No shades of gray

It was one of those days yesterday – and a Sunday, too – with a soft, sticky rain that clings to everything; your clothes, your hair, the line where on a sunny day I hang the laundry out to dry, the walls, the windows, the plants. Everything. No wind to lift off the misty humidity. It was even heavy to breathe. 

The rain makes everything gray. Dead. It kills the colours. 

There was no point in going out to get wet, so after lunch I finished reading John Irving’s The Fourth Hand. It was okay. I didn’t fall asleep. I almost wish I had.

After a few cloudy days I was missing the sun, so I looked for it where I knew I would find it; in photos. They took me back to a June evening in 2010, when I was staying in the fishing village of Vila Chã for holidays, and the photo session that I had with a seagull prancing on a wall between the beach with the fishermen's boats and their little houses. 

No shades of gray there.

This week I head for Spain. A few days’ journey in several cities, back via Guarda, the highest city in Portugal. New places, new faces, new ideas, new photos.