It's early evening on the day before the clocks go forward and the air is warm. I'm a little too cosy in my three layers - t-shirt, jumper, cardigan - but not cosy enough to peel any of them off my weary frame. It's Good Friday and I'm exhausted, and to add to the dull confusion surrounding my skull, the sky isn't real, I mean it doesn't look real. Don't get me wrong, it's the sky alright - I'm not upside down, or looking at a pair of pale blue curtains or a movie screen instead - it just looks wrong, erroneous. The clouds seem to belong to an Italian Renaissance painting. I'm looking for cupid and smug cherubs.
This obsessing about the space above our heads began when I glimpsed a poster earlier today (not that much earlier, I only got up at 2pm). A haze of lilac (my least favourite colour), peach, white and cornflower blue disected - not quite in the middle - by three words. At least I think they're words. My eyes are tired, contact lenses suctioned onto each eyeball like it's a life raft and they're heading for some undefined rapids. Anyway, I digress. I peer closer and a small child thinks I'm staring at him, oh yeah, I've seen this before: "TURNER, WHISTLER, MONET". Hmmm. I realise that part of the image on the painting is supposed to be London sky... I don't believe it. I know there was more polution in those days, but I can't translate the dappled lilac and peach palamino pattern into the sky I see every day whilst cycling through the city. That's what got me looking today. And you know what? The sky really IS like the poster. I'm indignant. Ashamed. I've lived in this city for years and until today I never really saw the sky for what it is. I was only looking. Terrible.
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