Sorry, we're closed

On my daily walks I have been collecting images of the various signs businesses have displayed to announce their temporary closure.

Today, I calculated the average number of passengers per local bus was 0.78 (i.e. nine buses, seven passengers in total.) I did that whilst listening, for the first time, to James Taylor's first album "James Taylor"  

This was recorded for Apple after he successfully auditioned for Paul McCartney and George Harrison, playing the song Something in the Way She Moves.  A year or so afterwards, Harrison had one of his biggest songwriting successes with Something, the first line of which is "Something in the way she moves." No law suits ensued - and maybe that is just as well because two of Taylor's lines end with the words "I feel fine" - from a Beatles song. Also, Taylor manages a brilliant piece of rhyme with:

the things I lean on lose their meaning
and I find myself careening

Less jovial but more topical was "The Martyrdom of St Sebastian" by Antonio and Piero del Pollaiuolo (1475.) This depicts the legend of St Sebastian, a Roman soldier but also a Christian. He provoked the wrath of Emperor Diocletian, who ordered him to be bound to a stake and shot with arrows. The legend says he was shot numerous times and "looked like a hedgehog" but survived and went to the Imperial palace. Not to be outdone, the Emperor promptly had him clubbed to death and his body cast into the sewers.

Sebastian became a popular saint in the 14th century when plague swept Europe. The illness caused the death of a third of the population.  Sebastian, as a legendary survivor, was  thought able to ward-off the deadly darts of the plague.