COLOURS

It turns out that I was measuring my windows wrong and I only need curtains which are half the size I had anticipated.

So, all I need now is curtains which colour-match everything, are the right size and will fit my curtain rails. Easy right?

You'd think so. I don't want to go on about it.

It did lead to me wandering around Dunelm Mill with a cushion, asking people what colour they thought it was. One woman was particularly animated at the thought that I could see brown as green. I don't know why she was so vehement - colours are subjective at the best of times, aren't they? Are there any absolutes?

Now, I don't want to get too philosophical about colours. It seems like a world I don't carry much weight in anyway, being a bit colourblind myself. That of course, was always part of the problem in Dunelm Mill - what looked purply-green to me, was apparently mink (whatever that means) to most other people.

I don't want to get too scientific about it either. I didn't have a portable spectrometer with me after all, so it was always going to be difficult to settle the debate with science.

However, I have worked out one thing about colourblindness: it's a little bit embarrassing. I think it's because identifying colours is one of the first things we learn how to do when we're children. Before spelling, before addition and long before understanding the diffraction of light through different materials, we all get the hang of pointing out that the bus is red, the grass is green and the sky is (supposed to be) blue.

What level of stupidity thinks the sky is purple and the grass is red? Up goes my hand, dropping a waxy crayon onto the desk. Sorry Miss.

I think that's why it's still difficult. I just don't know the difference, and I've interpreted it as stupidity, when it's not. Thankfully, I don't encounter the problem often, and I'm well aware that this feeling must be magnified a thousand times for dyslexics and dyscalulics.

Had I been sharper, I would have pointed out of course, that sometimes the sky actually is purple, that there are types of grasses which are red, that leaves can be brown, gold, yellow, blue, and hair can be any colour you choose it to be.

I'd have pointed out that the way I see the world is so unique and beautiful to me, that I might be the only person in the Universe who will ever see it quite this way; that colourblindness in all its forms, is not really blindness at all, but is a wonderful way of seeing and recreating the world around you.

Instead of sweating about those numbers hiding in the dotty circles, I'd have been amazed by the science, wondering why I might have been made a little differently. There is still a chance though that I'd still have been upset when told I would never be a pilot and that I would struggle to be an artist.

Thinking about it now, it was outrageous that they said that.

Anyway, the search for matching curtains goes on. You know, I don't think it even matters that I don't know how to use a tape measure.