Thursday, November 27, 2008

sheep...gum, footsteps

Posted by Picasa... in a brick wall.

The gum busters are in town. Removing discarded chewing gum from the streets of Tunbridge Wells seems to be like painting the Forth Bridge. When you finish you have to start again. I watch the machine operators progress accross the paving, with their scraper/power hoses infront of them like hockey sticks. Spray rises around them in clouds.

As I walk across the Grove, dry leaves crackle as the wind drives them along the paths. They sound like running footsteps and I look over my shoulder to see if anyone is behind me.

3 comments:

Zhoen said...

Don't people have bits of paper to spit their wad in? What is wrong with people? Are they all ex-smokers, and are just used to throwing their oral excrement on the ground? Gah.

Dave King said...

I agree with Zhoen. Our house backs on to a pedestrian square, which is now almost completely polka-dotted with spat gum.

Unknown said...

Nasty stuff, I agree, particularly when it sticks to the soles of your shoes. I had a fantasy once, a technological one, if you like. It was to change the nature of chewing gum so that it hardened shortly after being spat out to form a tarmac-like texture. You would have to change the colour of the gum so that it assumed a gilt like appearance. And behold you would have the streets paved with gold and a substantial reduction in the cost of street maintenance.