28/28 -

For colours today - and it's scraping the barrel - perhaps the jumpers in M&S - black, pale purple -'crushed grape' or some such fancy name -  a duck egg blue and a washed out sage green.   I had thought to buy the black but liked all the colours and ultimately didn't know which to chose - so I bought none.

26 and 27/28 - weekend

Busy, busy with J here, and the weekend to some extent dominated by the Six Nations, so a definitely green background with much white and blue moving in the foreground.   Durham stone too, and bookshops, and red, red wine ...

25/28

No obvious colour to the day - perhaps the silhouetted slivers of shouting protesters on the square outside, who added background distraction when the defendant finally got to the witness box which I thought at first was dogs and others football supporters, but later the streets were cordoned off by faded  blue and white tape and  flashing red and blue on yellow-striped police cars.

24/28 - Ten bridges

This morning I thought to count the bridges that the train passes beneath in the four miles between Eaglescliffe and Middlesbrough.
There are four of dirty dark red brick, two supporting metal spans and two older, brick-arched, with black-edged parapets above.
Five are concrete, changing with the weather from palest sun-dried hot-bleached grey, to dirty, post-roast dishwater.
And the green painted girders of the Newport Bridge are splendid - but less so since its centrepiece was screwed into immobility.

23/28

Truth and lies,
black and white
and presumably greys inbetween.
Prosecutor, defender
twisting words to prove,
omitting other words to intimate
things were otherwise,
not as they seem - or were.
Tomorrow brings more of all of these.

22/28 COLD BEER STORE

COLD BEER STORE
spelt out in white ceramic tiles,
set within a wall of other white ceramic tiles
but mis-aligned so as to be apparent
and now made further obvious
because grime-grouted.

What a pity that it is now a scrap yard,
a store for cold dead cars
and not cold beer.

21/28 (but late)

A day in court, and having mused in the early hours on the idea of twelve 'good men and true' equally wending their way towards Middlesbrough's County Court it was a surprise to see many any more when I arrived.   But of course there are eleven courts, and for each case a potential jury of fifteen to eighteen is sent up (and each of us is required for two weeks and there will be a similar selection every week)
Much ostentatious card-shuffling to denote random choice.
And how do the legal folk learn to speak like that, so clear and confident, and where do they get their voices from?
And the colours?   light-toasted smooth wood, swooping white ceilings and blue - leather desk tops and the tip up chairs

20/28 Fantasy hero?

I have just had to type 'myleth' as verification and thought it would make a good name for a Fantasy hero - green tights, unfortunately, and one of those padded doublety things (piped in alternative red and yellow), but perhaps that's because I was reading a review of a book about reprobates and Cavaliers as I ate my tea.


N.B - the white markings have worn off a number of the keys on my keyboard - fine if I don't think about it but when I do, the 'disappeared' letters E, R, T and N are hard to find.

19/28

Not a lot of colour to the day
blue or black, text on white.
Three unremarkable (and unremarked) T10s.
Re-reading cheap and nasty childhood copy
of Wuthering Heights
red beneath its long-lost (probably horrid) dustjacket.
Heathcliffe's deeds as dark and indiscernible as ever.

Bastard

He had coached her, not wisely, except in his own self-interest, but too well, and when her third “I’m late” was said too late, and the grey of his eyes changed as speedily as the Irish weather, from promise to perdition, she knew to jump.   Into the outgoing, grey-green, full moon, Spring solstice tide.  

Posted on Lily Child's Feardom site - Friday's prompts:   Irish, coach and tide, which inspired the above.
And which has enough in the way of colour in it to qualify for a February stone.

17/28 - Holding steady

Today is red and read.
Seven thirty doorbell  was not, as I feared
(and swore aloud in anticipation at)
our neighbour reporting on the state of his foul drain
but FedEx delivering my latest Blurb order.
Deliciously satisfying, holding the results of
November's writing December's editing
in my hands.
So today I have been reading,  Some of the time.

16/28

  
Pastels, pencils, graphite
in my studio

Listening to a CD of George Mackay Brown poetry

Later layered, to vivid, subtle, overlay
exclusion and difference

for MuDJoB's birthday

15/28

Thoughts of black and silver  - a wedding invitation and what I'm going to wear
Thoughts of adding burnt sienna to Paynes grey to make the colour of the clouds at noon
Thoughts of red - the red of my novel I was notified today has been despatched from Blurb,
and of the wine I can just this minute hear being uncorked - whatever goes with sausages.

14/28 - Bah bumhug!

What is the Valentine equivalent of Scrooge?
The opposite, reverse, backwards-read of messenger of love is 'Sore'
But, as with Christmas, it's the commercial hi-jacking
That aggravates my senses
The 'let's be seen to be' whatever - loved, desired, worth twenty quid of scentless force fed roses.
And not the fact of love itself.

13/28 - Smiling

Last night I dreamt I had hip bones once again.
The angular, skin-piercing sharpness of my teenage youth.
It might have been inspired by rugby thighs, by thoughts derived therefrom.
Or the fornicating flesh of Faulks’s fictional lovers on the BBC.
Or possibly pertained to last week’s pregnancy announcement.
But, last night I dreamt I had hip bones once again.

12/28 hmmm ...

The England Italy match I watched the game
The Scotland Welsh it was the thighs that caught my attention more
(but in the end I was forced to walk away because of the whingeing-voiced commentator)
and colour?  ... white and blue, bright blue.

11/28 Colour wisp memories

Today's Thinking 10 prompt allows me to add part four of a tale I've been writing since last Saturday.   An earlier prompt was 'bag of marbles' and today my hero was wanting to examine the marbles left at the scene of the crime.

Knowing exactly where my own marbles were - in a toffee tin whose lid depicted anthropomorphic bees sitting under a white spotted red toadstool - I photographed fifteen of them.   How strong a part images play in childhood memory, and how often, it seemed, I received boring toffees as Christmas presents.

But the marbles still glow, and I remember buying at least some of  these from Newton's shop, and rolling them down the slope by the coal bunker, into the sunken circle under the handle.   My favourites were the small solid blue one and a similar white one.

10/28 - Streetlights

It used to be that street lights demonstrated solidarity,
'All for one and one for all' - that kind of thing;
a thin strung orange line between the road and darkness,
separating safety and the blackmail of the night.

But now the trend is all for individuality:
the high-kick, tight-strung routine all abandoned.
Each now autonomous within its sphere of darkness,

extinguishing alone, when convinced of morning light.

9/28 - black and white

A post on MuDJoB today - three beautifully told tales by Farida Samekhanova one of which refers to a zebra - reminding me of a conversation with my youngest son last night in which he told me of a zoo where donkeys had been painted to resemble zebras, theirs having been recently killed (war-time attack?) 

6/28

The colour of today has been typical for Sunday
Grey, a transparent, pale, mucky grey
boring and unattractive,
with nothing of the subtlety of blues or pinks.
Just another static Sunday
BUT
teatime redeems:

yellow fragrant rice
on blue-edged plate
on rich wine-red table cloth
- a visual colour-fest