Frost Cocks

Leamington Spa is well known for its artistic connections. Sir Terry Frost was a local lad. As were Whitehouse and Baker and I even suspect that Rolf Harris has - on occasion - driven through the place whup-whup-whupping his wobble board as he passed through Leamington's Georgian streets on his way to pick up some poster paints from WHSmiths and a moustache trimmer from Boots.

So I should not have been surprised by the great collection of street art that I happened across whilst walking into town Saturday morning.

Nature had supplied an entire street's worth of ready made canvasses: a whole string of frosted windscreens lining the pavement.

Our anonymous artist plainly could not resist. Foregoing the traditional implements of paint brush and chisel, our Banksy-in-the-making set to work with his fingertips. I can only imagine the chillblains he suffered as he produced this transient oeuvre in honour of erect manhood. Car after car was burdened with a giant spurting cock complete with two balls like a pair of Russian cosmonaut helmets. Each cock followed the exact same design and proportions. A production line of phallic perfection. Each fat todger was clearly circumcised but whether this was a moral statement on the advantages of such a medical / religious procedure or just a way of ensuring that the viewer correctly identified these objects of mass insemination as cocks and not images of the Space Shuttle blasting off from Cape Canaveral is anybody's guess.

This artist - and I'd lay money on the fact he was male - clearly loves his own cock and wished to stamp its brooding authority upon another object already closely associated with male virility, the motorcar. Suddenly the street was full of cock-cars. The motor engine and the engine of procreation had become one.

The artist was egalitarian in his choice of motor. He didn't just go for high end sports cars; frequently he skewered the humble family car or a beat-up second-hand ringer of dubious provenance with his throbbing man tool. Plainly, when it comes to metaphorically shagging cars, this guy has no other requirements than a windscreen and four wheels. Speed and colour is not important. If it's parked by the roadside, engine coolling than it's fair game. Flash-bang-whallop! Your Porsche has been porked by the Phantom Penis Painter.

But such virility could not last. Nature performed an inevitable irony even as I considered heading home for my camera just so I could capture this carnival of cockdom for the enjoyment of you all. As the sun climbed higher each penis melted away as if faced with the prospect of having to dry hump a naked Des Lynam. The cars were returned to their virgin state once more.

Perhaps this was the artist's intention? To comment on the brief glory of the heat of male appetite?

Or perhaps it was just a bunch of drunk students with too much alcohol in their systems and too much time on their hands and a total lack of respect for other people's property?

*cue sound of record being scratched by a hastily removed needle*

No. No. Scrub that. Don't spoil it for me. In the back of my mind I can still hear the voice of Rolf Harris grumbling in counterpoint to the early morning birdsong, asking a red-faced milkman, "Can you see what it is yet?"