My father wants me to smuggle dead animal on to a plane in my carry-on luggage.

Macca, as some of you faithful few may know him, gave me a ring this afternoon and, after telling me about how bloody stinkin’ hot it’s been, the conversation quickly turned to meat. Obviously.

Meat is a big deal in my family. My father gets confused if someone suggests chicken for dinner twice in a row and my mother is practically a flesh eating velociraptor. She looks like a sweetie with her kind face and the care packages of baked goods she prepares for the nursing staff at the hospital she frequents, but make no mistake, she’s a cave woman. It’s not uncommon for her to literally gnaw on a leg of lamb. Sometimes she’ll salvage the comically large lamb bone instead of eating desert – which was always the standard but eternally sophisticated post-roast treat of Sara Lee apple pie. The local butcher gets concerned if Macca hasn’t gone in to pick up a few steaks in more than two days. My brother in law gifted my parents a carving set for Christmas and it was like they were 16-year-olds being given a Suzuki Swift with perosnalised plates in at their glitter-themed birthday parties.

And apparently that has rubbed off on me, because this it turns out I made a meat-themed birthday post I put on Facebook just today. This wasn’t to add clout to this importance of consuming dead animal to my family. This was purely by coincidence, and it’s actually pretty confronting that I would consider it appropriate for an acquaintance is haven’t seen in about four years: 

“Happy birthday NAME,” I said. 

“I hope you have sucked all of the marrow out of the bone of today.”

So yeah, meat is important.

Anyway, a few months ago Macca picked up a few lambs to keep the grass down in our spare paddock. It was his Fathers’ Day treat to himself. There would be one each to my sisters and their partners, and one for the main family unit (which included the single losers, as a fitting reminder than I’m not getting any meat). We were under strict orders to clear out the freezers in preparation for the greatest gift of all. Yep, Macca’s Christmas present to my two sisters this year was a whole lamb. An unholy amount of red meat. Kilo after kilo of Australia’s favourite thing to barbecue.

Well the day has come since Macca had one of the lambs slaughtered and carved up, and he’s in a sharing mood.

“I’ll give you some to take back,” he told me. “You can put it in your handbag.”

As someone whose carry on bag looks like it could fit several dismembered toddlers, I’m already pretty nervy about what I take on aeroplanes. I can’t say I’ve ever weighed my carry on, but it would rarely fall under the maximum weight limit thanks to my “better to be safe than sorry” approach to packing things I might need.

So when I walk up to the flight attendant to board the plane, I’m already a bit touchy. And with that cat-printed bag I generally look mentally unsound and would probably be picked as the most likely to flip out in the air and try to turn a weapon on someone. As such, clutching one of those Coles insulated esky bags full of dead lamb with a shifty look in my eye would not be a good option for me.

Particularly because of my family’s insistence on using old milk bottles for ice blocks, which would no doubt take me over the weight limit but could be classed as a weapon. I’m not saying I would select a two litre bottle of solid, milky water as my first choice in a line up of deadly implements, but it would do a heck of a lot more damage than a pair of nail scissors if I needed to defend myself. How do you explain away a bunch of dead sheep and a blunt ice club to airport security? I would end up on Border Patrol.

That being said, my retirement plan is currently hinged on the hope I will one day have my own reality TV series so perhaps this isn’t such a bad idea. This could be a creative way to bring it about. I mean, I know at least seven people who would watch at least the first series of a series about the the guy “just waiting for a mate”. Surely the meat smuggler girl could go just as viral? I’d be willing to discard my dignity if it could lead to me being paid $2000 to flog vitamin water on Instagram. I could even be a feature in the next Australia Day lamb adverts. I could even the new marketing tool for Australia, telling tourists I’ll, “throw another shank on the barbie,” for them. This could just set me up for life.

However, I think Macca would somehow wind up being the star of the show.