Fade to grey...

I woke up this morning to the sound of the wind whistling eight feet above me head and rain lashing, yes lashing, against the cottage windows. One of those days.

Normally I’m up early. Out and about pretending I’m busy, checking this, doing that - but days like this…well, what’s to get up for? So I turned over and dozed until I couldn’t take any more self-imposed guilt and got out of bed (after nine but before half past – shock, horror).

I looked out of the window towards the mountain.

Grey.

Now don’t get me long there are some greys I love. The grey evening light after a thunderstorm, that grey shirt I wore in my twenties (the one with the lighter grey bands), that special grey the sky dips into just before dawn in early summer, the thousands on thousands of variable greys of a dapple horse, long grey shadows chasing the sun across the wheat on a hot day, soft grey hairs on a laughing woman.

Grey – there are so many shades of it.

I used to see in black and white. But those days are gone (praise God) and these days I see in shades.

But today’s grey was that that flat, flat, grey of disappointment. An insipid grey that drops from the skies and hides the landscape with an indistinct veil of washed out nothingness – ten percent black, ninety percent bland. Grey that’s without interest, shape, hope - even a way through and out of it.

Yes, the nonentity grey we all know and would like to ignore because it seeps into the spirits, dampening them, making me as grey as the grey air it makes me breathe.

A beige of grey.

I looked around. The sky was grey, the hills were grey, the sea was grey, the buildings were grey, the trees and fields were grey, everywhere grey people going about grey business. No chance of sunshine either.

On days like this you have to find colour inside yourself.

Cocktail time I think.