By eight the balcony already had a little queue of words. The parrots handed each greeting a pocket mirror, then the words nodded to the railing and the geranium before repeating one good morning, and no encore.
We asked at the kiosk under the balcony. "I heard the same polite phrase twice," said a man with a paper cup. "First the parrot, then the mirror. The geranium nodded as if it had been on the guest list."
A day later the same parrot returned, left one extra good morning on the railing, and the geranium looked brighter than the street.