Concrete pencil

By John Hill on May 15, 2008 8:59 AM |

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Giles Broadbent picks up the Concrete Pencil this week (Dan Bourke is away)

The advert was wrong in the way that only adverts can be.

The advert was using the kung fu theory of advertising – weakness becomes strength; flaw becomes multi-million-pound marketing initiative.

So the advert saw dozens of people, nose to nose, in an abandoned warehouse with a slogan like “Get Closer”.

The advert was promoting a brand of chewing gum. Yet none of the hundred or so regimented folk sharing their personal space were joggling their jaws by so much as a nanometre.

Fast forward… a crowded DLR car and I, too, find myself similarly trapped by overbearing humanity.
To my right, a tall figure, Germanic in stature, wearing a cagoul under which he is, I presume, slow cooking a venison stew (judging from the meaty emanations).

I am lodged down wind and up close. The tinny bleep of his MP3 player relays the blunk-plink oeuvre of Kraftwerk. I rail against the curvature of my spine – unconsciously, defensively, unknowingly – and rise to find myself level with his mouth.

Into this rancid void he deposits a piece of gum and begins to chew.

They do not chew in the advert. They stand implacably still, smile, engage with each other’s twinkly eyes and, perhaps promote a hint of sexual tension here and there.

On the DLR car, there is also tension. I find it in my shoulders and down my back.

My fellow traveller polishes its teeth with his transient xylitol and draws forth lakes of saliva to arm against gingivitis. He casually tosses the gum from left cheek to right, like the Brazilian beach volley ball team. He presents the strangled lump to his lips, then makes it vanish, like a hairless albino mole suddenly aware of its nakedness.

He goes quiet to lull me, then starts up again, masticating furiously as though the ball of gum were the size and weight of life’s disappointments and the only course of action is attack, attack, attack.

And I wonder, in the sullen demi-silence punctuated only by the oceanic swashing of his Oatibix-flecked mouth juice, whether this is why they are called strangers.

They say strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet. May I offer an amendment? Strangers are friends you haven’t clocked with the business end of a Sunbeam 4211 Steam-Master Iron … yet.

Think about it. Etymological evolution could have done away with the word “stranger”. The language is flexible enough to create a softer word to accommodate newcomers.

We could call them “misms” or “lills” or “bunlets”. We could have run the word “stranger” out of town, as we did some racial and gender labels.

But no. We stuck with strangers. We stuck with a word, 77.7 per cent of which is a synoym for weird, and bizarre and outlandish. We decided that the furtherance of our species was best served by ensuring that a warning was inherently linked to the appearance of an alien.

And, with my gum-bearing provocateur agitating my timpanic membrane, I understand why.

Anyway, that’s me. How are you doing?