FFfAW : In search of other colours

 

This week’s photo prompt is provided by wildverbs. Thank you wildverbs!

 

I rub my palm on the misted bus window, clearing a porthole of clean glass to peer through. Lawns stretch along straight roads, dust-dulled grass cut by grey tarmac, grey houses, grey pavements.

There’s a man mowing his lawn, stooped back turned towards me, grey head down as he follows the straight line in the grass. His cardigan flaps in the breeze, the colour of gunmetal. He could almost be my dad, bent under the weight of geometric lawns, pub and pint Saturdays, roast beef Sundays, back to work Mondays.

The bus passes on and leaves the man behind and I begin my search for other colours.

 

Written for the FFfAW Challenge. See the pic and write a tale, share, read and comment. See here to join in the fun.

The image of green and grey through a gloomy window reminded me of one of my favourite New Model Army songs, Green and Grey. The song is all about someone who escapes a small town life … and the people they leave behind.

41 thoughts on “FFfAW : In search of other colours”

  1. A fitting story as I sit in work today, having just returned from holiday, looking at the grey clouds and wet tarmac and the thought of autumn turning to winter ahead… Beautifully described Lynn.

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  2. Lovely description and then this – “He could almost be my dad, bent under the weight of geometric lawns, pub and pint Saturdays, roast beef Sundays, back to work Mondays.” As simply as that you tell that the viewer is very different, and rejects the identikit model of middle class life to which their parents subscribed so fervently. And now they are on their way to find other colours. Well written, Lynn!

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    1. Thank you very much Penny. I’m really glad you liked that segment – I liked it but wasn’t sure if it read a little clumsily. Thank you very much for the kind comment and for reading

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  3. Misted, dust-dulled, gun-metal, grey— almost an absence of colour, of life even, despite the grass. You’ve captured exactly the sort of reverie one went into on bus journeys, pre-internet, when one had run out of things to read or say and were entering a stream-of-consciousness mood, drifting from one fog of related thoughts to another. Been there, done that, now I’ve read the flash fiction!

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    1. I actually used to enjoy that on long bus journeys, staring out of the window day dreaming. Used to do it a lot as a teenager, crossing from Derbyshire to London to see my dad. Thank you, Chris. Glad you could identify

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    1. I felt a bit cruel about suburbia after I’d written it – I don’t despise it at all really. We all make our lives where we can and I rather enjoy what to others would seem a humdrum routine. Thank you Crispina

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      1. I guess if you grow up as a country-bod, the idea of suburbia can be chilling. I moved into a small town, but I have to get out at least once a week. Photography is my excuse.

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      2. And what a lovely ‘excuse’ that is! I’ve mainly lived in cities or small towns, apart from a short stint in Suffolk with my dad. He owned a 17th century thatched cottage and though he was on a busy-ish road, there was little surrounding us other than wheat fields and deer. I don’t think it suited me. Much as I’d like more quiet in my life, I also like to be within walking distance of a cafe and a museum! 🙂

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      3. That’s one (major) advantage of where I live now. Short walk to doctors surgesry, to dentist, to library (groan, it’s not well stocked), to 3 major supermarkets plus two more, to high street shops, to buses, to trains, to the beach, though I seldom go, to Breydon Water and the wetlands, to historic monuments suffiecient tyo occupy an idle day, to two Roman forts (yay!) and ….. sufficient to keep me happy (oh, forgot the nightspots, but they don’t appeal these days) and restuarants serving food from around the world, owned and staffed by peoples from around the world. Yet it’s only a small town; five minutes walk and I’m deep in mud.

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      5. You remember rightly. Lots of pros, lots of cons, but it has become my home (though I still return at least twice a year to the village of my youth. On the outsikrts of Norwich, it has what Yarmouth has not: Woods, trees, bluebells, ramsons, snowdrops, hills, paddling streams–and a neolithic henge which has yet to be excavated. Oh, and don’t forget the remains of an Eliizabethan hall, which isn’t as big as it was when I was a kid, and neither as assessible.

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      6. What a lovely mix of places to visit and environments to enjoy. We go weeks only seeing the city, with all its sights and very many sounds – often unpleasant ones! Lovely to get away every once in a while. What I’d really like is to go somewhere very, very quiet for a short time – by a lake, by a deserted, wintry beach. Ah, the quiet. Sadly, I don’t think the fourteen year old in the house would be up for that. One day, I’ll escape 🙂

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      7. While weather holds I go ‘into the wilds’ once a week. Sometimes that takes one bus, sometimes two. Sometimes I walk from one bus route to another, which forces me to keep on walking. I plan the routes to avoid busy roads. Yellow roads, and brown roads if I must road-walk, but best are green lanes. Sometimes a tractor will trug away in the distance. Sometimes it will chase me down a lane! But generaly, at most a distant hum, and the birds.
        Although I take the camera, and usually return to 100-plus photos, it’s the walk, and the greenery, and the quiet I go for.

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      8. Sounds lovely! That yomping about the countryside, watching nature change over the seasons. Such a lot to see that you would miss if you weren’t out in the elements. Nice to avoid those busy roads too!

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      10. We’re very lucky with the weather at the moment – here at least. Enjoying these last days of sun before the gloom sets in 🙂

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      11. Last two days, rain. And today (out climbing hills, wood-walking and hunting fungi) extremely windy, and thus cold. And still no fly agaric!

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      12. Fly agaric are extraordinary looking things, though I’ve never seen one in the flesh. I did watch a documentary once that claimed fungi have more in common with animals than with plants … Makes those things even more odd, I’d suggest! Good luck for improved weather later this week.

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      13. I recently watched a documentary about fungi that showed it as underlying all other life on this planet. Like without it, life as we know it (cliche!) would not have evolved. Incredible.

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      14. Yes! And horticulturalists are becoming obsessed with it as they’ve found these fine, white, fungal connections are essential to root development and growth – forget fertiliser, reach for fungi! Astonishingly weird and complex organisms

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  9. Bus moves on to another stop and another address. Man you are looking remains the same, pub and pint Saturday, and roast beef Sundays. Nice!

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