Friday, April 27, 2018

I Am The Power Pole Advertising Nazi

Sam woke me just as the clock passed 8am and said, “Go downstairs and make me toast. I demand toast.” He gave me an impish smile. He was already dressed.

He makes me laugh. He cooks every night. "7 days a week," he would say. Thumbs up, it saves me doing it, which I think is great.

I’m comfortable, but awake. “Rightio then,” I say. “Since you asked so sweetly.” I looked at my clock and it said 8.05am. I got out of bed and pulled on my house frau outfit.

“Make me toast with the bakery bread.”

“No, that is all gone.” I ate it with butter and honey, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Oh well, don’t bother then, I'll get something on my way.”

“I can make you toast with other bread, from the freezer.”

“No, I don’t want Coles bread,” said Sam. “I am not eating Coles bread.”

I shrugged. And, I crawled back in under the doona.

“I see,” said Sam. “Your services are no longer needed.”

“I am like a robot going back to my docking station,” I said.

“Nice life…”

“Off you go to work,” I said.

“You have to get up and feed Buddy.”

“I see. I do, do I?”

“Yes, it is all about Bud Bud, you should know that by now.”

“I do know that,” I said. “I know I am number 2.” I am number two, I know that. I know my place.

“Good, as long as you know that,” said Sam.

Can do no wrong angel dog.

All three of us padded downstairs.


I turned the coffee machine on and turned my laptop on. I was heading back to the kitchen.

“Feed him, feed Buddy.”

“Will you stop it,” I said. “I was just going to do that.”

Sam snapped his fingers, twice. Sam is much more on things than I am at 8am, but then, he has to be, huh?

So, Buddy got fed. And I made coffee.

Sam left as soon as he put his shoes on. I walked to the door to kiss him good bye like Donna Reed. The door was open, Sam turned back to for the good bye kiss, I looked over his shoulder and then I spotted it.

“Oh, no.”

“What?” asks Sam.

“Wait until I get my shoes.”

“What are you doing?”

“Just a minute.” I got my shoes and a pair of scissors and returned to Sam standing on the veranda. (Do we actually have a veranda? I’m not sure. We have an Edwardian porch, I am guessing, is the correct term for it)

“I’m not having it, that is what I am doing.”

“Huh?” said Sam.

I headed out the gate and to the power pole outside our house to where somebody had wrapped an advertising sheet for some café in the main street. I cut it down. And as it so happened, the neighbours rubbish bin was still in the street just underneath the offending sheet of paper, and I just dropped it in.

“I have to go, Mrs Jessup,” said Sam. He rolled his eyes. I smiled.

Kiss, kiss, and then he was gone. I waved him good bye until he was out of sight. I then gazed down the street and could see the same advertising paper wrapped around all the poles.

“Don’t you worry about that,” I muttered. “I will get all…” The pretty young things must have just finished their yoga sessions at the yoga centre and were at that very moment heading down my street towards me, so I stopped talking to myself like a mad thing. A beautiful blond girl with an expression like a cat’s arse walked passed me, with her yoga mat in a bag over her shoulder. Then another gorgeous girl too busy looking at her phone to pay me any attention. I stepped out of her way, and I don’t think she noticed me at all. Then a very handsome young man in with shiny brown hair and good legs and red shorts walked by. He had an impish smile. And a nice arse, as it turned out.

I was soon looking back at the row of power poles all wrapped in crisp, white advertising posters. I walked down to the next power pole and cut that paper down and returned to drop it in my neighbour’s bin.

Oh, I am not having that, I thought.

The power poles in our street used to be covered in posters and papers and tatt and yellowing sticky tape, some of them hanging off, some of them blowing in the wind, some of them referring to a concert, or an event, from 1998. All old and water stained and disgusting, really. Okay, so disgusting is really maggot blown meat, or physical abuse, or robbing the elderly, or a compound fracture, but you get what I mean. Visual pollution, all tacky and unnecessary.

The thing is, they are very good at putting their posters up, with their kilometres of thick-arse sticky tape, but they never return to take them down, now do they? And we have to live with the visual pollution forever after that.

I used to think to myself, that is like physical graffiti, as I walked passed, shaking my head. That was until one day when I had a bright idea. Yes, I am very slow, I acknowledge that. I could take them down, clean it all up, and get rid of them, and so I did.

We walked Buddy every day anyway. So, one by one, bit by bit, I removed them from every power pole in our street (the poles that I walked passed) much to Sam’s chagrin. I didn’t do them all at the same time, even if my fingers itched to do so. But one by one, bit by bit, slowly, slowly catch the money, I took them all down.

I also learnt, the hard way, that with old wooden power poles you can easily sustain really big splinter injuries, sometimes down under your finger nail, which are a bitch to get out and a pain to have heal.

I have maintained a vigil ever since.

I am the power pole advertising Nazi.

And anyway, whoever looks at those pole advertising anyway? Can any of you genuinely say that you have caught a great show, or found a cool café from reading it on an advertising sheet on a power pole?

Can you?

The new lot are all the way down the street, on every power pole, I can see that from my front gate. I have to admit, I am itching to get out there and remove them all.


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