the colour

I have a friend who loves the colour green. Green bags, green wallets, green sweaters, green bedspreads, green laptop cases, green umbrellas, green ballet flats and green turtle-shaped decorative lamps. She's tiny and cute and her love for green is so passionate and heart-felt it's endearing and it makes me smile everytime I hear her gush about something green. I'm sure that one day she will live in a house with green walls and a garden full of green leaves and wear a green dress every day.

On days like today in Sydney - still winter, but hot and sticky and with a dry wind meandering through it all - it's not hard to remember that this time last year I was surrounded by green myself in country France. As we walks those tree-lined avenues, leading to good things like chateaus and museums and tiny little village restaurants, or the leafy foliage of our secret picnic spot, where 'by the bank of the Seine we sat down and wept', or the windows shrouded with green hedges that we peered through in medieval towns, or the days where we sat in our courtyard terrace, shaded by trees and washing lines, and watched the movement of clouds. I think that green, true green, is always shocking. In Australia things are not so much green as they are yellow, or orange, or even blue. But I love it!

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