Colour

A very different day today, as was forecast. Rain, rain, lots of rain - though the strong winds at least did not materialise. It didn't stop quite a large fleet of dinghies setting out on a Frostbite race on Windermere though. I was there to help Sue on the Committee boat, always a good opportunity to play at being Captain Pugwash.

I had already selected this image before I heard some news tonight, and now it seems oddly fitting. A former colleague died yesterday after being diagnosed a few months ago with oesophageal cancer. M wasn't always the easiest of people to be around, he had some rough edges, but I knew him a long time, and there was something about him that I always warmed to. Above all, he had a deep passion for wildlife and for one very special place, a place that was for him his spiritual home. He had a difficult time this last few years, he was separated from the place where he belonged, and then this particularly aggressive form of cancer ambushed him.

Strangely in his last couple of months he found some comfort and maybe happiness in the care of first St Mary's Hospice in Ulverston, then Holehird in Windermere. These are special places too, places where people are accepted for what they are, cared for lovingly in an unqualified way.

I can't imagine M was ever interested in sailing, but this little bit of colour amongst the gloom of the day is symbolic for me of the bright, hopeful light of our humanity that shines through the darkness.

ps I haven't selectively desaturated this, the colour of the sail really was the only colour in this view.