The Blue Window

You see a blue square on a wall, quite a few feet ahead of you. Slowly you walk towards it, and as you do so, you notice that the square has recessed edgers, almost like a window.

As you move even closer, you feel a blast of warm air followed by a cool breeze, and you could almost swear you hear the distant cry of seagulls.

You stand facing the square, and now you’re certain it’s a window, at eye-level, but not too high off the ground. You swing a leg over, and you feel cool water underneath. As your leg descends further, it touches sand of the finest consistency you’ve ever encountered. As you swish your foot around, the grains just fall away. You swing your other leg over, using the edge of the window for balance.

Suddenly you’re in a pair of swimming trunks. You sit on the sand and let the water rise and fall around you, coming up to just under your neck. In the distance, bounding towards you, you see Peace, a beautiful golden retriever. His paws pound through the sand and he lands in front of you, and the two of you play, running and jumping through the water, diving and looping.

You look to the beach from where Peace had come, and you both make your way there. Peace runs ahead of you and you slide into the sand next to him. You snuggle up, sharing body warmth, and he pants contentedly into your neck, as you slowly stroke his back.

His tail wags. Off in the distance, you hear a village bell ring. Somewhere other people are having fun and playing, but right here there’s just you and your dog, the sun and the sand, the gentle tide and the cooling breeze.

I did something of a number on myself last night, the horrible part of my brain somehow working to destroy the happiness in the other, or just manifest some of the fears I was having about the new job. Obviously it all centred around G*l but it was knackering my sleep. And of course it had nothing to do with him but with the dangerous, obsessive part of my brain.

Being woken up at midnight after a pleasant dream, by what I can only imagine was a very hungry Bailey, yipping away at me, also didn’t help.

So I started formulating this idea, almost out of nowhere. The blue square seemed naturally calming against a surface, and it only took a couple of drafts in my head to get to the point of the dog and the village bell at the end.

As I write this, I have tears in my eyes. That relaxation technique touches a childlike part of me which I think helps to put out the fire of the destructive element. It seems to have helped, so I wanted to make sure I had it down somewhere, and to chronicle the odd storm of feelings I’ve just been through. Part of it may just be a release of tension, bottled up over a night. Part of it may even be some of the booze from the last week leaving my system!

One thing’s for sure: probably having a glass of off wine before starting a meeting isn’t a good thing, especially if you feel that meeting might trigger you.

OK, now time to kick Tuesday up the bum.