MM on rainbows....

The recent uncertain weather has created some fantastic St. Reatham skies, including this double rainbow.


As with about 1 in 20 men I am red-green colour blind. It's no big deal, I never wanted to be a pilot, an electrician or a fireman anyway....although you can be sure I'd have looked dandy in the uniforms!

It's something that is hard to explain to others, people seem to think that either I see in black and white or can't recognise all reds and greens - that's not the case. All colours are a mixture of the primary colours and my eye picks up yellow and blue more dominantly that red - therefore my eyes acknowledgement of colour is different to 'normal'. I have no problem with traffic lights and I can see that grass is green but I find it difficult to pick out a red poppy in field of long grass.

Obviously by its nature I can't comment on if this is true or not but the map diagram shows how different eyes see the same image. The first map is what 'normal' eyes see and the others show to 'normal' eyes how people with different types of colourblindness see the same map. I think my perception is somewhere between the second and third maps.(click on the picture to enlarge the image)

The only time I ever ever regret being colour blind is when I spot a rainbow - I can see them in the sky but to me it pretty much looks like a series of bands in yellow or blue, I don't distinguish all the different colours.

It would be amazing to see a full rainbow. I've always had the romantic notion that the woman I fall in love with will some how be able to show me the rainbow....just as in one of my favourite songs; 'It's all over now baby blue' by Bob Dylan. "I met a young girl she gave me a rainbow."

To show that beauty is possible in even the most unpromising surroundings I've posted here photos I've taken from Muxloe Manor over the last few years of St. Reatham skies.

MM on missing the morning muse....

One potential candidate to be Muxloe's Muse was a cute and stylish maiden I met catching the daily 8.43am train from Streatham Common to London Victoria. After some coy catching of each other's eye, the flash of a few smiles and some initial flirtations things have gone off the boil somewhat with the train-station princess. Every morning I think 'maybe I should rectify the situation and get the ball rolling again'. I approach the station full of noble intentions to engage her in conversation but somehow they whither and die when she looms into view. I feel like I'm 12 again - too scared to talk to a girl!

At the moment I'm reading David Copperfield by Charles Dickens and this whole phenomenon is obviously nothing new. Copperfield is recounting about the time he went to see Little Em'ly, a girl he fell in love the summer before. He'd been desperate to see her and was full of things he wanted to say.

“A figure appeared in the distance before long and I soon knew it to be Em'ly.......when she drew nearer, and I saw her blue eyes looking bluer, and her dimpled face looking brighter and her whole self prettier, a curious feeling came over me that made me pretend not to know her,and pass by as if I were looking at something a long way off. I have done such a thing since in later life.

Little Em'ly didn't care a bit. She saw me well enough; but instead of turning round and calling after me, ran away laughing.”

I know how he feels, I wonder if the station princess knows how little em'ly feels too....