Fear hangs a plane of gunsmoke

Today my new manager asked me how my current stress levels were, alluding (obliquely yet to my mind unmistakably) to the my Dark Days. 'Oh, I'm fine', I said. 'I've walked out into the sun.'

Only someone from the same place and time as me (which she is not) could possibly recognise this as a line from Duran Duran's Careless Memories, but that doesn't matter. It wasn't a line that needed an appreciative audience, though it meant a lot that she asked.

But it got me thinking. I don't really get poetry. I want to, but the words just move round the page and make me feel clumsy. But now and again there's a line that sears into me and hangs around for days. I was more searable (maybe we all are) when I was an adolescent or even younger, and I have a whole bunch of lines, from songs, from poems, from books, still there, waiting for the right moment. (I don't know if lyrics count as poetry, but I think they probably stimulate the same nerve centre).

Sometimes I don't even remember the words, just the idea. One of the earliest is from an Enid Blyton book I must have read when I was about eight. There were some kids, there was a castle, there was somerthing bad happening. They were investigating in the middle of the night, as you do, and there was a window giving out a light which was a colour they had never seen before.

I was fascinated by this colour. How could it exist? Could I imagine a colour myself that I'd never seen?

Many years later, I saw a February city sky at 4am, the colour of streetlights reflected off snow onto heavy clouds. That was a colour I'd never seen before. I saw it again this week, an ethereal orange-grey glow. Here be magic.

joella

Muffled snuffles

The doctor gave me a pot to poo in but said I probably had a virus that would go away on its own eventually. I said I thought she was probably right.

But it hasn't gone away yet. Yesterday my temperature started rising while I was driving across Oxford to attend a three hour meeting to develop a shared vision for our open source content management system. Try saying *that* when the thermometer reads 100. (Actually, it reads 38, but I am strictly old money when it comes to fevers).

I sat at the far end of the big boardroom table drinking coffee and shivering while we talked about 'strategic collaboration' and drew lots of circles on flip charts. I remember waving my arms and saying 'poor and intermittent connectivity!' a lot.

I drove home hunched over the steering wheel with the heater blasting, feeling small and vulnerable and having the little anxious 'what if I was homeless?' moments that come out at such times. But I am not, thank heavens, and instead I was soon pyjame-ed under a duvet with Lemsip, which is where I have been ever since.

So I am watching the snow rather than battling it, which is possibly the only sane thing to do if you are not a bus driver, road-gritter or member of the emergency services. I am gutted to be missing plumbing tonight (I am struggling with lead welding and need all the help I can get) and I'd still rather have something short and sharp than this will-it-won't-it business, but sometimes you need to accept that you have to slow down for a while.

joella