This is about life size, hardly noticeable it on the road surface. I nearly ignore it, but on close inspection, I find the tidy man symbol is irresistible.
A man strolls past nursing his mobile as though he wants to use it but can't think of anyone to ring. Or maybe he is hoping that someone will ring him. Even in the days of telephones plugged in to landlines there was always potential sadness to be found in a silent telephone .
"There's a hawk" says Geoff outside The Compasses. I look up to see a sparrow hawk circling high overhead. The last time I saw one was last summer. It was patrolling the same patch of sky above the town. Now two other birds - perhaps wood pigeons - fly below the hawk. They are too large to be likely prey themselves, and you think that they must be on some sort of defence mission.
5 comments:
I like the tidy man, prim and resolute in the face of so much dirt all around him.
Even in the days of telephones plugged in to landlines there was always potential sadness to be found in a silent telephone.
It can be a poignant lesson, but people learn it - that even with cellphones everywhere (and other wireless devices) we're not necessarily better or more meaningfully connected to other people.
I agree with HKatz. The arm tapering to a point cries out "fastidious".
I find I am looking at litter with more observation, and tempted to imitation.
The tidy man is good bit of design, a quite a common sign since a campaign called "Keep Britain Tidy" wasn't it.
But, Lucy, I find it difficult to imagine litter in the lovley Brittany countryside. Is there litter in paradise?
You're right that there isn't much in the countryside, except baler twine and other bits of agricultural mess. Oddly, I find its absence one of the things which can make this kind of landscape feel a bit barren, especially at this time of year.
However, I do venture into urban areas sometimes, and that's where I'm finding myseld looking more carefully at the litter. In fact though, the French aren't prolific litterers, in my observation, which is strange because they can be fairly slobbish in many other ways.
I remember someone who did a bit of open sea sailing saying that sometimes out at sea a bit of recognisable human litter floating towards you was quite reassuring in the empty ocean. Though evidently, as you've remarked, there is too much of the largely invisible kind, as the turtles that die from eating it can testify.
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