the away-day

{Malham Tarn Field Studies Centre}

mellow yellow

Dark clouds still hover, weighing heavy on me. They block out warm, happy, yellowness. At times like these, I step away from everything for a while. I feel we each have dark recesses of our own and need not share in anyone else's. Iscah calls it a low biorhythm, my glass half-empty dwelling place.

Yellow is such a happy colour.

For years it was my favourite. I'm certain that's because I was in weaver house at school. If memory serves me right, we never won a race. Years later i learn it's all in the psychology of sports, though I'd long suspected red is the colour of winners.

these days everyone would probably be in red house because some bright spark decided failure is harmful to children and could scar them for life! 
That, or we would all be given medals because, "It's the taking part that counts"!

I've always found that insulting, even as a child it annoyed me. I know my limitations. I always have. I've never been gifted athletically but would always turn up, wear my plimsoles, get on the track, run my skinny arse off and try my damnedest to not come last. And that was just fine because when it came to other things - I was good. So I could live with not getting track and field medals because that meant I worked harder to get medals elsewhere. If I hadn't earned it, I didn't deserve it and being given something I didn't deserve felt wrong. To me, that's a much better life lesson than, "it's the taking part that counts".

As it transpired, there were great advantages to be had from being in weaver house:

• we were the loudest cheerers
• we were eternally optimistic (every year was gonna be our year to win)
• we further developed our already over-developed imagination - plotting the demise of crane house. Team building at its best.

Losing doesn't harm. If anything, it prepares you for a life rife with disappointment.

keys

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away, I played the piano. I was relatively good at it too. I loved everything about playing the piano; sitting on my piano seat, rearranging everything till it was just so, playing my favourite tunes first, then my scales before "my practice" began.

I loved the notes my piano resonated as my little fingers ran, skipped and jumped across the keys, I even loved the ever so quiet sound of the keys being depressed. Do you know the one I mean? the sound of wood softly touching wood. I loved that sound and still do, if I'm to be honest.

When I played the piano I was naked (metaphorically). Don't know why. What I felt was comparable to the way one feels post-orgasm: deep contentment, abandon, vulnerability, ecstasy and yet hunger for just a teeny bit more of ... the unknown. But then something happened (don't know what) and I packed it in. I tried once or twice while at university but the magic was gone. The piano and I had drifted far apart.

Lately, the piano's been calling to me.

snowed in!

It's a snow day here, albeit self-imposed. There's something decidedly naughty about working from home today. It could be the fact that my lover is sitting across from me, a mere arm's length away - footsie distance!

Today I feel playful and I'm too excited to settle down to work. So instead I walked around my building - just for the sake of walking in snow that's shin high and capturing a few pictures for you.

I haven't experienced anything like this since I moved back from Toronto and I'll tell you that after 3 winters there the novelty wore off. But to have this much (19cm) snow ... in England? Is extremely exciting indeed! Let's not get into the fact that it's so unusual there's a nationwide shortage of grit salt; or the various groans at the possibility of 3 more weeks of this.

On my return from photographing snow and trees, I bumped into my neighbour, Jackie, and what a reality check that was. Jackie is a retired woman in her sixties, she lives alone and is very self-sufficient. She is also disabled and uses a wheel chair. I had been so caught-up in my work of late, I hadn't spared her a thought. We chatted and in the course of our conversation I learnt she was well catered for and didn't need anything. I did tell her not to hesitate if she ran out of anything and needed groceries picking up from the store or food brought in from the freezer in her garage or anything else S and I could help with.

This was a reminder to spare a thought for my elderly and less able neighbours this winter.

Aptly listening to The Snow Prelude N0. 15

i think to myself

i see trees of green

and red roses too

i see them bloom

for me and you

and i think to myself,

"What a wonderful world"

i see skies of blue

and clouds of white

the bright blessed day

the dark sacred night

and i think to myself,

"What a wonderful world"

the colours of the rainbow

so pretty in the sky

are also on the faces

of people passing by

i see friends shaking hands

saying, "How do you do"

they're really saying, "I love you"

i hear babies cry

and i watch them grow

they'll learn much more

than i'll ever know

and i think to myself,

"What a wonderful world"

yes, i think to myself,

"What a wonderful world".

written by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss