Shaun the Sheep ecstasy: Pig in the City

Who knows from whence the news first travelled? A murmur finding voice as it charted the interspace of brackish water and settled like mist across the Somerset levels? A whispered secret in cloistered vaults, tumbling and booming as it spread through aged stone and timeworn gorge? A dealer writing texts without vowels to anyone who’d listen? However, travel it did, and like a cacophony of ferrous cow-hobbles it struck my ears, “John, do you know they have started making Shaun the Sheep Pills?”

This was the information which I had waited a lifetime for. Immediately upon becoming cognisant of this development I dropped my scythe and ran…to the Vauxhall Corsa, and upon entering my carriage to the otherworld I cleared monster munch detritus and ancient water bottles at such speed that I saw the wings of Hermes frozen, all in a desperate bid to get from pasture to city, and ingest this “little wheel” circling twixt man and sheep.

The city can be a fleeting glance or an eternal stare, but it always imitates with apathy; simulacra locked in the broken reflections. This is why I don’t have mirrors on the farm.

On this occasion I would not wonder long through the disingenuous gloss of the city streets, as I had been given my contact detail and destination in advance by a winsome, eager farmhand named Straight Andy. I was scheduled to meet a certain Miss Cum-Dump in the public toilets on Brandon Hill. I was concerned that the farmhand had confused his contacts and handed over the remnant information from some more salacious meeting in the city. However, I ploughed on regardless, given my quest for oneness with nature and the need to get some gurners down my neck (or so I thought). 

The late evening sun captured the protected beauty of the city’s expanse, I was immediately met with a greater feeling of belonging than that which I had often had shuffling around the taxi ranks and neon con-tricks to be found in other areas. Upon entering the public toilets I realised that I was, however, not entirely free from the grime of the urban landscape. The incongruous delicacy of a dripping tap and the warring smells of contaminant and decontaminant served to reinforce any pejorative, self-flagellating feelings regarding the nature of purchasing drugs. I studied the eternally open cubicle door, lockless and unequivocal, and my eyes stumbled across etched words revealing another sort of liaison regularly housed within these walls: “I like long walks on the beach in Donegal with my dog Melanie, and getting vigourously fisted, interested in the latter? Then call 07837 97****.”

As I focused intently and somewhat disgustedly on this message, wondering why there was any reference to the distant, former activity, an imposing figure staggered into the facility. I was startled from my reverie by what is best described as a porcine, mid-career Cher in a hall of mirrors; a squeezed and strapped lumbering giant in torn black rags, lost in a constantly tossed back, ill-fitting, black polyester wig, with tear-melted black mascara serving to finesse the desolation. 

“You must be Miss Cum-Dump,”, I inquired. 

There was a brief moment of silence, save for a couple of sniffs, then the anti-temptress replied: “It’s pronounced MIZZZZ Cum-Dump actually.”

“Oh, okay, Fello….Sister,” I mumbled, (managing to refrain from saying that which insistently burned across my synapses – “Whatever bruv, you are obviously a man, can we just get down to business?”)

“So MIZZZ Cum-Dump, I was given your number by Straight Andy, he said he would speak to you, I’m John Cowell and….”

“Oh yes, sniff, you’re after some Shaun the Sheep products? What are you after, Anniversary Mugs, Signed Photos?”

“Well, let me see, um…absolutely none of those things, MIZZZ.”

“I was using a special code, MIZZZ Cowell.”

“It’s pronounced John Cowell, actually.”

“Okay John Cowell, well frankly I’ve only got one product anyway, how many gurners do you want? I’m selling them for £8 each or 6 for £40.”

“Can you do 20 for £120?”

“Um, well, I wouldn’t normally, but seeing as I am in a rush, and you are SUCH a cutie-pie’ (Well that’s gross, I thought, but didn’t vocalise it) ‘and seeing as I do owe Straight Andy SOME kind of favour, well, sure, 20 for 120. But you listen to me John Cowell, there is really only one way to take these pills if you want to feel at one with the Ovis Aries Shaun.”

“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I inquired.

“Have you ever heard of Shelving?….”

After an overly demonstrative and needlessly sexualised representation of the act of Shelving, MIZZZZ Cum-Dump staggered out of the public toilet, and I tentatively tiptoed into the cubicle. To be honest, the thought of shelving itself, and what’s more, in this particular cubicle, did not fill me with great dread as it might have done some, firstly because I was brought up on a farm, and secondly we’ve all done worse things in portaloos and/or densely populated public areas.  The requisite shelving ensued and with the process complete I was borne back into the open air…

Walking purposefully, AND TOTALLY NORMALLY, I assessed the overview of what now seemed a sequestered city, from my lofty repose. The glazed plating was now indistinguishable, burrowed into the crater of the surrounding countryside, which stretched out towards my own accustomed niche. Encouraged by the natural height I decided that the best catalyst for entering the euphoria of an anally-administered Shaun the sheep would be a return to the Corsa and a drive through the scattered city below, confining myself physically before sweeping into the joyous confines of drug-influenced perception. However, before leaving I caught a glimpse of the first form of my spirit guide, Shaun the Sheep, with one eye winking and the other a Star, manifesting the colourful spirit of festivity. When combined, the winking star represented some of the anatomical realities of my process of embarkation. 

The rise and fall of Bristol’s roads provide many chances for shifting vision, framing at one moment expansive pastoral views, present yet distant, and at another, focusing downwards through furrowed, vascular routes. Moving through these changing, compact views in the Corsa-enclosure I began to flutter and feel a sense of growing immersion. Internal time began to entwine with Karenn, Tessela and a Miss Dynamite mix which one of Straight Andy’s suitors, Adrianne, had left in the glove compartment. I drove on, buoyed to emergence upon enriched blood and light-drinking eyes, with a glimmering nervousness. Any worries of anal excoriation were replaced by the insight that this was a pretty direct and fast-moving method to help the process of uniting the animal kingdom. 

Isn’t it our aim to find kinship across the great diversity of the Animal Kingdom? To any discerning eye, I am a size-zero glamourpuss, but that doesn’t mean I can’t connect deeply with the life and loves of a slutty Manatee, I too have longed for the wildly aggressive caress of a delirious sailor. 

Between entering and leaving the city I drove, I walked, I met and I devoured love as joyfully as I devoured the essence of my acquiescent totem. Every orifice was crammed with Shaun the Sheep and my eyes witnessed a multiplicity of his forms, revealing himself to me as various members of Kingdom Animalia past and present: Canis Lupis Familiaris, Strix aluco, Orytolagus cuniculus, Felis Catus AND Silviu Petrovan, Tyrannosaurus Rex and of course the speculatively named Equus monoceros.

Finally satiated I was drawn back to my own habitat, my own land, crossing a suspended bridge between worlds to an emerging verdant land, physically leaving the magical world of Shaun the Sheep in which I had ensconced myself for some hours. With the sun in elevation I took rest at the top of Ashton Court Estate, accompanied by the final variation of Shaun’s form I was to encounter, a variation close to my heart and one with distant family ties to Shaun: Bos taurus. Together we surveyed a woken land and city which I knew to be studded with varying casts of Shaun’s form, shrouded in the city’s daily endeavours. Some of my own recently cast forms of Shaun the Sheep, those small, white portals into his world, also remained shrouded, in the random cleaning rags and side-door storage of the Corsa.

When drugs bring us closer to the natural world we may be reminded of a dully distant, synergic past. We may find unity through taking acid on our farm and thinking that the Goats are trying to eat our skin. We may feel a symbiotic frisson through doing Shaun the Sheep gurners in a public toilet. Who knows how we will experience communion, nature is a multifarious mystery which can leave us perpetually confounded.

Yet when coalescing around the epistemological structures of our knowable world, nature’s mystery may seem somewhat more acquainted. Maybe these new Shaun the Sheep gurners do have some role to play in bringing us closer to nature? However, I would like to reiterate the oft-spoken imperative, “KIDS, don’t do drugs!”, and by Kids obviously I mean young goats, because they’ll think I’m trying to eat their skin, I’ll think they’re trying to eat my skin and it will just be this whole thing.