cat, present, tourists

 The cat's shadow steps gingerly on the cat's paws.

In the house of some friends, they show me, a Victorian print of figures in a mountain landscape. They remind me that it was a wedding present which I gave them - it must be more than 30 years ago. Do I remember it. At first I do not, but on the bus going home, I recall  finding it in a shop in Sevenoaks and liking it enough to regret for a moment giving it away. Such reminders of time past prompt as this one does floods of thoughts and memories. Between now and then the interim seems infinitely expandable.

In The Pantiles this afternoon tourists move ponderously like sailing ships in a calm. They shift their weight from hip to hip as they advance if they advance at all. It is a way of walking which I perfectly understand because, much as I dislike it, I sometimes in idle moments, catch myself at it.

Kites or swallows, sums up the last question I put to Lucy Kempton  in our Compasses dialogue (see side panel). She has now posted her response, with a lovely poem contemplating the nature of kite -flying, messages on the pieces of paper which form a kite's tail, and the contrasting freedom of swallows. It is a complex poem and deserves reading and rereading. The question I must answer: Would I nod and dance at the end of the string or follow the free and perilous trajectory of the swallow's wing? Not as easy to answer as it  may sound.