Pigeons

I stopped to chat to one of the chaps doing the painting at Booth's. He said that the scaffolding should be coming down on Wednesday, so they've got to get their skates on to finish the job.
There was a pigeon strutting around the pavement at our feet - at one time, Islay would have pounced on it, and that would have been the end of that. This evening, though, she just watched it in a vaguely interested way.
It tried to walk right into the shop. I noticed the ring on its leg as the painter picked it up. "You've got a racing pigeon there," I said. "No wonder it's so friendly."
"There's another one over there," he said, nodding across the street to where there's an alcove in the wall at ground level, protected by bars. He went over and put the pigeon in with its friend. It would have been perfectly easy for the pigeon to just walk out again, but it strutted up and down as if it was in a basket, quite happily.
So it looks as if the two of them have got lost during a race, and are thinking of settling down in Hay.