Alien Slavery in Eltham

Mike Slavin May 2008

I go to the station every morning to pick up the free paper. It’s not just that I’m Scottish, it forces me down and up the stairs with a mile walk in between. At my age, I call that exercise. One of my young friends told me he’d seen me one morning: “You were in your track suit. You must have been going to your exercise, or coming back.” “No”, I said, “I wasn’t going or coming – that was the exercise.” And there’s another plus: I like to go to a fringe theatre event every week, and the Metro has, by far, the best London fringe listing I’ve found anywhere.
Anyway, there I was, the other morning, on my way to the station, when I spotted an abandoned parking cone on the edge of the pavement.

Hardly very interesting; roadwork gangs abandon equipment right, left and centre along there. The Gas Board (which I think has now moved to its holiday gite and calls itself ‘Le Board de Gaz’ these days) has been sniffing for a leak there for years. Safety barriers are constantly being blown into the road. And the Water Board (or is it the ‘Wasserborden’ now?) has cleared away its recent workings, leaving only a very large pump behind on the pavement. So what’s to worry about one little parking cone?

Well, as I got quite close, it appeared to have been run over, but someone had drawn scars and stitch-mark over it. I stopped to have a better look, and, do you know, on the side pointed towards the road, there was what you see in the picture below.

(If you eyes are as aged as mine, the writing at the top says ‘ALIEN SLAVE’ and the speaking bubble says ‘hello, handsome’, an obvious reference to me.) Fancy someone taking all that trouble just to bring a smile to my lips first thing in the morning.

I’m not myself much impressed with what is nowadays called ‘Installation Art’. I reckon an artist has to show a bit of technical skill. Someone getting up in the morning, realising they haven’t done anything for the exhibition, and displaying their unmade bed just leaves me cold. Or rather, thinking “There’s one born every minute”.

But this little cone impressed me: this wasn’t to get another million out of Saatchi, this was just to cheer me up. Which it did. Quite made my day, it did.

I sometimes walk up the High Street, contemplating with some equanimity a law which would allow police marksmen to practice on the little tykes who deface the shops. They just make things a tiny bit worse, but they do it day after day after day. And it simultaneously depresses and angers me.

But this little Alien Slave added to the gaiety of life. I could put up with something like that every morning. Do it again, son, I can’t wait!