Pigs might fly, said my grandmother at every possible occasion, wiping her spectacles on her floral pinny as she gazed into the middle distance of a future in which she was certain nothing would change. Take Austria, for example – home of the waltzes she tapped and swayed to when they played them on the grand wooden wireless, and of that vicious little fascist who her brothers had sent packing for good. Yet, only last week, there was Veronika the cow, employing a broom to scratch herself: bristles for her back and the smooth handle for her sensitive belly. What would Gran have made of that? And who knows? – maybe somewhere there’s an ambitious porker experimenting with wax and feathers, eyeing up the Sun. Gran wouldn’t have had any of it, of course, turning the Bakelite dial away from such nonsensical prognostications. And as for the rise of fascists at home, well, she would have said, pigs might fly.
.
Oz Hardwick
Picture Nick Victor
.