Dark/Light

I've always loved the dark half of the year: the evenings drawing in when autumn comes, the sharp taste of the air, the calming of the colours after the dazzling blue days of summer, the wild stormy afternoons, the cold on my cheeks. I'm a Samhain baby, which is part of it, and another part is my traditional preference for indoor, by-the-fire type activities.

But these past few winters have been very fucking hard. Today I look out at yet another perfect spring day - clear and warm, but with an edge to it all the same - and my whole body aches to be out in it.

It's the full-time job thing again, I realised as I scuttled a couple of hundred metres down the street to have my lunch. I just don't get enough daylight in December and January any more. In school we were turfed out into the yard at lunchtime whenever there wasn't an actual hurricane blowing; in college I was always on the move in the gaps in my timetable. Whatever - it did the trick. But now I arrive at work in the morning, and apart from the abovementioned lunch-scuttle there's no reason for me to be out under the sky at all until evening comes.

(I won't do it, you see, unless I have to. I don't know what's good for me.)

The clocks are going forward next weekend, and for the first time in my life, I think I won't grudge the lost hour in bed.

Red/Green

(I'm on a polarities vibe today, clearly.)

So, tea break just now, conversation turns to colour blindness. Colleague reveals that he can't distinguish between red and green. Explains the genetics (grandfather passes to grandson through daughter - women are carriers but not sufferers; men vice versa), cheerfully answers questions about what he can and can't see.

"You know," he says, "if you show me a colour that's half way between red and green, I won't know which one it is."

Wow, I think. Here's somebody who all his life has assumed that there are colours half way between red and green, which other people can assign accurately to one category or the other.

Perspective, it's all about.