The Battle of Monkey Nose

I know I shouldn't judge my self worth by the number of yellow stickers I stick on tube poster noses, but at the moment this is what I do. Today was a very bad day. One of the IWAA stickers stuck on poster noses at Tooting Bec tube station had been removed. A sticker on a monkey nose, stuck on a poster for a Tate Modern art exhibition, had been unstuck. It was only the second IWAA sticker I'd ever dared to stick.

I had to face the sad truth that not only had I failed to sticker for two whole days, but now the stickers I had stuck succesfully were being taken away from me. The little monkey's sad eyes stared at me from that art poster, it was as if his dull staring eyes said, 'This is it. Who wants an adventure anyway? There is no adventure. This is all there is.' And the lady with the joined together eyebrows was no help at all either.


It says a lot about my state of mind at the moment that in the last few weeks many days have gone by without any tube poster noses getting stickers at all. In fact as I head to work, and travel up the up escalator at Oxford Circus station, I often reflect that there are more bits of chewing gum on the poster noses besides that one tube escalator, than IWAA stickers on poster noses throughout the whole of London.

I must admit that the boldness needed to decorate noses doesn't come easily to me. Although I have developed some sneaky sticking tactics. I'll sometimes position a sticker at the ready, hidden behind my Metro paper, and as the tube train arrives and people are busy getting on and off, I'll quickly 'stick and run'. A quick nose stick and then I'll hurry on to the train, sometimes too late to get a seat, but nonetheless satisfied and happy for a while. Until I realise it's much harder to read the Metro standing up.

I don't know why I'm so concerned about being seen stickering, I think maybe I'm more scared of public ridicule than getting arrested. Although I have heard it said that 'Bill Posters will be prosecuted'. Don't worry I won't do the Bill Posters joke. Although Bill did recently write in to suggest that 'a poker game outside the Houses of Parliament' might be a cool adventure to organise. I know, I said I'd stop it with the made up people.

But due to my lack of stickering productivity it's unfortunately true that made up people are still my own allies. It could be that sad little monkey eyes is right, maybe it's not a lack of stickers to be seen, or poor sticker design, or an off putting web page design... Maybe no one actually does want an adventure? Except me. Maybe I should just save myself effort and the prospect of future heartbreak and just hit 'delete' on this blog right now. Maybe I should just give up on stickering those bright yellow circles on poster noses. Maybe this is all a very silly idea.

I can't force people to have adventures. Nor can I can convince anyone that 'silly' might be quite good for a change.

I wondered who had removed my yellow sticker? Perhaps an art fan, or a member of the tube staff? When they removed it, I wondered did they, just for a second, think, 'Adventure? What's that?' Or 'Adventure. Well maybe one day...?' Or were they as dull and spiritless as that poor monkey and the eyebrow-lady?

I didn't bother with the Metro and the stick and run tactic. I got an IWAA sticker out in full public view, and soon the monkey's nose was good again. His eyes were still sad, but at least his nose was very silly. And that gave me my one smile on an otherwise quite dreary day.