weekend colour palette // red

Last weekend wasn’t the best of weekends, I have to say. There was rather too much rain lashing off the windows, and stress-induced tear-soaked pillows, and tug-of-war matches with words that wouldn’t ease up on me (‘come on, guys. Give me a break here!’). But – even in the tussle of it all – here’s what I noticed. These red things. Popping out of the grey. 

There were odd bits and pieces around the house: books and (actual) Russian dolls, and shoes, and old-things from my late-grandparents found in a silver tin (Granny Chrissy’s tiny driving licence, a favourite photo of my Dad and Grandpa). 

There were things-I-stood-in-the-rain-for: the ferry, the post office doors, some flowers.

There were food related moments. Like the juicy crunch of watermelon triangles, and minestrone soup from the slow-cooker, and a rare outing away from the PhD to catch up with old-flatmates-and-co for dinner (Rosie – the beautiful girl in red up there – is getting married later this year, and moving down to England for a while, so it was a goodbye-for-now dinner. Which was a sad reason to be meeting. But good to visit, nevertheless. She was holding up the silver tray our bill came on at one point, and it cast such a lovely light on her face that I had to leap up and take a picture. Isn’t she lovely?)

❤

I’ve been trying to stay away from my phone the last few weeks as much as possible because it is an MTG – i.e. Major Time Gobbler – so for these pictures, I switched from the iPhone to my DSLR. It was the first time in more than a year that I’ve used my camera and it made me remember that I want to learn how to work all those buttons. I’m adding it to my growing list of Things To Do after this study! Other things include: learn how to make an origami elephant, read Gone with the Wind, travel somewhere in Asia, make steps towards preventing potential-impending-Cat-Lady-future, bask in the bliss of being able to write what I want, watch the rest of the Gilmore Girls guilt-free. 

Following the difficult weekend, this first week of August has been a good, if incredibly full-on, week. May this next one be similarly productive (for me and for you).  

ps. This post has been written bit-by-bit over the last week as I've been working pretty much all day everyday on the thesis. Got there eventually though. Also pps. I've written a little about this colour project - which is actually Lu-from-Beside the Danube's idea - in the previous post). 

weekend colour palette // introduction

My friend and lovely writer, Lu (from Beside the Danube), has started up a weekend photo project – #weekendcolourpalette – which I am going to try to join in with when I can. The goal of the project: to notice, and capture on film (or, in my case, iPhone pixels), C O L O U R in the midst of the everyday. This weekend the colour is red. Which – in small quantities – happens to be one of my very favourite colours. So, it seems like a good place to start. (She has, so far, captured: yellow, pink, and blue).  

The photographs-to-come will probably be accompanied by very little actual writing, I’m afraid, as every word in me these days is being rounded up and ushered into the thesis as I hurtle ever closer to the submission date. (Oh goodness.) So, it’s not really a proper return to blogging* yet (I can’t wait wait wait to start back though. Just a few more months to go!).

Anyway... sometimes, in the midst of great stress, you need to be reminded to look for the colour. And, as the pictures Lu (and her gang of merry followers: Natalie, Audrey, Kate) have been taking over the previous weeks have shown, colour is everywhere – in the paint of people’s houses, in the hydrangeas in the garden, in the light across a teacup, in the scuff of someone's shoes.

I used to play a bit of a colour ‘game’ with myself when I was an undergraduate actually, and this project reminds me of that a little. I had a longish walk to and from the university and the train-station, and every so often, on days when I was feeling particularly anxious – which, I’m sad to say, during those years was fairly often, though I rarely talked about it to anyone – I’d intentionally look out for colours-in-rainbow-order in my surroundings to distract from the anxious feelings.  

‘Richard of... Red’ scanning the streets and finding a flash of red silk in the lining of a business woman’s coat flapping open in the wind. ‘Orange...’ there – a George Square pigeon pecking at a single Dorito chip. ‘Richard Of York... Yellow’ a dandelion pushing through a crack the pavement. ‘Green’ a boy with green hair walking further ahead... 

...and so on. All the colours would suddenly sing out to me, popping out of the grey city like they’d been there the whole time. (Which, of course, they had been). Things I’d normally never give a second glance – like stray Doritos or ruby red coke cans sticking out of a bin – would turn into works of colour-filled art.

While I’ve since learned, through mindfulness, that distraction isn’t necessarily the best way to alleviate anxiety... in those days, I did my best with what I knew at the time. And the colour search was often helpful in turning my mind away from difficult thinking patterns (‘I’ll never feel any better than this. What did I do to get stuck with this?’) and out into something other than myself. Plus, it is also just a fun thing to do in general when I have a bit of time on my hands and don’t want to fill it staring at a phone.

So, this weekend: red. Next week: green. You could join in too if you like. 

❤

Notes.

Image by Marc Johns. (Sorry this is a big of a word-heavy post. I'm writing this quickly in between PhD tasks. Lots of pictures to follow.) 

*PS. Isn’t ‘blogging’ kind of an ugly word? I love what it means, but it has an unpleasant clunk to it (I think I just dislike double G words in general. Snogging, jogging, hogging, flogging). Anyway... that is what it’s called, but I might need to think of a different word purely for myself, so I don’t shudder every time I write it. 

PPS. If you don't follow me on Instagram, that's where I've been 'micro-blogging' over the past few months (in the absence of writing on here). Things might be a little quiet over weekdays on there for the next few weeks, but you should come say hello. 

'I'm just a silhouette...'

Another smattering of photographs from this past week (taken through instagram*).

 

 

The week started off sunny, and then descended into days and days of heavy rain (resulting in damp feet and a chill that only a long soak in the bath could purge). 

 

 

I'm trying to spot moments of beauty, though, even in the rainy weather. We have such buckets of it in this country and moaning about it probably doesn't help things (...I say this to myself, being up there with the best of the rain-ranters).

 

 

(Rainy shadows in George Square on my walk to class)

 

 

(A puddle of orange leaves on my walk home.)

 

 

Rainy days and dark nights make twinkle lights and tea all the more necessary (which can only be a good thing).

 

 

And... I suppose the rain makes the sun more noticeable (when it chooses to show up).

 

 

(Long shadows while waiting on the morning train. I was juggling my bag, my phone, and a cup of Earl Grey tea while taking this picture.)

 

 

Today, it's been lovely. My favourite part of autumn, every year, is the golden hour.

 

 

(A serendipitous picture of my mum walking into the golden light. I love the movement in this.) 

 

♥

*(my user name is teaandascone, if you wanted to find me.)

proud of ma' shelf.

I rearranged the bookcase in my room this summer. I realised that it is very easy to take the books out of the bookcase – to slide them off, to stack them into piles on the floor, to dust the shelves that haven’t seen sunlight for years.



However! Once the books are strewn across your floor, all in a muddle, it is incredibly difficult to know how to put them back in.  



First: it is tricky to start anything that resembles tidying when the books are distracting you by calling out, ‘Helloo! Remember me? Read me!’

Also! there are a lot of tricky genre questions that need answering. Questions like: 'Is the novel Jane Eyre simply: fiction? Or is it classic fiction? Or gothic fiction? Or romantic fiction? And should it go on the shelf beside Pride and Prejudice and Emma? Would Charlotte Brontë be annoyed by this, seeing as how she apparently had such a low opinion of Jane Austen? Would they squabble with each other in the middle of the night making it difficult to get to sleep?'

  

 

And so on. You get the picture.

♥

Anyway! Here is what they look like now. (Cue the the bright, naturally-lit photographs which emphasise the shelves’ gloriousness in their rearranged state).

 ♥

Much better, eh?

spotted in Glasgow...

...when my sister, Emilie, and I went to see 'The Slow Club' (amazingly quirky). Quite nice to be greeted by stairs. We realised that, between us, we were wearing every colour in the rainbow. Red: my coat. Orange: the flowers in her dress. Yellow: her cardigan. Green: her dress. Blue: my shoes and dress. Indigo and violet: the flowers in her dress (kind of ...does anyone actually know what indigo looks like? It just has a lovely sounding name. Like 'India' and 'Calico' - two of my favourite words to say - mixed up in one).