Sunday, April 22, 2012

pack slogans fruit









This pack caught my eye behind the wire marking the boundary of a tennis court. I'm not sure that I need to say any more. I like it uncommented on.

Slogans continually fascinate for their vacuity and loose grip on meaning.  I  imagine with a sort of schadenfreude the meetings at which they are agreed.   How about this for example. In anticipation of the coming Tunbridge Wells Borough Council elections, the slogan on the Conservative leaflet, which comes through the door to day,  perhaps optimistically proclaims Towards Tomorrow. Labour's slogan doesn't beat about the bush: New Council Needed!  Turn the page over and just in case, they might lose ground, they have added A 21st Century Tunbridge Wells? Note the question mark.
With so many shops closing down I have become accustomed to the apocalyptic Everything Must Go. In moments of inattention it is easy for the mind to shift from the specific to the general when confronted by such slipshod use of the gerund. I leave you for the moment with Argos chain's offering: "Living for less".

For those who commented a couple of posts back on shoes hanging from trees and telephone wires I believe I reported here a year so so ago  no fewer than four trees in The Grove each of which hugged in its top branches a football. Meanwhile, on a less frivolous note, at the back of my mind I hear again the voice  (and who can forget it or the words) of Billie Holiday who first recorded Strange Fruit the protest song about lynching in 1939  " ...Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees... .

1 comment:

Roderick Robinson said...

Strange Fruit was a poem by Langston Hughes before it was a song. It's the sort of thing I don't usually know.