Adam Mars-Jones - Cedilla

These were not good times for her. Sooner or later it was inevitable that word of my banishment or apostasy would reach the sewing circle, and then the joy must have gone out of Mum’s needlework.

It’s not something I particularly want to think about. I was lucky in the Washbournes, luckier yet in Eileen. The conspiratorial late-night atmosphere of our chats seemed to put Slippery Elm in the category of bootleg liquor, moonshine whisky, though it tasted much like oatmeal.

Some people like to sniff glue, apparently. I’d rather drink it. Ten grains of the powdered bark will make a thick potion with an ounce of water. Ulmus fulva , as I didn’t then know to call it, of the family Ulmaceæ . Also known as the Red Elm, the Moose Elm, the Indian Elm, its virtues well known to the American aborigines, who used it as the basis of a healing salve. Demulcent, emollient, expectorant, diuretic, nutritive, astringent, anti-tussive and vulnerary, it is altogether a boon to the herbalist or freelance practitioner, not to mention the tireless self-medicator and respite-home rebel, returning back to base half-cut. It is tolerated by the stomach when all other foods fail, provides unfailing respite for a digestion in disarray.

The knife of advertising

After my stay in the Cheshire Home I didn’t write an article for the News of the World . Instead I wrote to the magazine of the parent organisation, delightfully called the Cheshire Smile . Perhaps my letter was too literary, too steeped in the imagery of the Alice books. I told them that while I was staying in the Home I felt I’d fallen down the rabbit-hole and ended up in a topsy-turvy world where only the Director’s door had a lock and everyone was told what was best for them, by people who had no idea. Perhaps I came across as one of life’s belittlers, someone whose only contribution is negative, but writing sunny letters of complaint isn’t the easiest trick to bring off. They didn’t print my letter, and I only got a standard acknowledgement, so from that point of view it was the Busy Bee News from hospital days all over again. I should really have kept on at them. Persistence pays off in these things. Rejection doesn’t stand a chance in the long run.

Back at Downing after my respite at Gerrards Cross I was starting my last term as a student. Certain things had to be faced. I arranged an appointment with the department of the university which gave advice about careers, the Appointments Board (but universally known as the Disappointments Board), and had a good meeting with someone called Bill Kirkman. A delightful chap, obviously very taken with me. He kept saying that it was obvious I’d be ‘quite excellent’ at something, if we could only work out between us what it might be. Somewhere in the cosmos there was a jigsaw puzzle missing a piece of exactly my quite excellent shape — but not necessarily in the Cambridge area.

Bill Kirkman had obviously sat on his glasses at some stage and bent the stems out of true, because he couldn’t make them sit on his face properly — one side or the other was always sticking up at an angle, however often he adjusted them. He asked me if I thought the UKAEA might be my thing. I gave it a lot of thought, tilting my head this way and that as if I was trying to make sense of the world through my own pair of lop-sided glasses.

There’s no denying the glamour of a set of initials. Perhaps UKAEA was some sort of cousin organisation to AMORC, the Ancient and Mystical Order Rosae Crucis. I said it to myself: You-Kay-A . It sounded like the name of a Maori god. I said that I thought this might indeed be my thing, though in fairness it did rather depend what the UKAEA actually was.

‘It’s actually the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.’

‘You know,’ I said, ‘I don’t think the UKAEA is going to be my thing after all.’ The isotopes of glamour can have a short half-life.

His second suggestion seemed more promising. A firm called J. Walter Thompson was always interested in snapping up Cambridge graduates. I managed to get quite excited about that. ‘Do you think they’ll want me?’ I asked.

‘I don’t see why not. Do you want me to set up an interview?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ I had heard of J. Walter Thompson as a giant in the advertising game, but until I had phoned Malcolm Washbourne I hadn’t realised quite what big boys ‘JWT’ were in his world.

He was impressed despite himself, even while he warned me frantically against his whole line of business. I had no inherent interest in advertising, and Malcolm had warned me against it any number of times as a living death of the spirit — but sometimes when the inner and the outer voices coincide, it becomes a sacred duty to disregard them. Perhaps there would be a little niche for me in this baffling industry. Perhaps I would clinch the coveted Margaret Erskine Dream-Cloud account.

I would dance with the devil. I would give J. Walter Beelzebub a whirl.

On the morning of the interview, all the same, I found I wasn’t looking forward to it. I popped a Fortral or two into my mouth before attending, thinking this would make it more bearable. Always a risky assumption.

The interview was held in some sort of meeting room in the Blue Boar, the town’s GHQ of meat-eating on Trinity Street. The first thing I was told was that I should ignore the camera — but I’d never seen one like it before. It was an enormous piece of apparatus, hardly smaller than what they had used when they filmed The Pumpkin Eater in Bourne End with Peter Finch, years before. They explained that it was the newest thing, a great breakthrough, and it was called a video camera. Soon they would be used in every interview, enabling employers to make entirely objective assessments of the candidates on offer.

I managed to ignore the camera, but only by dint of staring at the lady who was doing the interview. She was American, had a pointy nose and wore a smart suit — but she had a hair-band in her hair. I hadn’t seen a grown woman wear such a thing before, but perhaps she’d seen it advertised and thought it looked smart.

She started off making kneading gestures with her hands, as if there was a ball of dough on her lap, and her voice was soft and crooning. ‘Our goal is to get our audience to relax … we massage them … we let them know that they’re in safe hands … they can let down their guard …’

Shamanistically delving

It seemed to me while she was saying all this that her nose was getting longer (by several inches) and even more pointed. I tried to decide whether this was to do with the hallucinogenic effects of pentazocine, or if I was shamanistically delving into her inmost soul and putting together a portrait, a Photofit like the ones on the news, of the culpable demon of lies I found at her core. These are probably just two ways of looking at the same thing. It stood to reason, though, that if I got this job my shamanistic talents would be fully engaged. They’d be working overtime.

Then the lady said, ‘When consumers are thoroughly at their ease, completely relaxed … that’s when we Plunge in the Knife of Advertising!’ She thrust her hand forward in a completely savage gesture, and I won’t even begin to describe her facial contortions while she did it. It was the most vicious display imaginable, and I gave a little scream.

That wasn’t technically the end of the interview, but after that there was really nothing to be said. Why did I want the job? I didn’t. What did I have to offer the company that would set me apart from the other applicants? Well, let me see — I was on the phone.

Somewhere in the archives of J. Walter Thompson there may exist video footage of the Knife of Advertising being plunged into the psychic flesh of an innocent bystander. I hope my scream on the soundtrack seeps into a thousand executive nightmares.