I find puns so draining

Somehow I get about as much pleasure from a well-designed practical item as from an Important Oeuvre Of Great Import. Maybe more when the practical item is especially humble.

A few months ago, I took the picture on the left of the water meter cover in New Orleans. They’re getting stolen for souvenirs and replaced with intentionally unlovely ones to stop the pillaging.

The picture on the right is a full-sized Toulouse manhole cover, so too big to steal easily, but quite artful all the same.

And on the bottom a panorama of the Garonne where all that Toulousain water goes.