| I’m yellow. At least, that’s what Laura the
Aura says. Yellow surrounded by orange spikey bits with a few grey clouds which,
apparently, are merely temporary. It sounded more like a description of a nudibranch than
the outward appearance of my soul. Normally yellow is not a colour I’d aspire to but,
since it’s generally considered quite a positive colour for ones aura, I’ll
begrudgingly accept. I’m quite proud of my orange spikey bits though. That’s my
‘tough guy’ testosterone laden protective shield apparently, my defence against
the cold hard world. Truth be told, though, ever since I was a lad I’d always
associated myself with black. Black trousers, black shoes, black eyes, black bicycle etc. I’d even dress up in black rubber suits and
dive into the deep dark void that is the English Channel. No. Laura says that I really
shouldn’t want to be black, it’s not a good colour for an aura – but I do.
I always have. Maybe it’s a boy thing. Part of the painful; process of growing up.
Dark, mysterious, cool, very Gothic, very Rock and Roll. Rob says Rock and Roll’s got
to be black - and he should know. Have you ever seen a Rock and Roll band and thought,
hmm, yes, that yellow T shirt is really quite fetching ? When I hit adolescence I used to
have these dreams. I used to have some other dreams too, but the ones that changed my life
concerned the poster on my bedroom wall – the one that my mother always disapproved
of. It was the last thing I saw at night as I drifted away and its image will be forever
engrained on my mind. Along the bottom, in dark brown comic sans ms bold font, was the
word ‘Manakin’. Above the word, in dark brown sans anything on the front and
looking very bold, was a young lady crouching like a tiger against a backdrop of palm
trees, silhouetted upon the deep blue sea. To a young impressionable lad like me, this
image started to become a bit of a fixation. I even started to dream about it. I’d
imagine myself on a deserted beach, my back burning in the sun, the sand hot beneath my
feet as I drew the smoke from the Manakin cigar deep into my lungs, staring lovingly into
the eyes of aforementioned dusky maiden. Over the years it got worse. I was driven by this
obsession. I became addicted to nicotine and travelled the world in search of
‘that’ image. Eventually, arriving in Sinai, I thought I’d found it, that
paradise from my adolescent fantasy. Burning hot sand beneath my feet, palm trees
silhouetted upon a deep blue sea, but no, something’s missing. And there lies the
flaw in my plan. They don’t sell Manakin cigars in Sharm. |