flitted among the blue, white, silver and stone.

The Cow turned to the black-clad teenager sitting next to her. "Is black a colour?" she asked. "Free, free as a free range moth," he quoted back at her, and sunk his teeth into his salome.

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"Aha!" cried Gramsci triumphantly. "You'd have a tough time in Laos!" The Cow wasn't entirely sure what to make of that, until Gramsci explained patiently that Laos was a country in Asia, between Burma, China, Cambodia, Thailand and Vietnam. It didn't sound like somewhere she was about to find herself anywhere soon, but just in case, she asked Gramsci why.

"According to News24," he chuckled, "they have a complete ban on Public Displays of Affection. No kissing, no touching, no dancing in pubs... " Gramsci shook his head sympathetically. "You wouldn't last long at all!"

The Cow ruminated slowly. Even in pubs? She mailed the Butler, sending him the URL. "Let's not go to Laos," she suggested. "Kleinmond, rather."

The reply was not altogether surprising. "The old git in The Pheasant," the Butler noted, "must have been Laotian." It made perfect sense, after all.

Gary Glitter has lost his appeal. Well, that's not exactly news, as the Cow pointed out to Gramsci, given that his appeal was transient and very much a 70s phenomenon. But what was being referred to in the press was his losing his appeal against a three-year sentence for molesting under-age girls in Vietnam.

Gary Glitter had fled to Vietnam after being jailed in the UK for possession of child pornography. This, Gramsci held, was due to his not having had Advocate Barbie to conduct his defence. "Presumably," the Cow suggested, "he thought that the Americans had messed up the country so badly that the Vietnamese' 70s traumas were related more to napalm than to tight sparkly clothes and platform shoes, and so would be more accepting of him than most."

Gramsci, shuffling along singing "I love you love me love", shrugged. "Still," he said, "it does show that crime doesn't pay. Sartorial crimes against humanity may not rank up there with child abuse, but either way, a spell in jail is certainly warranted."

It's not often one hears Marx quoted on Campus, and so the Cow sat up and took notice. It was all due, she was convinced, to the commodification of space. Putting a price-tag on how many windows an office had reminded her somewhat of some Dickensian tax of yore, but history had never been her strong point, whether it be as tragedy or as farce.

Still, the anecdotes that Prof Ritalin was collecting were interesting. HODs overtly claiming territorial, conservative or tactical positions were unsurprising, but the sound-byte succinctness of the statements was. Almost as if they cried out to be headlined across the media, albeit just the Not The Monday Paper.

She couldn't help noting, furthermore, how rapidly the conversation had morphed from dicussing The Politics of Marking, to discussing The Politics of Space. After all, why waste good academic attention on teaching and learning matters when there were administrativia to consume it?

And, if an Englishman's home was his castle, was an academic's office his fortress?

Gramsci mulled over the possibility meditatively while the Cow humphed about a bit more. "Perhaps Marx should have spent some time at UCT," he ventured. "Then his model might have allowed for the simultaneity of tragedy and farce."

Greener grass or not, the Cow felt very at home on the damp little island in the North Sea. Perhaps from recognising the Benjamin Bunnies and Mrs Tiggywinkles of her youth among the carcasses on the roads, or perhaps from finding newspapers with both Su Doku and Ka Kuro every day, but it did have a comfortable feel about it.

Perhaps, Gramsci added, the attentiveness of her English butler had something to do with it too, but the Cow changed the subject at that point with the merest hint of moisture gathering in her melancholic bovine eyes.

After all, how surprising was it for a Carnivorous Cow to feel at home in an environment that commemorates such beasts as the Craven Heifer?

The Cow, as can be seen (below) from her photo, is white in places. One of those places is UCT. This leads to all manner of assumptions, such as the assumption that she knows something about wine, and the assumption that she's been overseas. Until about a year ago, both of these assumptions were wrong.

The wine assumption has been slightly addressed of late - these days the Cow can tell white wine from red, mainly by holding her glass up to the light and staring at the colour. The overseas travel issue, however, has been resolved more fully. Of late, the Cow has done some travelling - and crossed the pond twice, with a third trip to follow, all within the space of a year.

Which has left the Nipple Owner rather non-plussed. A migratory Cow resonates with his expectation; a Cow who was until last year completely non-migratory shook his universe, like the flightless American.

Gramsci found it all rather amusing. Watching the Cow pine for the green green grass on the banks of the Greta, he shook his head sadly. "Perhaps," he suggested, "sprouting some wings might be the answer?"

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Cow no. 200185 looked over the wall. It could have been UCT, since it was a stonewall, and the cow had no name, only a number. But then, the number was only six digits long and not eight, so the bar code reader in the Library would probably not issue her any books, and her access control might be limited.

Which was probably as well, as she had her eye on plants in the garden, to feast on.

The grass greener on the other side? Well, those were the kinds of questions this Cow has been facing since her return from the Yew Kay. It seems that everyone translated a four-week absence into an LSD trip, and wanted to know the outcome. Was the return merely temporary, in order to pack up and serve out notice periods, or had the warm beer and funny accents been sufficient to discourage her from any intentions to step over the pond?

All of which was very amusing, the Cow assured Gramsci. Partly because the beer wasn't warm, and partly because it had never been intended as an LSD trip anyway.

But, she assured him, the grass was very much greener. And springier, and lusher, and quite another type of thing to what she associated with the term "grass" from her exposure to African grass. In fact, there were so many different shades of green she felt linguistically impoverished and unable to describe them sufficiently with only the term "green" at her disposal. A bit like isiXhosa having a single word for both blue and green, perhaps. But greener, by any definition, the grass most certainly was. And wetter, even at midday. Laying in the grass was inadvisable without an aqualung, even on the sunniest day.

Inadvisable also, perhaps, because of the nettles. Not that the nettles bothered the Cow - their sting was overrated, and besides, they seemed always to grow among dock leaves, their natural antidote - and she discovered during "be kind to nettles" week that they contained more iron than spinach. The subtext was that one shouldn't root them out of ones garden, but rather farm them, and eat them.

But the Cow didn't get that far. With Green & Black's orgasmic chocolate, and Thunder & Lightning ice cream, as a staple diet, she was never tempted to become that adventurous. Aside from the fact that it reminded her of Angela Lansbury, and manglewurzles, and she had no inclination to land up at the bottom of the sea with a bunch of football-playing cartoon animals, World Cup or not!

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