There’s a commercial currently running on American TV for the Ford Edge
– a vehicle about which I have no opinion for or against. The narrative of the ad has a guy missing his
wife, who appears to be away on a business trip, so he gets in his car and drives a long way, possibly a thousand miles,
to surprise his wife in her hotel room.
Anyway, a banal enough story.
Things are improved somewhat by the music – the Proclaimers’ “I’m Gonna Be
(500 Miles)” a good song to be sure, but did nobody at Ford or their ad agency ever
listen to the effin lyrics?
But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
To be the man who walked a thousand miles
To fall down at your door
It’s about walking, you
clowns! Not about driving an effin Ford
Edge or anything else!
Hold that thought.
A few years back me and my Yorkshire
psychogeographic pal Steve went from his house in Sheffield to Saltaire (in a
Skoda rather than a Ford) to see the David Hockney gallery there, in Salt's Mill.
And afterwards we wandered the
streets of the town and went down by the river and into the park, and as we
were walking Steve came down with something very unpleasant, a stomach thing, I
think. But he was very stoic, and then we drove home to Steve’s house – more
like 50 miles than 1000.
And when we got home, Steve’s stoicism
slipped and he submitted to whatever was ailing him. Meanwhile, it just so happened that the Proclaimers
were playing in the Sheffield Botanic Gardens – a place I used to walk many a lunchtime
when they let us out of the big bad grammar school I went to.
There was a bit of a sunset
that night in Sheffield and from Steve’s backyard you could watch the sky and
listen to the music drifting across the hills, and soon enough it came
But I would walk 500 miles
And I would walk 500 more
By which time
Steve looked as though he’d struggle to walk from one side of the yard to the
other.
