The little visitor’s dock is a quiet, pleasant place to spend a few days close to the heart of town but it’s interesting to observe the lack of freedom one experiences when navigation is blocked by a lifting bridge on one side and a lock on the other, both requiring more than a day’s notice to arrange for the necessary operation to let one pass.
We weren’t exactly anxious to find something to do, which is just as well as we’d visited the church yesterday and have possibly seen the inside of enough fifteenth century jails to last a lifetime, so apart from a supermarket we’d pretty much checked off the “things to see in town” list. In the absence of anything more compelling which didn’t involve the expenditure of significant energy, we settled in for an afternoon of drinking coffee and lying in the sun reading, while keeping half an eye on the bridge lest an opportunity to escape before our appointed time tomorrow should arise.
This lack of activity was accompanied all the while by the town’s carillon which broke our concentration hourly with a rendition of something that sounded suspiciously like “I’m a little teapot short and stout” played by a three year old. When that bridge goes up at nine in the morning, we’ll be waiting to make our escape, but strangely we know that when we do, we’ll leave with the feeling that we should have stayed longer, and if it all happens exactly on time, we'll have that rotten tune in our heads for the rest of the day.
No comments
Post a Comment