Evidently my first column for Nine to Five slid in all right. So the hierarchy said they would give me another chance, provided I took my girlfriend. I still haven’t got a girlfriend and don’t look like getting one. It’s sad and I did want to write this column. So I got in touch with this Romanian heroin dealer I know who tipped me into a woman running a singles club out near Punchbowl, Zelda Shrdlu. It’s unlisted and exclusive and called Madam Zelda’s Zanzibar Dating Service. As it happened I knew Zelda when her name was Tui, she lived in Marrickville and used to do armed robberies with her Maori boyfriend. I told her I needed to meet some KFCs, I had a chance to write a column for a magazine. Forget the view to marriage thing. Don’t blow my cover and I won’t blow yours. Zelda said okay. But no taking photos of the girls or anything like that. It was a bit short notice but was there anything in particular I fancied? Did she have Brigitte Nielsen on her books? Sorry. Instead I got Golda Slobbowitz. Golda lived in Kensington, had black hair, dark eyes, wore black, and just my luck, she was Jewish. Anybody that reads those books of mine I’m not allowed to plug knows they’re anti-Semitic. I mean, I’m not crooked on Jews because I’m a Nazi or I’ve got a Jewish dentist. During another part of my illustrious career when I was a butcher sometimes I used to work in these Kosher butcher shops around Bondi. All those weird cuts, everyone talking Yiddish, something about Kushruth. And before you could get anything done you had to hang around and wait until some swami from the Synagogue who looked like a cross between Boy George and Ned Kelly came and blessed it. The pay was always good and you didn’t have to work on Saturdays, but not for this goyen. They helped to drive me round the bend. Still, even though I didn’t want to talk to Golda, she hadn’t scrubbed up too bad, squeezed into her black stockings and such.

I told her I was a retired detective. I’d quit the force through stress and didn’t want to talk about it. Golda was a doctor’s receptionist. Whatever, like a good Jewish mamma Golda organised the night and we finished up on Oxford Street. The night just got better. Not only am I stuck with a front wheeler, now I’m surrounded by poofs. Then as I got out of the car I dropped my wallet. Undaunted, I kicked it all the way to the front door of the Malibu Restaurant and Grill.

The night started to look up. The Malibu was roomy and bright without being glary, lots of cream and white walls and comfy enough wooden seats and nice enough music in the background. We plonked our rumps down. There was a table menu and a short blackboard menu which was a greenboard. The waiter put some cornbread on the table that he said was made on the premises then pointed out the specials. But Golda was flashing a bit of cleavage from across the table and I missed most of what he was saying. Somehow I finished up ordering a bit of chicken and lime with toasted tortillas soup and cajun style blackened fish with lemon butter sauce. Golda went for the cheese, black bean and corn quesadilla wedges for starters and abode chicken breast, chargrilled with corn and black bean salsa with honey mustard mayo, plus a salad and two mineral waters.

There’s a wine list, but I was driving. So while we were waiting, Golda and I toasted each other’s health in iced spa de maison.

The soup was okay, clear, sliced pieces of chicken and vegetables. It went well with the cornbread, which I might add was delightful. I could have eaten a loaf. Golda said her quesadilla wedges were delish. I took a taste and had to agree. My cajun fish was tops, spicy enough and crispy black. I soaked up the sauce with more cornbread and salad. I’m used to salads made with one lettuce, but this one was different and the dressing was good.

Golda said her abode chicken was delicious so I had another taste and she got no argument from me there. But I did want to tell her that all the black beans amongst the corn on her plate reminded me of possum turds I see on my verandah now and again. I didn’t have the heart. All up the bill came to around $60 with a tip, which isn’t an arm and a leg. How would I describe the food? Nouvelle Californian? Tex Mex? I don’t know, but Golda and I agreed it tasted good. The service was friendly and I didn’t have to wash the dishes. What more can you want? I didn’t split any infinitives at the dinner table, the KFC didn’t offer to split the bill, so we split for the movies.

If Golda wanted to get even with me for ogling her boobs during the entrees, she did it with the film: Leon the Pig Farmer. I should have known and I’d heard something about this. A Jewish family running a pig farm in Yorkshire. Sounded like a good plot. I bought two tickets and a chocolate ice-cream for Golda, picked up a brochure and in we went.

‘A wry comedy’, ‘fresh original entertainment’ it said in the brochure. ‘Hilarious’ it said on the brochure. ‘The British hit comedy of the year!’, I’m reading in the brochure. Comedy? Funny? As what? An asthma attack? The Japanese Whaling Commission? And wailing is what I felt like doing at $11.50 a seat. It wasn’t about some Jewish family running a pig farm, it was about some estate agent who finds out he was born via IVF and they mixed up the test tubes. So he traces the original donor, his so-called true father, to a piggery in Yorkshire. This takes up about half the movie as it meanders between Jewish wedding parties and just about anything.

In fact they could have cut the first third of the movie and the characters out and saved the rolls of film. I think what threw me off straight away was the lead, Mark Frankel. He’s a swap for Diego Maradona, right to the scar on his top lip. You can’t miss it, there’s plenty of close ups. Golda reckoned they shot it like those oddball series on the ABC, The Singing Detective, etc. Or Brazil, plenty of weird dark colours and all over the top bordering on the ridiculous. Even Golda wasn’t all that rapt. The movie doesn’t quite transmogrify its way along, but parts were going by me. They mutate a pig with a sheep, some big Rabbi beams in from somewhere, complete strangers walk up to Diego and discuss his innermost thoughts with him, and every now and again this ‘whoosh’ goes through the soundtrack to emphasise what? Parts of the dialogue are completely unintelligible and I was wearing my new solar-powered hearing aid. I recognised Connie Booth from Fawlty Towers, as the wife of the pig farmer, who I recognised from parts in Minder and Alien 3. I laughed at a couple of things and the punters around me laughed on occasions. No one was rolling in the aisles. Then it finished. The lights came on and we walked out. I asked Golda what she thought and we both came to the same conclusions: Leon the Pig Farmer might have been Kosher but it was still a swine of a movie.

All up it wasn’t too bad a night. I didn’t get robbed and I got Golda home safe and sound without any sexual harassment or lewd behaviour charges being laid on me. I said I’d give her a ring, somehow, though, I don’t think it would have worked out between me and Golda. It’s sad, and I’ve got another column to try and get together. I suppose I’ll just have to give Madam Zelda another ring, see what she’s got on the books at the Zanzibar Dating Service that isn’t too fussy.