The Song in My Head

This is the front of an actual store in Holt, England. It's a toy store, as you can see from the Thomas the Tank Engine stuff in the window. But the store name and the train imagery instantly put a song into my head for the rest of that August day: "White Room" by Cream.

In the white room with black curtains near the station.
Blackroof country, no gold pavements, tired starlings.

In England, the European starling is a native bird, and one that is declining. So while we may wish starlings ill here in North America, in the U.K. people are worried about losing this highly adaptable species.

Who knows, someone may get a notion to trap a bunch of starlings here for export across the pond? If that happens, I would not be surprised to learn that starlings started showing up at this store in Holt, thinking it was a retail outlet devoted to their species. After all, starlings are quite intelligent—who's to say they can't learn to read?