White is the colour that shouts. White is Real Madrid, looking down on the rest of the football world in their royal purity. White is cricket: serenity at a distance and a hand-to-hand struggle when you’re in the middle of it all.
White is a bold statement in brides, in business-shirts, in sheets and in terror. It’s the colour above all that catches the eye: the one colour they tell you not to wear when you go walking in the bush in Africa.
Watch an animal flee from you: an antelope in the Luangwa Valley or a bunny in England. As they turn away they flash white: a fluffy tail, or a caudal patch, the white that shines out from beneath the lifted tail. The flash of white — white in motion – shouts fear, danger, flee, don’t think, don’t stop, act.
White glares and blares and hollers. But nature loves a good paradox, and so for some, white is the colour of concealment.
My eye was caught by the unmissable flashing of white, and I turned my head to see a little egret land in the dike 20 feet away. To me looking down he stood out like a light-house. He stabbed his stiletto-bill into the dark water and threw his head back: a slim silver fish caught crossways, flicked, turned and swallowed. Headfirst and whole.
From his position in the water, looking up, the fish couldn’t see him at all. He was a brightness against the brightness of the sky: a white threat from a white world the fish had no wish ever to enter. But enter he did: and it was the last event of his life.
In China white is the colour for funerals.
Poetic!
The book is fabulous thank you. And it is so good to have a reason to open the Sunday Times magazine!
Thanks for a lovely message.
Loved that, thank you.
Reading your articles, you bring strong memories of the colours, landscape and wildlife of the UK to me here in Singapore. Thank you
I’m delighted to hear that. I hope there are still nice green places in Singapore.