Cat Stevens sang about looking for a hard-headed woman. I could have done him a favour, and sent along Ms Violent.

Now, I'm not about to pile ridicule on my ex in absentia: our time together was my choice too, and I delayed getting out when it was so obviously a bad choice to continue.

I know a bit of her further adventures, and the end appears to have been quite sad.

Please read this as an exposure of a bad personal trait of mine, rather than any condemnation of her.

***

Ah, jazz, good food, and wine! It should have been heaven.

Just fifteen minutes' slow amble from my then-home in Guvvietown, a fine bistro had set up in the upstairs area of a block of shops. Thanks to the eternal food-snob quest of Ms Violent, we'd been among the first customers.

It may have been due to more snobbery on her part that we continued as regular customers: the place was a hobby project run by a couple who were academics by day.

I had, as usual, not much say in the matter, but I really didn't mind. The rota of musicians playing there included many friends and acquaintances from my own after-hours projects in the field of Silly Noises.

So we'd wander down about once a week, and I'd watch and listen, trying to steal David's guitar chords or work out why it was that stick-insect Jim could get such an excellent slap bass tone, while Ms Violent sucked up to Owner Couple and ingested far too many carafes of house white.

Eventually (and it was often after the players had bumped out, and Owner Couple were making their hints more and more obvious), Ms Violent would finally budge, and we'd amble home.

Okay, I'd amble. She might stagger.

This one particular Friday night in December was particularly warm (it's Australia, folks!) and I suspect my companion may have caraffed to a degree unprecedented, even for her.

As we meandered up the hill toward our connubial battleground, she hove close to a power pole.

"Seeeeeeeee youuuuuuuu, Jimmehhhhhhh!" she cried, in a bad Glaswegian accent, possibly imitating that punk gerbil in The Young Ones on TV.

A solid headbutt shook the pole - not a bit.

If you're full of grog and something stupid doesn't get a laugh, you might just conclude it had better be done again, with more gusto.

There are quite a few power poles up that hill from town: despite my best efforts to prevent it happening, most of them were assaulted that night. The culprit was believed to be a stocky Englishwoman with a pronounced wobbly gait.

Then we got to the corner of our street. Mrs Bernitoff, the inhabitant of the corner house, had a fondness for incinerating gum leaves, and often conducted her white, racist version of smoking ceremonies just as our washing went up downwind of the pyre.

Yes, okay, old Bernie made me angry too, but then I was comparatively sober. It wasn't me who decided to use my bare hands, to try and strip all the leaves off Bernie's prized rosebushes. The ones with the thorns, you know...

After half a dozen tries, the idea may sunk into Violent's addled brain: "pull rosebush, feel pain".

She stopped, and we finally got home.

Once we were in bed, the complaints began. The room was apparently spinning. Then she had to get up, and, unsurprisingly, go to the bathroom.

Nope. Didn't make it. Bleurgh, she went, right in the middle of the bedroom carpet.

Of course, it fell to Muggins to make good. I girded up the old loins with a towel, got bucket and all, and set to work...

...Only to be interrupted by another storm-surge of beef strog and grog, fair in the middle of my naked back, just like Monty Python's Mr Creosote hosing the cleaner in the film.

Eventually, I managed to clean up once more than Violent managed to throw up, so I showered and prepared to sleep.

No, that wasn't happening. Apparently the superhuman powers had vanished, with a vengeance. She Who Could Put A Wee Malky On Utility Poles was now She Who Would Die Very Soon.

"Get me an ambulance. NOW! I am dying!"

I weighed up the possibility of her having any more contents to upchuck, and do a Mama Cass choke upon: the odds were negligible.

While Ms Violent had taken on board a considerable lake of fermented grapes that evening, I'd seen her regularly do a 2-litre cask of white and a few Coopers stubbies in an evening, so I didn't think tolerance was a short term problem.

I asked if she could die quietly, please, and rolled over in the hope of some sleep.

Sleep came to me eventually, and not long after that, the dawn. I was soon up, into the coffee, and at work tidying the garden. Our landlady, Mrs Fastidious, was particularly keen on the lawn and garden thing as an excuse to hang around and pry, so a bit of self-discipline was the best way to deter her from visiting (and possibly discovering The Cat We Pretended Wasn't Ours).

From my vantage in the pine-bark on the front terrace, I could hear brass instruments playing "Good King Wenceslas", somewhere down toward the city centre.

Gradually, the music got closer. It turned out to be a bunch of Salvation Army dudes and dudettes, in uniform. They were riding around, busking on a flatbed truck.

The band had parked on our street, just out of sight, in front of the Bernitoff place.

I slipped the leader of the band a twenty, and asked for four or five rousing Crimbo tunes "for a lady who's sick in bed at my place", then dodged inside to bring Ms Violent a cup of tea and watch the abject agony.

I might have missed being born a bastard, but I was definitely conceived as one.