"LOST or STOLEN or STRAYED!"

There's something immensely pathetic about those dog-eared and disintegrating notices that adorn lamp posts and trees along many city streets. Those which are neatly DTP-ed, covered in plastic and tacked up firmly are the saddest of all: they last, sometimes the year round, still asking for news of the missing, usually, cat. I assume that folk do bother to remove the signs if their missing moggy returns and that the ones that remain, month after month, dropping gradually one by one. are small flickers of increasingly-hopeless optimism.

Occasionally, it's not a missing cat at all, but a strayed or stolen puppy.

For the last couple of months on all the lamp posts in the vicinity of The Wrestlers there's been a similar set of signs wistfully seeking that which has been lost. In this case, the items in question are not pets but a set of harmonicas. This isn't, what with The Wrestlers hosting live music, entirely bizarre, except that harmonicas, even by the handful (and an exact number is not specified in the notice), are pocketable instruments--presumably this would be the thought also of a hypothetical thief.

Well, good riddance, many would say. After all, a harmonica possesses, in common with the cat, a voice not... universally liked? I've seen many people wince at Bob Dylan's harmonica playing, although their professed dislike of this aspect of his performance often seems to be a ruse, an escape route for not admitting in the presence of devotees (or worse) their dislike of the rest of the man's work. And it's true that some of Dylan's harmonica playing does induce wincing on a number of occasions. Not a favourite instrument. Larry Adler's thin, pure tones were never convincing, either. Without the earthy growls the instrument lost what little virtue it might have had. Only Vikki Simpson's performances with The Waifs lifted the harmonica from annoying screech to something that can be appreciated as music. So maybe the unknown harmonica player's loss isn't that great after all.

Still, the mystery remains as to the fate of the lost harmonica collection: the notices seem to imply their originator is not local, merely near enough and concerned enough to have made one or more return trips to attempt to locate the lost property. This presumably means that they might not return to remove the signs, if the lost harmonicas are returned. We'll never know. But trhe signs are looking good for a long stay.

And no prizes for identifying the quote at the beginning

Begun at lunch before the cable went down (no digital radio, either!); posted later.

That was a near miss

We've just been doorstepped by Christians. And weren't they lucky. When the knock came, we were just heading off to bring last week's box inside to return to the organic veg. man whose knocking we assumed it was. We hadn't got the boxes, so the gentleman and his little son (carrying the briefcase) didn't have said box thrust into his hands as I opened the door. We don't need proseletysing. We needs spuds... and carrots....