50 Shades Of Grey

One Lucky Bastard. It is as I finally attempt to dust the cyber-cobwebs of my literary aspirations that I contemplate how frequently the title of this absurdly self-promotional electronic diatribe is actually used to describe me (the adjective, dear Reader, the adjective). Its most common usage invariably refers to the very obvious benefits of the profession that keeps me in bread and water and is generally used by friends, foes and passing acquaintances following one of my gratuitously exhibitionistic social media posts vaunting a particularly succulent sliver of Serrano ham on a Spanish plaza in between business meetings.

But as so many other superficial exhortations of the general populace’s near perfect state of being proclaimed on Facebook, the message delivered conveys only part of the reality. Yes, there are the many luxury lounge champagne interludes, the outstanding culinary experiences and the megatrillions of air miles, loyalty points and hotel vouchers garnered. It’s not easy being me. But at the end of each and every single one, there is the return. The bitter return. The return to headquarters. The return to the – voluntary shiver – office.

And this is where the luck of my job runs out. For all the visual wonder and palate-tantalising fare enjoyed on these jet-set jaunts, there is always an unshakeable sense of futility that defines the temporary escapism I am fortunate to experience. For the world to turn on its axis, equilibrium must be restored: where there is good, there must be evil; where there is light, there must be dark; and where there are the azure waters of coastal Sicily, pastel hues of Vienna’s Hapsburg palaces or granite pink townhouses of Toulouse, there must be the rusting corrugated iron of Goodwins Cash & Carry, sunken ashen skyline of Sunbury Cross roundabout and endless retina-scratching grey concrete of the Dolphin Industrial Estate on Windmill Road West.

To unsuspecting visitors new to our business address, any romantic thoughts of the animal kingdom’s most sentient marine mammal frolicking gaily near a rocky seashore lined with slow-turning windmills are quickly banished as the bridge of despair is crossed and the global epicentre of monochromatic misery first comes into sight. Without warning, a dazzling array of soul-numbing greys hits every sense so simultaneously as to cause the brain to contract to a tiny amorphous blob of grey matter not worthy of the everyday life challenges of the Palaeolithic age. If ugliness is sin, then we are in hell. Or Las Vegas.

There is no escape as multiple infinite rainbows of grey pantone drabness vie for the right to bludgeon my brain’s unexpectedly vulnerable receptors of aesthetic appreciation. To my left, as I descend the stairway to my daytime doom, is a sight that would make Dante’s 9^th circle of hell seem as inviting as an aquapark on the Algarve in mid-July. Brutalist 1960s office concrete to make any soviet architect green with jealousy juts angrily against unsightly angular corrugated iron warehousing. I flinch to the right only to see menacing barbed wire railings and long-redundant faded fencing torn from its concrete pillars welcome me silently to another day in colour-blind paradise. In the distance a flight of pigeons ferries disease unnoticed from grey roof to grey roof via grey skies, utterly camouflaged, the natural world’s true chameleons in this barren environment of industrial wasteland.

 Manhattan Sunbury Cross skyline from the bridge of despair

Goodwins: a good reason to shop online

 The bridge of despair and the stairway of sorrow

Google head office, Sunbury-on-Thames

Three years ago, in a poignant example of nature’s toiling effort to preserve life against all odds, a lone wild tomato plant with one green fruit was spotted sprouting hopefully between two more liberal cracks in the otherwise harsh bitumen. The next day it was gone, crushed under the careless sole of a disillusioned office worker in pre-drudgery autopilot denial. Hope springs eternal, but not from grey asphalt.

And this is now grime prime time. This is October: long after the last hopeful rays of the Indian summer have disappeared; when the skeletal trees’ leaves are but a mushy ratatouille of canine excreta trodden underfoot; long before the reassuringly crisp cold air and ice-blue skies of winter reanimate those buried memories of summers past and future. This is a time of year when wind and rain unite in an unholy alliance to distort their gravity trajectory into the slightest gap between umbrella and bitterly frowning face; when the damp seeps through and beyond skin and bones to permeate one’s very soul.

So carpe colorem is the order of the day on every single escape attempt. To Munich, to Copenhagen, to Nice! To anywhere! I must fill my eyes and memory with enough primary colours to provide the soul energy that will allow me to hibernate through the next age of grey. I must treasure in my impregnable memory vault the rich mosaics of Madrid and green parklands of Paris, the crazily-daubed tower blocks of Tirana and mesmerizingly contrasting colours of the Croatian coastline.

And so it is that as I sit on the tube at the tail end of a sixteen hour round-trip to Vienna for a one hour meeting, far enough in mind and body from the glum humdrum of everyday office existence, I am aglow with the finest travelling vision I can be fortunate to experience: the near-infantile innocent enjoyment of both sunrise and sunset witnessed from the air and high above the clouds, on the very same day. I treasure my in-and-out day trips to Europe's far-flung corners for this very reason; I book my flights accordingly, enduring a needlessly exhausting trip there and back for the simple pleasure of witnessing the changing colours of the sky at sunrise and sunset, from the skies.

The interwoven layers and textures of cloud blankets within a rotating prism of sunset colours interact like a giant kaleidoscope as the plane banks left or right. So many shades of orange, red and blue that I do not know where to look, my only regret that I will not see the darkening shades of the sky as night gradually falls. And as the plane finally dips through the final sheet of cloud cover, revealing a drizzle-heavy English evening on yet another interminable approach into Heathrow, the colours abruptly disappear leaving an indelible memory recognisable only by the smile on my face. I am recharged, and ready for the grey.

The happy place...