Very Nice

Penny and I have been away for a long weekend to mark our joint 120th birthday - in Nice, which is well-named. Moths weren't my priority but I wonder how they get along with the city centre's unusual nightscape which includes seven of these large illuminated figures, perching on slender metal poles like St Simeon Stylites. The daytime butterfly world was dazzlingly sunny but I didn't see anything unusual, just some Speckled Woods gambolling in the dappled light on the old castle hill plus what looked like an over-sized Orange Tip. There was also this butterfly-themed advert in the window of a dry-cleaners (left). The use of butterflies and moths in advertising, and culture more widely, always interests me, and I was grateful for some good examples when I sounded off the other week about National Moth Day on the Guardian's website. They were given by readers in the article's thread, like so many enterprising little clothes moths browsing on this piece of cyber-fabric.
Goodness, what similes; the sun must have got at me. So finally, here is the only butterfly I managed to photograph in Nice; a slightly worn female among lots of beautiful Blues skittering about the very impressive Roman ruins below the Matisse museum (all civic museums are free in the city and there are plenty of them - vive la France!). I don't know precisely what type of Blue she is, but she looks like a Common one - proof yet again, that beauty is not confined to fine breeding. By chance, my two illuminated men were blue when I snapped them; they change colour all the time.