Strolling by Fallon on a summer evening

Watching the new Cadbury Fair Trade spot over the weekend reminded of a rather curious incident some weeks ago. On waiting for a friend near their HQ I overhead the following…

P1: Right then guys, new brief from Cadburys to celebrate their use of Fair Trade cocoa beans. They’re looking for something gritty, dark, disturbingly close to the bone… hahah, only joking. Let’s think life affirming, optimistic and nauseatingly positive. Any ideas?

P2: Hmm, where the beans from?

P1: Think Ivory Coast, Ghana…

P3: Underdeveloped then.

P1: Erm, yes

P2: Okay, okay – so we’re celebrating how the use of Fair Trade cocoa beans improves the lives of producers in Africa. Let’s make a song and dance over it then.. hah

P3: I like it

P1: What?

P3: Song and dance. Think Africa, think black people, think great rhythms, great dancing..

P2: And, and, hysterical amounts of laughter and inane grinning.

P3: Yes! Just like a Bob Sinclair video, or travelling dancing troupes on Blue Peter. Always smiling, singing, dancing… happy little buggers.

P1: Ok, ok.. I’m getting optimistic, life affirming, as if looking at life through a rainbow coloured filter. This is good guys, this is us. But where’s the touch of absurdity. You know, that spark, that…

P2: Witchcraft!

P1: Hang on, that’s all a bit dark and unseemly.

P2: No, no… witchcraft in the good sense. Glitter and fireworks and pretty colours..

P3: Exploding from the limbs of gyrating people in a state of permanent exstasy!

P2: Except it’s a Monday afternoon, and they’re just dancing, and grinning, and singing not for little old Jonny’s Birthday. No, no.. just for the hell of it!

P3: God, those guys are crazy.

P1: Hmm, this all feels mildly racist, doesn’t it? Like Minstrals, or those old Lilt adverts.

P3: No, no, not at all. We’re celebrating the grit and strength of the African people, who even in adversity always find a time and place to party. It’s what they do best, don’t you know.

(Murmurs of agreement)

P1: Ok, ok, but we’re still missing something. Something people can copy. We have kinda built an agency off that..

P2: Air drumming? No, no.. done that.

P3: Dancing?

P2: No, no, these guys are black, remember. We’d have middle class kids from the home counties looking like epileptic robots. Absurd. We bloody struggled with Whigfield, for God’s sake. Let’s stick with face movements – that worked last time.

P3: Tounge flicking? Ear waggling? Winking?

(Deathly, prolonged silence)

P2: Well… how about all of them?

P3/P1: Go on..

P2: We create a huge virtual 3D head which looks like a cross between a tribal mask and a vodoo doll

P1: Erm…

P2: And it, and it… spins around for no apparent reason while everyone dances, and grins, and looks just bloody happy while fireworks shoot from their fingers

P3: Fuck, this is bigger than trucks!

P2: And then, then, cocoa beans start shooting from the head as it winks, squints, pull it’s own ear off, showering the townsfolk in a symbolic scent of success… coca beans which are, are, are..

P3: Grinning!

P2: Yes! Grinning cocoa beans shooting off in all directions from this great oversized tribal head, infecting people with absurd amounts of happiness!

P3: Shitting hell, I can already see YouTube filled with people making absurd facial expressions while their mates pour bowls of cocoa pops over their heads. It’s going to be bigger than eyebrows!

P1: I’m going to lie down

And then my mate turned up, and I had to leave. Knowing what I do know, I would have asked to hang about a bit longer… being privy to such a stream of creative brilliance.

Life’s News Feed

For all, events, mini trends, and other phenomena often come to represent aspects or periods of your life. Italia 90, for one. Or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

The funny thing about Facebook is that it feels a bit more than this. I know it’s just a tool to capture and share events, phenomena etc, but when I think about University nights out, I think of the Facebook photo upload and tagging marathon the day after. I’m sure you do too.

As the social glue, Facebook (or more importantly, the News Feed) feels synonymous with a broad range of defining life periods. And it’s getting broader.

The reason behind these musings is my noting, on a recent glance over my News Feed, a series of photos uploaded from the fifth annual ‘Tour De Lash’, an event which involves men, bikes and many pubs. I remember the photos appearing from the inaugural Tour, fresh faced enthusiasm personified.

Not much had changed, in truth. Old school friends with broader waste lines, departing hair lines, girlfriends and wives in tow. The evidence of a few more years on the jolly bender known as life.

I sometimes think that it’d be quite fun to capture periodic screen grabs of your News Feed from the first Facebook forays to today’s occasional glimpses. For those, like me, careering towards 30, I’m sure there would be a depressing familiarity about it all. First the manic photo uploading and tagging marathon of snake bite stained lips and Wednesday night debauchery followed by commentary chitter chatter of students poking, scarbulousing and graffiting around.

Then, without warning, the nights out photos stop (or are replaced by dinner and after work sneakys), the ‘miss you’s’ dry up and on the first glimpses of Summer our eyes are confronted with wedding dresses, confetti and first dances.

An occasional new born pops into view. Suddenly it’s albums worth of first smiles and congratulatory wall posts. In the blink of an eye your News Feed has shifted from a stream of debauched hedonistic filth to picnics and family day outs.

What next? First day at school? New house? Kids wedding? Grandchildren? And then what, death? A newsfeed of funeral photos and sympathetic clucking?

No doubt we won’t even remember what Facebook was as death bells begin to toll – considering the uptake of the site by parents, employers and old teachers, I wonder what legs it has now. But even so, there’s something about the Facebook News Feed which, quite subconciousely, as come to represent so many of those standard life changes that we all, and through every generation passes.

Climate Change

Did you see that ‘Home’ thing on YouTube?

That documentary about how we’re killing the world? Did you notice that it was only sponsored by bloody Chanel??!

How bizarre is that. Genuinely.

The one thing that I find baffling, regardless of your views on climate change, is the fallacy that we’re killing the planet. Because we’re not. Humanity may be under threat, that much I can concede, but please can we at least start admitting to ourselves that the Earth will continue to function quite happily (although in a differing capacity) regardless of the climate (See Ice Age)

In truth, it is only human kind that may struggle a bit under differing climate. We may all get a smidgen hot and have to hide under a rock. Or learn to swim. So if we accept climate change, we do so because we’re attempting to save our own bacon – not the Earths. She’ll do quite fine, thank you very much.