apple 2, festival, heels

 I have to confess to anthropomorphic tendencies. It is hard for me to resist putting words into the mouths of the creatures I encounter on a daily basis, or to supply them with human attributes. Maybe its because part of the fascination with birds and animals other than ourselves is that they share many of the experiences of being alive with us. So that we recognise in their eyes or the angles of their heads,  or the lines of their mouths or beaks,  something which we know as human expressions. The pigeons that perch on the parapet of the roof across the road in the evening sun, seem  often to be enjoying the view and the sunset, as we might. And when they begin to tap each other with their beaks (billing I believe it's called) and sometimes express their feeling in an even more basic form, I can't help thinking about human lovers in the bloom of youth.  Yesterday's blackbird was digging into a piece of apple. Today's seems to be protesting  about the procedure being interrupted. He looks cross and worried, but wants above all to finish his meal, an avian gourmand if not an avian gourmet.

Tunbridge Wells is this weekend enjoying something called The Electric Lantern Film and Arts Festival. I fear that  Edinburgh, Malvern, Venice, Cannes and the like leave it far  behind, but I do enjoy this morning the site of a canvas a little larger than a ping pong table spread on the road outside the Public Library. Trays of paints, brushes and printing blocks are left beside it and people, children in particular, are invited to draw or paint whatever comes into their heads. It is rather clumsily called SplatMob. Not the best term for a good idea. I am one of those who love the impact of rain and wind on sheets of metal or rock faces over decades or millennia, so why not the random impact of passing children on an expanse of canvas?

A  photograph I didn't take. I see from the outside, behind a frosted glass window in the back room of a shop, a row of  the heels of several pairs  of high heeled shoes pressed against a window like the beaks of birds.