greetings, hornswoggle, dripping

This is a photograph of a print which developers have posted on the hoarding outside the extinct cinema in Tunbridge Wells. It shows the view from the place (where the print now resides), on the corner of Church Road,  as it used to be. Traffic lights  now occupy the corner. Barrett Bonden, thanks for your comment. Please note that  the same habit of decorating disused buildings with pictures from the past is to be found here as well as in Hereford.

Am I alone in allowing my eye to be caught by a word in a dictionary, the pursuit of which  can lead to a chain of distractions? The other day I could not resist in the Oxford Dictionary Hornswoggle  - to cheat or hoax. This led me, in  The Cassell Dictionary of Slang, to  Bumswiggle  - to  confound or ruin; and to Honeyfuggle - to swindle, trick or fool; with the secondary meaning - cuddle or sweet talk. Oh  for the chance  to use these words! Failing that it is pleasing to roll  each of them them round the tongue like an old fashioned bullseye.

This afternoon everything is dripping. It is not quite raining but the air is damp enough to keep the children from the playground in The Grove. The warm and rather steamy weather  is, however, welcome to the birds. The humidity slows everything down. Starlings are fluting in the treetops; a blackbird darts across the path, its alarm call like a  briefly ringing telephone; pigeons fly heavily on to the wet grass in search of grubs and worms; and The Grove crow, ever present and ever watchful, flaps among the branches.