Out Looking for Purple

There’s the promise of at least a few hours sunshine so I head out to Whiting Bay and walk to King’s Cross. It’s a multi-tasking walk, as I’m trying out a writing challenge too. Look for a colour as you walk, then write the colour.

I can’t decide what to look for but a burst of purple heather at the top of the church lane makes the decision for me. And so I watch for purple as I walk.

You wouldn’t be surprised at the flowers and plants I found on my way: crocuses, tiny hedgreow blooms, dark purple leaves on the ground, even the woody stalks of the brambles have gone purple, as if the juice of the last berries has been sucked into them, waiting to paint the next batch of berries when the autumn comes back around.

And I guess you wouldn’t be surprised at the pebbles and rocks on the shore, the inner shine of an oyster shell, the near brown shades of the sea-weed, all adding to my collection.

It was the rubbish that perplexed me the most – dairy milk chocolate, a blackcurrant Locket, a calypso bar from the summer, even the print on thrown away papers was running purple in the rain. A circle of plastic washed up on the shore. An old office chair in someone’s garden – mainly white with a bright purple cushion. As if it had been put there, waiting for me.

On the way back from Kings Cross my eye was caught by a fragment of material in the muddy ground. A fragment of something bigger, a scarf maybe, or the lining of a glove, embedded deep into the earth, only an inch of colour showing: deep, dark purple.

Later in the day I walk out again. I’m looking for different things now.

As if.

Purple leaves, stones and flowers are thrown into view. Look at me, they say. We’re here too.

I walk down to the shore at Fallen Rocks and it’s all I can do not to laugh.

The rocks and stones are a thousand shades of purple, as if a god has taken the colour and splintered it into a thousand million variations all lying here at the beach to the north of Sannox.

It starts to rain and I can’t help myself, I gather up handfuls of pebbles, tiny stones and larger rocks, filling my pockets with the fruits of my day, bringing home bundles of purple.