Tuesday 24 September 2013

Grey or Gray

Big hugs and thank you to Tony who did the blog for me at the weekend when I was wretchedly ill. I think a migraine and a virus met in the middle. Tony truly is a Master, not only of Theology, but of putting furniture together and looking after his poor ailing wife at the same time.

The English spelling is 'grey'. In the US it's 'gray'. For me, they suggest quite different things. I read once about a writer who used 'grey' in the sense of dismal, boring, rainy day, can't wash the dirt out grey. 'Gray' was for anything filmy, gauzy, mysterious. A raincoat is grey. Mist rising in the early morning is gray. That works for me. Also, if it's just in-betweenish grey, it's grey. If it's very pale or has a bit of blue or purple in it, it's gray.

I was thinking about grey (let's stick with that one for now) because there's a lot of it in this house, left by the people here before us. We don't particularly like grey, but there's no point in taking up perfectly good carpets so we're working around it. Pretty curtains have been ordered, for a start, and in the bathroom there is a grey blind. We talked about that and, as Tony is a rather good artist, are thinking of painting it. So, what will we have on our blind?

Green trees and flowers?

The sky - day or night?

A fjord? A loch? A river? An Alpine village?

The sea? A beach?

A bubble bath? Towels? Yellow ducks?

fairies?

Boats?

What do you think?

2 comments:

Elinor said...

Mistmantle animals of course.

margaret mcallister said...

You could be right :)