Plural is Singular Plus Time – with reference to Squirrels and Bicycle Shadows

 

 I've been a little feverish since Monday. Whistling nostrils. Some bug. Not covid. Also my gums have been playing up ever since I sifted through the bag of our Henry looking for the inmost of a set of Matryoshka, but these two conditions are probably unrelated. 

 Anyway I've needed rest and fresh air, so I stay and I go out and stay in and go out with no real plan or pattern beyond just that, and today in Holland Park I noticed how my subconscious had started regarding all the squirrels as simply different phases of the same single squirrel, like the frames of an old film come to life. I tried to take a picture to illustrate this, but never managed to photograph more than one, as if in confirmation.

 One would think it might nevertheless be simpler to just accept the reality of there being a lot squirrels in a park and those squirrels all looking like each other, but no my absent mind was now working on the assumption it could see a fourth dimension. And that was the state of brain when I turned up Queensway and saw this...

 All the way down the racks, bicycles' shadows had been traced onto the pavement in coloured chalk. Some of the shadows themselves had gone now. A day's work.

 

The unaccommodated artist was still there outside Sainsbury's. "Tee Em," he said, then his name, which I didn't quite catch. Maybe Gareth. He had company so I didn't ask twice. He didn't want me stealing his work. Very fair. Noone has cash on them these days but there was a cashpoint outside Bayswater.