BLUE SKY THINKING

“Oh! ‘darkly, deeply, beautifully blue’, As someone somewhere sings about the sky.” (Lord Byron: Don Juan IV).

The sight of blue sky is joyous, particularly after a series of grey days. The night before last there was a beautiful sunset in southern England, the herald of a clear star-spotted night sky. Yesterday morning dawned with both the sun and half-moon clearly visible in a cloudless sky. It was glorious! Such blue-ness lifts the spirits after grey days.

Bloo. Bleu. Blue. The more you look at a word, the more odd it looks. No wonder that a child, learning to write, might spell blue b-l-o-o. It’s logical. You wouldn’t spell igloo i-g-l-e-u, so why spell blue b-l-u-e? The vagaries of the English language are enough to make anyone feel blue. Blew. The wind bloo. The wind blue. No, the wind blew. If you follow that spelling, yew would be you rather than a tree. How confusing.

Blue sky days to come is the title of a poem I once wrote. It was written on a grey day when I looked forward to seeing a blue sky again. Any of us can feel blue when the sky isn’t blue. Things happen in life that come out of the blue – a pandemic, for example. Whatever may be oppressing you today – whether trying to learn to spell, reeling from bereavement, loss of a job, uncertainty… remember: the sky above the clouds is blue, the stars do still shine and that life, though blue at times, has happy blue sky days too.