Monday, May 26, 2008

A rose..., two tiers, lone fish

















...is a rose is a rose


It is a long time since there has been a baby or two for me to push. But I can't help noticing the evolving design of push chairs. The arrangement where the child is facing forward in the same direction as the pusher, is now almost universal, though it does have the drawback of excluding conversation between parent and child. Most twin push chairs, where the twins sit by side, also have the children facing forward. There was, I recall, in the days of perambulators, a twin version, where the babies faced one another at either end of the gondola. Now I notice a new design of push chair for children, close in age, though, not I would have thought, intended for twins. This has the children sitting or lying in tiers as in a bunk. The lowest cradle rides just clear of the pavement, while the higher one is at the normal height. It strikes me that the lower level is only suitable for a baby, for whom status means very little; it clearly has little attraction for a child, who wants to sit up and see what's going on in the world.

Our new next door neighbours, away for a couple of days, ask us to feed their fish. This is fish in the singular It lives in a cube-shaped, aerated and illuminated tank. There is a hatch at the top through which food is dropped. The fish, known as Silky, is less than two centemeters from head to tail by my reckoning. It eats no more than three tiny flakes of fish food a day. Meeting the solitary Silky has been a new and enlightening experience for me. I pray that he or she survives my care.
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2 comments:

Lucy said...

It is indeed a rose, but looks to me like Charles de Mills, a beauty, essentially a rugosa type, but double flowered with a superb perfume. I wonder who Charles was?

Lucas said...

I like this picture of green buds juxtaposed with the open rose. What the rose does is to change remarkably qickly from one shape and colour into another, both remarkably well designed. Walter de la Mare's line: "Through what wild centuries roves back the rose?"