Stop being stabby, or we’ll use a bigger font.

Monday, March 16th, 2009

Gobbing distance from my flat in St Pauls, Bristol, there’s a huge billboard that reads “Bristol says no to knives”

It’s massive, and being a clinical simpleton I’ll believe anything written in a large enough typeface:

JIMMY HENDRICKS INVENTED THE UNICORN.

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E.T. WAS PLAYED BY A TROUPE OF HIGHLY TRAINED CIRCUS OTTERS.

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See?

Who ever erected it clearly has an unflinching belief in the power of advertising. For a while I wondered who exactly it was supposed to be targeting. Then last night I realised it was me.

David is an affable, diabetic Chihuahua who resides under an upturned copy of Andy Mcnab’s Bravo Two Zero at the bottom of my garden. I don’t charge him any rent, and in return he guards my collections of Teutonic sausage meats and soiled leotards. I consider us to be friends. We’re supportive of each other. When, for example, the isolation of living inside a hollowed out military tome becomes unbearable for him, I simply tickle him on his little stomach until his involuntary canine spasming scatters his desolate tears over my steadfast lap. He reciprocates by letting me use his trembling torso to massage and exfoliate my heavily callused perineum. It’s your run of the mill pervert / Chihuahua emotional symbiosis. We also share an appreciation for the dramatic dexterity of the actor Steven Segal.

My point is we’re close. It’s not uncommon for us to borrow each others belongings (brie, jewellery, prosthetics etc). So last night when I asked to have a loan of a wad of toilet tissue to give my Bavarian Bierschinken a wipe down, the last thing I expected was a hullabaloo.

I’d specifically asked David for at least seven sheets of Andrex quilted and scented toilet tissue.

“No problemo” he barked. (He’s not really Mexican, he grew up in Otley, the accents just an affectation, like Lilly Allen when she sings, but so what? If it gives them a sense of identity, who are we to judge?)

Anyway, later that evening I was arranging my Wienerwursts, when I noticed something was awry. I glanced down at my quilted papery bundle, and what did I see? The little bug eyed lollygagger had only tried to mug me off with the quilted but non scented variety, and there was only six sheets. As you can imagine, I was apoplectic. I was madder than a cockney volecirapter at a creationist buffet. I hadn’t been this angry since Johnny Rotten dismissed my figurative margarine sculpture of him cuddling the Hamburglar as “contrived”.

I’m not normally one to get hostile, especially with David; he suffers from a glandular problem and has a neurotic disposition. But some times you need to assert yourself, and I’m not standing for that sort of tomfoolery, not from a corpulent Chihuahua.

I felt a blistering rage surge through the very sinews of my soul. I hurriedly fashioned a makeshift ‘shiv’ out of some tinsel and a discarded flamethrower.

With no regard for accepted codes of culinary hygiene, I threw down my sausages and stormed towards him like Ritalin starved toddler on a Tartrazine rampage. I was Rick James playing a blue funk solo on a guitar made of fury.

So there I was, all ready to knife punch the little fella all up in his tiny dog parts, when all of a sudden the most amazing thing occurred:

Some light light rays REFLECTED OFF AN OBJECT!!!

I’d heard about this happening in science, but never dreamed of experiencing it myself. They assaulted my corneas, pupils, lenses and retinas like stealthy luminous ninjas. This light information was then converted into electrical impulses and carried via the optic nerve to my brain where I cleverly interpreted it to be ’some words’ on a large billboard.

Their impact was profound. Those words hit me like your mum hits gin. It was nothing short of an epiphany. It all became so clear; I no longer saw the city of Bristol as merely a collection of geographical urban boroughs populated by individuals, but as a singular conscious entity… with a mouth… a mouth shaped like a billboard… from which it spewed forth its texty message of peace:

BRISTOL SAYS NO TO KNIVES.

Yeah, I thought. if Bristol, an inanimate metropolitan region can “say no to knifes”… then maybe I could too.

I’ll be the first to admit it; up until I saw that munificent and informative hoarding my life was going nowhere. Yeah, I thought that stabbing people was “cool” and “trendy” but I was wrong. I’ve come to realise that spatchcocking a fat Chihuahua is, at best, morally dubious, and I have Bristol city council to thank for pointing that out to me.

So it’s with little thought and great piousness that I urge you to follow my example. Say no to knifes! So what if they aren’t sentient and would therefore be incapable of understanding what you’re on about, even if they did have ears. Follow my lead, banish them from your lives. Why not try using an uzi to dice your pamplemouse, or you could perhaps attempt buttering your bread by mashing your face into the tub and smearing the slices over your cheeks.

The billboard really does exist; I may have dreamt the rest of it.

You may think I’m being flippant, and I am. I’ve been stabbed. It really hurts. I lost more blood than I knew I had. Every time I see that billboard I’m reminded of it.

I’m not claiming to be an expert on the subtleties of human psychology, but if I was angry enough to stick a knife into another human person (or an obese toy dog*), I really don’t think a big sign with some nonsensical words written on it would in anyway dissuade me. Unless of course you grafted giant hands onto an aggressive giraffes neck and trained it to beat me over the head with it. Which I find highly unlikely, as all the giraffes I’ve known consider themselves to be lovers not fighters.

I can only presume that what the sign-writers actually meant is that the people of Bristol say no to knife crime. Which makes a bit more sense, even though technically it’s still not accurate. Because, not all people in Bristol say no to knife crime do they? A good indication of this, is the knife crime, in Bristol. Paradoxically, if everyone in Bristol did say no to knife crime, we wouldn’t even need a sign. Unless we were bragging, and that seems in poor taste.

“Oi Manchester, how many stabbings this week? NINE! In your face you perforated tossers”. Not cool my friends, not cool.

Is this the start of a new trend in public information? Are local governments going to start attributing similar sentiments to inanimate things:

KETTLES SAY NO TO TERRORISM.

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GIRLS ALOUD SAY “BOBBINS” TO HOMOPHOBIA

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I think I just objectified girls aloud …

….but was it really me, or was it all us?

It was just me.

That is all.

*No fault of his own, like I said it’s glandular.

tagged under: St. Pauls Byron Vincent