(An experiment with text and image)

Sometimes, floating away, I find myself in a beautiful city, not unlike Paris perhaps, where broad boulevards are dotted with attractive and civilised people chatting, strolling, sitting on benches and enjoying the sunshine.  Often they approach me and ask whether I have seen this or that cultural site or to alert me to a new and humane text which has been published or to the latest parkland blossoms flowering nearby.  Cool breezes temper the warmth and I am filled with a sense of well-being at the prospect of happy hours ahead.  I cannot help noticing however that crowds are gathering around monitors where flickering letters and numbers, supported by distant and indistinct announcements, seem to be about some form of lottery or game of chance.  These are not the final results it appears, but some sort of interim stages of a process whose beginning and end are no longer of consequence.  Yet each time I approach a monitor myself to see if I can decipher its display I find that another denizen of this charming though curious city has taken me by the elbow and is enquiring after my health, directing me to a particularly beautiful viewing spot or otherwise distracting me from those subtly glowing screens.