a story book picture

If you removed the plastic boat you'd have a scene straight from a children's picture book - about a - I don't know - who would the main character be walking these crooked cobbled streets? The cobbles are so smooth and rounded underfoot: uneven but satisfying for bare feet or feet in flip flops. There would have to be a chatty woman with a funny way of speaking who knew everyone's business before they themselves did, and a callow, bony youth with long expressive hands and curious eyes in a thin face who walks already with a stoop. And a middle-aged man nursing his drink, whose hair is thick and overly black, lying solid as a cap above dark waxy dead eyes. Close up his skin is yellow sallow and thin and you realise he is older than he looks and wonder what his dead eyes see to paint.

Also in the book would be the fluffy town cats that live in the jumble of stones by the harbour wall and the two grumpy sisters, one round and homely, the other more angular and polished, whose lives have disappointed the dreams of a glamorous future they cherished as teenagers and who, tied to each other by fate, carp and snipe and reduce each other with words. The patient niece fetches them wine and bitters and smiles sweetly when they bite.

And don't forget the animals hidden in the walls that emerge by candlelight, and the pigeons in the garden - perhaps they can be doves - that do nothing but fly straight up in the sky and then come back down again.