Synaesthesia (I)
Created | Updated Apr 7, 2019
Synaesthesia (I)
God, that wind is bitter, in a yellowy-pinky sort of way. need to put something warm and woolly on. Woolly – hmm... that has a nice, kind of grey sound to it.
Mike walked out the door as a gust of cold wind hit him in the face.
'That whistling wind was in A flat – you'd have expected it to be in C sharp!' he laughed to himself.
'Oh well, this won't get the cow milked or the beer barrels down the cellar,' he said to himself and walked on.
'This is definitely hot chocolate weather,' he thought as he waltzed on down the road.
'Morning, Mrs Wilson!' he grinned at the approaching woman.
'Morning, Michael! Cold day!' she replied.
'Yes, but there's a tinge of orange in the air.'
'If you say so'.
A look of Oh my God, here we go again crept across her embarrassed face, which turned slightly away at this, too, her unfathomable remark.
Michael continued 'You can almost taste it, when the wind blasts you in the face'.'
'Can't argue with that' Mrs Wilson said in a bemused, rather than amused way. She looked at him strangely, knowing this was just part of him and his strange family. His father, for instance, and the way he referred to all lawnmowers as being 'Grahams' – moaning, tough, stubborn and always arguing with you, rather than just cutting the grass as they were simply meant to do. 'Nutters, all nutters,' she thought to herself, 'but mostly harmless'.
Michael moved off. 'Well, shopping to do, must dash! Goodbye ,Mrs Wilson'.
'Yes,' she said, then realising she was looking at him strangely, she shook herself free of the self-induced trance and said, 'I must go, too'. Turning her back on him, she walked off as well. 'Why is it always like talking to the Wooden Tops, when I meet that boy?' she muttered to herself with regret, before disappearing down the street.
'Must remember to get some 92s in Tescoes,' Michael thought to himself. 'I really love that flash of red, which the number 92 brings to mind (92 evoked scarlet in his thoughts, which was a code for peanuts, for no sensible reason he'd ever been able to discern but it was always 92-scarlet-peanuts as an association in his head).
Great uncle Ernie was funny. He used to say that Tuesday made him sad – not the day itself but the name. All he had to hear was the name repeated, to feel himself slipping into a bleary-eyed state. Kids at school would take advantage of this to make him burst into tears by chanting 'Tuesday! Tuesday! Tuesday!'
'What's up, Smith?' a teacher would innocently ask.
'They've been screaming Tuesday at me again!'
To which the teacher would respond by clipping him round the ear, saying 'Pull yourself together, boy!' or a baffled 'What the hell are you on about?' again followed by a clip round the ear, for being cheeky to the teacher. 'I don't know what your game is, but I'm not putting up with this utter dribble – do you understand? See me after school.'
'Yes, but – '
'Don't but me, or you'll have to stay behind for longer!'
When he was older, he used to say a bit of how's your father, smelled of chestnuts at the crucial moment, for some reason ('Could be to do with Christmas and stuffing!' he always said with a wink.)
As a small child, he apparently nearly jumped out of his seat at the table because an orange's bitter taste, made him see a bright, green flash in front of his eyes.
'I've always been wired up strange,' he always said, when reminded of this and other incidents, that elicited peculiar responses in him.
