The sea is the colour of slate, today, as the sky is overcast and grey. It’ll probably start raining shortly. The view from my massage bed (I know, it’s a hard life…*) was of a fairly smooth ocean as far as the eye could see, the colour of slate, with white horses cresting the waves forming ripple patterns similar to those found in the surface of natural slate. It’s all rather pretty, despite the dark grey overall effect. Sometimes, I spend so much time running around “doing” stuff, that even I forget to look out the window and marvel at the magic of the water. It’s never the same colour twice or the same shade all over. It’s constantly changing and shifting, with the wind, with the clouds, with the sun, mist or rain. It is actually quite dangerously hypnotic and if you look at it for long enough, you’d never get anything done at all! You’d never move. It’s still bitterly cold out, though, so the effect is currently a little diluted from being witnessed through glass. It is still pretty, but it doesn’t have nearly the same visceral power as when you are outdoors, with nothing between you and the infinite but a waist-high barrier and a steady footing.

* In my defence, Beijing has done something catastrophic to my neck. Don’t ask me what or how, I’ve no idea.