Home Is Where You Lay Your Hat

I stood in the chaos that was once my bedroom, stared around at the complete lack of visible floor space and cried "I can't believe this is what I am!" This dramatic outburst of self misery that would normally be met with a fall to the knees, a sorrowful piano chord and a rain storm in any half-successful blockbuster film, was actually met with my house mate sticking her head round the door and chuckling at my tragic situation.

I'm sure some people have systems and colour codes and probably an itinerary when it comes to packing, but I do not. I make a big mess and then spend the next few hours trying to battle it into any form of container, may it be a suitcase, a Sainsbury's bag or a left wellington boot (to clarify the boot in question had been left behind, I can't remember if it was in fact the boot for the left foot). If this situation isn't stressful enough, you then find yourself surrounded by your now contained belongings and realise that this mismatch pile of stuff is everything you own. In 23 years I seem to have collected A LOT of stuff and actually, I found it rather depressing. I kept thinking that if there was a freak natural disaster and I was left frozen in the state I was then in, and some explorer thousands of years from now found me and had to make some conclusion about who I was based on the stuff that surrounded me…I would be irritatingly generic. Apart possibly from the large, metal, guitar-playing ant my friends bought me on my 18th birthday that was then unceremoniously shoved in an old-lady-wheelie shopping bag, I had clothes, shoes, jewellery, some books and my one file of organisation and then just stuff. So much stuff that there is no other word for it. I can't even remember what it was. It was stuff, and if I can't remember what it is it probably isn't that special. Our explorer friend would probably look at it with a raised eye-brow and declare me an insignificant find.

The thing I find the most interesting about moving house is the believe that it will solve all our problems. The phrase "once we've moved" was said so many times in our post-move week and more significantly, we had so much faith in those three little words. Dieting, detoxing, budgeting, working and organising were all things that we unquestionably believed would happen better "once we've moved." I grant you it makes sense in it in that the stress and mental capacity required for moving takes up so much of your brain that even thinking about anything else is a huge effort. But it's like New Year. It's the fresh new start, the beginning of a new chapter, that's what excites us. It's the possibility that by simply moving yourself to a new place you are wiping the slate clean and starting again. The idea of taking a new route to work and putting all your kitchen utensils in their new places is exciting, it's fun. You try and make your mark on a place, make it yours. You plan where you're going to put things, what bed sheets would look best; you have to make it feel like home. Then, just as by February you have slipped back into old habits, by the end of your first week in your new place the novelty begins to wear off. All of that stuff, the stuff that you wrapped up in bin bags and shoved into wellingtons, you brought all of it with you. Soon your fresh and hopeful new room is full of everything you have always had. You are actually the same person after all.

This is all sounding really depressing and originally I thought it was, but now I wonder if perhaps it's not the building and the new and snazzy living room that makes somewhere a home, maybe it is the stuff. The stuff that I feel makes me an insignificant find is actually what I use to make myself a home. Yes it's probably due to our consumerism driven lives blah blah blah and it may be generic but it's the stuff that I choose to keep and carry with me and that does define who I am, to an extent. Mr Future Explorer might not think me anyone special, but that's because he doesn't know all the things about me that I can't pack. Our friends, family, memories and adventures also define who we are. It just so happens they are a lot more difficult to fit into a wellington boot.

You Can Taste a Rainbow

"I'm feeling a bit beige today Mum."  This seemingly off-the-cuff remark sparked a whole rainbow of colour-orientated thoughts about how much colour seeps its way into our lives. Looking around my slightly untidy and Sunday-a-fied living room I can see colour everywhere and even on the greyest of London days you can not turn around without taking in a variety of hues, tones and shades (even if they are shades of watery and depressing).  There is colour in our environment, we use colours in our speech and I would argue that our relationship with colour affects our choices and moods in a much more emotional way than most of us are aware of.

There are people who think in colour. That is to say, they think of one thing like a number or letter and automatically associate it with a colour: it's called synesthesia. There's an excellent book called Painting Ruby Tuesday by Jane Yardley which is about a girl who can do just this. I don’t have synesthesia, but I do feel colour has a lot more impact on me that I’ve ever thought about before. The colours I choose to wear for instance; is it because I simply like the colour? Is it that I like the look of the colour on me? Or, is it because the colour represents something to me, subliminally or conscientiously? I’m not sure whether I’ve ever been green with envy, and I don’t think even my angriest of faces could be described as a black look (mainly due to my unfortunate habit of looking like a meerkat when I try to look angry). Do I associate red with salvation because of that shiny red beacon that finally trundles round the corner just when I’m about to give up and take the underground? Are my teenage memories tinged in purple because of those purple stripes I thought looked really good painted on my bedroom wall?

On the day these questions were born I was feeling beige. The idea of feeling a colour was not something I had been dwelling on for a while, it was not a comment that had been carefully structured and planned in advance, it was just the only thing I could think to say that could describe how I felt on that particular day. It was a Tuesday, which in my view are always the worst of days and not ruby at all, but it was also a day when I could have walked naked through the office with sparklers coming out my ears and no one would have noticed. Do you recognise the feeling? You can't say anything interesting, do anything note-worthy and you feel so boring you should be employed in a sleep clinic. (I would like to make you aware out at this point I am not boring and everything I do is interesting and note worthy and I am exceptionably employable and rarely naked in public. It was just a Tuesday). 

I wanted to know if I was being unusual in letting colour enter my head to this level so I went to the newly introduced minions of knowledge - The Secretaries. "What colour are you feeling today?" Two responses of yellow - optimistic and at ease with the world. I had one green - she was hung-over, one brown - she's taken to the ridiculous habit of running around the park at lunch times and so is smelly and in need of washing. I received a very carefully thought of pastel orange - quite happy but having her vibrancy sucked out of her through sheer boredom. Most depressing was grey - mainly because it was raining but also because she only wears black and white, what does this say about her I wonder? I even had fluorescent beige, which I believe is a reference to a 90s comedy film…

What was interesting is that it was a very easy question to answer. Feeling a colour seems to be the sort of thing you are not aware of at all but when someone asks you an answer springs to mind immediately. Perhaps it's a way of organising feelings. Occasionally, there are so many emotions rushing around like spinning tops that trying to get them to stay still and arrange themselves carefully into something you can understand is impossible. But label them a colour and it's easier. For example, this very minute I am tired (indigo) and full of hay fever (icky yellow) and a bit emotional from watching I Capture the Castle and crying at the bit when Bill Nighy cries (navy blue) but enjoying writing and feeling a tad inspired and productive for the first time today (light blue) and there is definitely some worry going on about various life decisions that are in the balance, (bizarrely a shimmering silver). So, if I need to shut my mind to everything going on in there to stop myself being totally overwhelmed, I can close the door and paint it in shades of blue, with a horrible yellow doorknob for the pollen and coat it all in a glitter of worry and then I feel emotionally organised. Of course you could be reading this thinking "golly, she's gone a bit philosophical and crazy and she should stop crying at films by herself on a Sunday night". All very good points and I'm definitely starting to think the same, and maybe you don't feel the need to organise your head as I do, but I bet at some point today you'll try and work out what colour you're feeling…and I bet it makes you feel better…as long as it's not beige.