Making Dead Cow Damn Cool

Before we get underway with today’s narrative I need to bring you up to date on a few changes in my life. These have been profound, for - like a caterpillar emerging from its chrysalis into a new dawn of hope and forgiveness – I have been reborn through the love of God and his sacred Son Jesus Christ.

Oh, hang on. No, wait. So sorry, that was someone else. My mistake. I still love phalli, and crazy Latin plural nouns.

Please proceed.

In June of 2009 – after paying my taxes like a good boy for seven years and sitting a test to ensure I knew how to claim dentistry benefits when I became pregnant at 15 – the British Home Office gave me a shiny new visa. This innocuous little stamp meant that I was no longer tied to any particular employer but could now stay in the country as long as I wanted as an independent citizen. Hurrah! The fools! Now I could implement my plan to 1) become Intergalactic Saviour Of Humanity Through The Medium Of Design and 2) have a very cool nametag.

Step one; quit my life-sapping job! Pah! I laugh at your puny insignificance and irrelevance, Employer of the Past! Step two; leave London and its sordid distractions! Farewell, City of Costly Expenditure and Naughty Liaisons with Magical Barristers; I am on the path of righteousness now! Step three; well, ummm, fanny around a bit overseas and blow some cash. Ahem. Arriving swiftly at step four; move to the West Country with Intimately Proportioned Design Partner! Rent a house! Set up an office! Put a gold bath in the corner, ready to swim in all the money we make! Hazaar! Kazam! Whoopee!

This was the fulfilment of an old dream. Design Partner and I had long talked about setting up a business together, one that would allow us to design, manufacture and distribute our own products under our own brand. I met him through Straight Best Friend many years ago and admired his intelligence, drive and miniaturisation. For like a kinky Japanese sex toy he is a technological tour de force, providing long-lasting performance in a casing a little bit smaller than you’re used to. You don’t need to wash him as much though.

In order to get a house with space for an office Design Partner and I settled in a quaint little village in the West Country. While beautiful the downside of our new home was the impossibility of getting to or from it. Public transport in post-Thatcher England is about as reliable as a bus where Lassie does the steering and Skippy does the brakes, yet I was unwilling to increase my carbon footprint through the purchase of a car and there was no parking in the village for a dirigible.

Instead I settled for a very tiny, beautifully designed scooter. All sweeping lines and cappuccino colourings, he called out to me in his little Taiwanese voice and said “Bai mi! Bai mi mista an’ wi will hav soh mani adwenchaas togeva it will bee laik Audwii Hepburn in Woeman Howiday wen shi goes funni cwazi on a wespa an’ nearwi kills everwi-won! Oh yes bai mi bai mi mista!!.” And although living in the country had already turned me into a Daily Mail bigot I forgave this little asylum seeker and snaffled him up as my own.

Our first autumn together was a beautiful time. On those long, golden days we would zip around the back lanes of England together, my scarf trailing behind us in the breeze, my Italian boots gleaming in the sun. For safety reasons it was necessary for me to buy a baby-soft leather jacket from Liberty’s of London, a jacket so fitted that it pushed my intestinal tract into my chest cavity to create rippling, kidney-shaped pecs. Straight Best Friend said it made me look like The Fonz, but – never good with her 80s trivia - she was obviously thinking that The Fonz drove a sentient talking car and looked shit-hot in ripped denim. The poor dear never was very smart.

So the days slipped by, shortened and became winter. Crisp blue skies, the promise of Christmas and then finally snow! Yes, snow! Unbelievably the UK weather had decided it wouldn’t shit on us with a giant wind-and-rain ball-turd this year but would instead provide the stuff of Christmas cards. From my bedroom window the garden looked like a giant wedding cake, complete with marzipan compost bin and sugar-dusted dead bird.

“Be careful out there today,” cautioned Design Partner as I vaselined myself into my jacket. “It’ll be cold and slippery.” Well duh. Why do people always assume that Australians don’t know how to handle cold weather? We DO have refrigeration you know. I’ve SEEN the inside of a freezer. I’m not an idiot.

I threw open the back door and stepped into the glorious morning. Fuck! It really was cold. Double fuck! The path was ridiculously slippery. I reached the shed intact but my hands were shaking and my saliva was undergoing a change of state. Buggery fuck bollocks. I was going to need more clothes.

Three trips back to the house later I was ready to go. I was now wearing two pairs of gloves, a thermal top, a collared shirt, a woollen jumper, a waterproof and then finally my corseting leather jacket. Suddenly I was less John Travolta in Grease and more the Battlefield Earth years. I was a sausage in a stocking, jelly in a johnny, an old chesterfield bursting out of its seams. I had slipped from sex god to upholstery. Oh the ignominy.

I slithered down the lane to the village road, which – against all expectations – had not been gritted. Honestly, what the fuck do they spend my council taxes on? Books for disabled children from broken homes? Fuck the little shits; my road needs de-icing. I lined the Taiwanese workhorse up, gave the accelerator a confident twist, and … Well, nothing. No motion. Clearly, more power was required. I twisted the accelerator further; nothing. Then further, until finally the back wheel gripped and the pinko scum skidded sideways in something approximating a low-speed biking accident. The traitorous bastard.

Slightly shaken but undeterred, I moved from a perpendicular road position to the more conventional parallel arrangement, lowered my tapered Italian boots to the road surface and set off at 2 mph with a dainty set of outriggers. Hurrah! A triumphant union of engineering and fashion!

And yet… as the village traffic backed up behind me and I was overtaken by a man walking his dog I couldn’t help but feel a certain je ne sais quoi had been lost from my stylish transportation. I had this niggling feeling that if Mr Right looked out from the Rococo study in the west annex of his country seat and happened to see me gliding past that – rather than the love of his life – he might only see some twat with his feet down looking like the Marshmallow Man…

…in a very hot leather jacket.