Having just finished my latest Gripping Novel (Dickensian Steampunk alchemical phantasie The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters by G W Dahlquist -- highly recommended if you're OK about losing the thread repeatedly until you get the characters straightened out -- and with none of the distasteful ethical issues which dogged my previous Gripping Novel, far-future Orwellian colourscape scifiction Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde) I think it's time I got a meme done.

Ten green things I love

This meme was passed to me by steppenpunk so long ago I don't even remember. The colour was generated randomly but is entirely appropriate as green is "my" colour (it's a large family thing -- my younger sisters' colours are blue, purple, and yellow, and my older sister's is red). I think I lucked out; it's a colour that's easy to love.

1. Leaves when they have just unfurled
New leaves are astonishing. They have a smoothly perfect texture; the colour is delicate and perfect, they seem soft and hard, as if they're made of living jade, as if they are what jade is trying to look like.


2. Green glass pebbles on the beach
Sandblasted yet still luminous. Worthless treasures. Pocketable and precious. Common enough to be found everywhere; rare enough to seem special.


3. My wedding dress
The top bit of it, that is -- it's a cocktail dress that I found on the rack at TK Maxx and took gloomily to the fitting room, sure it wouldn't fit. That fascinator's seen a bit of use since, too; the slightly cabbalistic floor-length silver skirt, rather less...


4. Green flowers
Somewhat unnatural, luminous at dusk; green echinacea, green roses, green zinnia, green chrysanthemum, green tulip -- these are green datura, tobacco plant. I had them at my wedding, took them home and planted them in my garden; their seeds came through true, so I have them again this year.


5. Green amber
Actually, I like most colours of amber, but a pale light high green amber with plenty of defects and embeds to split the light is especially beautiful.


6. Peridot
While we're harping on about jewellery. I like them cabochon-cut and quite opaque.


7. Green Photocopier toner
In the early 90s, there were "spot colour" photocopiers. You passed the paper through the machine twice, once for the black, and then once for the spot. The one I had access to -- and this was a photocopier I came to know very well -- you could set to blue, green, brown or red. It didn't take long to discover that, by passing your paper through four or five times, you could produce some quite complex effects. For anyone thinking, surely, that would lead to the copier jamming, well, like I said, I got to know it very well. Of all the toner colours I ended up inadvertently inhaling/spattering on the floor/giving myself temporary tattoos with I liked the green the best. No photos because spot colour photocopiers pre-date mass internet.

8. Peacock back feathers
Peacocks actually moult that astonishing plumage off every year and re-grow it. Feather collecting is all part and parcel of being a bird-farmer -- I would collect the tail feathers daily in season, we'd sell them on to merchants or on trade stands. The back feathers fairly glow against murky British soil, like little windows into a warmer world.


9. Water, rivers, ponds, sea
Murky green, roily green, dirty green, mucky green, dull green; green is the colour of water that's doing something, flooding, growing life, being cut by the movement of a boat. I find it hypnotic; the movements, reflections, flutter and shimmer.


10. Cats eyes
I'm also quire fond of their paws and claws.


any one want to join in, ask and I shall give you a random colour.

Anyone who was expecting the other meme, well, OK -- let's see how my webcam made it through the clean re-install. Like you don't get to see the real me all the time anyway, in most of my user icons. By some miracle, that's my NATURAL hair colour: