Banana phone

Thought I would give Big Al Davies a blow on the banana phone. He might not be able to pick up the signal cos he has got one of those new staple gun phones... hard black plastic... brittle, and if you are not careful you could staple your ear to the side of your head. Besides that the spring at the flexi-joint has a nasty habit of catching the flesh on the palm of your hand and giving it a nasty nip.

Now a banana phone on the other hand has got a certain class. You know that russians never take the labels off their Ray Bann or DG sun-glasses. They just have to let you know that they have Ray Bann or DG sunglasses, cos you wouldn't recognise them otherwise. (note to self: Investigate the possibility of printing up a few thousand Ray Bann or DG labels to attach to cheap sunglasses to be sold at an outrageous profit)

Well as I was saying I left my "fair trade" sticker on my banana phone just so folks would know I am politically conscious. I wouldn't be seen dead with a Delmonte banana phone, and those Chiquita banana phones are rubbish, made with cheap labour down in Mexico. Buy a bunch of those and you are inviting a tarantula into your ear.



You see I have been trying to get in touch with Big Al for sometime, but can't get through. Over a thousand of his photos disapeared overnight. Not a fez in sight. Mandolins and copy-cat stratocasters all gone. Punk gigs from the eighties, beer and more beer, beer mats, pub signs, collages with course fish, Laurel and Hardy, chronicle of life in a welsh vilage, punks on the wall, leather studded jackets, Dr martins bovver boots, stones and stone circles, weddings, Geoff's paintings of old blues men with spidery fingers, and pork pie hats on the back of their heads. sheep on the moors, church doors, cottages in remote cornwall, the british seaside resort. ice-cream and sunshine, sunflowers in his lapel.

You see all of this is from memory because none of this exists any more. Consider the nights that went into scanning old photos, the selection process, the steady stream of photos spotlighting the past. The work and the endevour, the obvious joy and fun, the twinkle in the eye, the allusions to old songs, the playing with words, the laughter, the fellowship, the record of a life time condensed into a few months and then deleted with the press of a key on the computer.

It is strange when people disappear. Remember Lord Lucan of course you do. Became more famous for disappearing than for living. THe singer with the Manic street preachers disappeared, and at one time Peter Green from Fleetwood Mac threw it all in to become a grave digger in Cornwall. Disappearing is not so bad if it gives you mystic. Then you have those people like Lennon who believed music should have the permenancy of newspapers. Cut the disk get it out and let posterity decided if it was good or not. And what of those famous people who burn all their love letters and corrispondence, as if to obliterate their tracks. If there is no evidence of a life lived then it might never have been lived. And then you have people like efatima and Big Al who document their lives and then in one fell swoop, erase it as if it never existed.

Oh yes I forgot about the banana phone how did that really come about. Well I discovered that Big Al and all of his photos had gone over the blue event horizon and I had a banana in my hand, and I remembered his photo where he is using a stapler as a phone, so I stuck the banana in my ear and said "If you are on the line somewhere Al pick up"

But of course he hasn't. The idea that he could is just plain bananas. I was just hoping to say let's take it from the top one more time.