Day dream believer.

Day dream believer

Patti could see a long dark stripe running down the tall sycamore which stood outside her window. It was raining. Drops of rain had gathered together up amongst the sycamores branches into a pool. A pool which grew and grew until it spilled, trickling down the sycamores thick truck to the ground.
The ground where puddles blossomed.
Splosh! The leafs dripped with drops.

The skies were pure white. Which made Patti think,
Huh, The sky is white and all the clouds are blue.

Patti wondered if this meant the clouds were upset, before deciding that wasn’t what she meant by thinking the clouds were blue. For if the sky was white and the clouds were blue, then that would mean there were lots of clouds so they wouldn’t have any reason to be sad.
Then Patti changed her mind, she reasoned that the sky being white meant a lot of clouds had gathered, and it was this new sky that had turned the sky beneath into clouds, which might well be blue. Patti couldn’t decide whether these new clouds were gloomy or depressed or a phenomena that drifted at a far distance into the unknown. Patti settled on saying out loud to herself very merrily in a sing song voice,
The skies are white and all the clouds are blue.

A tiny chink like a blue smile in the ceaseless mass of white cloud that headed towards the east revealed Patti to be right.

Blue skies and falling rain, they’re beautiful, just like you.

As Patti wrote these words for the Sycamore tree which stood outside her window, shadows kissed with light from the trees leafs danced to the swash of her pen.

After a moment spent mesmerised by the sun the leafs the tree the light and the shadows that danced across her page, Patti looked up to the sky. The giant mass of white was rapidly disappearing.

It’s like the clouds are being pushed by a giant hand, or perhaps they are being blown by a giant, like they have in fairy tales, Patti thought to herself. Then she begun to wonder whether the giant that blew clouds would be sweet natured like a gardener who made flowers grow. Or angry. Like a man that breaks his hand by punching a brick wall.
She decided he would be sweet natured, of course.
Gently the giant blanketing the clouds in warm air so they could safely fly away on their journeys.
Then again. Patti conjured up another twinkle in her mind. Perhaps Gently the giant did get angry when the skies were blue and all the clouds had been blown away, and perhaps the reason the skies were blue were because they were depressed all the clouds had left them.

Patti figured,
Gently the giant would stop blowing out warm air for the clouds, which would be a bit like the hot tap in the bath suddenly turning cold or a sad song getting sadder.

Was gently the Giants breath a song?

If it was it had changed into a storm. Gently breathed in furiously to bring the clouds back, except Gently couldn’t stop and before he knew it he had swallowed all the clouds inside his belly.
A belly full of clouds! Patti felt like she had been tickled what would happen if the giant burped or...
Of course Patti giggled that would explain why sometimes there’s only a few little fluffy clouds in the sky.

With all the clouds deep inside Gently’s belly it meant the skies were blue again. This time Gently the giant didn’t get angry. His big round giant face drooped dismally. He got sad. It didn’t seem there was anything Gently could do to stop the clouds he loved to play with so much leaving him on his own. So he began to blow out a sad song, which made the clouds waft one by one out of his mouth. As the sky became white and the clouds again blue Gently’s song got happier and happier. The clouds begun billowing out of Gently’s mouth thick and fast until there were no more left inside his belly.

Patti wondered why Gently the giant didn’t shed a tear or cry.

As maybe that would be where the rain or the sea or sea and the rain came from.
Patti asked herself,
What came first the rain or the sea? Then answered her own question.
Ice!

What came first the ice the sea or the rain?

Patti decided the only reason you would want to freeze the sea is if you couldn’t swim or didn’t have a boat. Then outside she found a rusty nail. It was the colour of an autumn leaf. Patti looked across the road at a silver car that had drops of water sitting all over it.

Why don’t cars get rusty on top, they must spray them with special stuff, I bet the old cars in Cuba, blue, yellow, green, red, I bet they get rusty. That’s if it rains in Cuba.

A drop of rain splashed onto Patti’s head.
Oh dear!
Patti exclaimed out loud. For she had just that minute decided that people get rusty if they weren’t wearing hats.
Oh dear, oh dear, She cried, I haven’t been sprayed with special stuff and I haven’t got a hat.

Patti took refuge from the rain beneath the shelter of the tall Sycamore tree.
There’s only one thing for it, ill have to wait for the rain to stop or find a hat, or maybe someone will come along with an umbrella for me.
This was really three things, but Patti rushed along at such a speed that she didn’t have time to notice such idiosyncrasies.

Umbrellas are a bit like hats which you hold in your hand but don’t ever touch your head except by accident, Patti laughed, and as she did the sun came out.

Wouldn’t it be funny if instead of tipping their hats to passersby people open and closed their umbrellas. If an umbrella closed on top of somebody’s head with its handle dangling past the nose on their face it really would be like a hat.

Except then no-one in these hats would be able to see where they were going and they’d bump into each other all the time. That’s of course if umbrellas were hats.
Patti started to think she rather enjoyed bumping into people, so decided the next time anyone bumped into her before they could say sorry she would say,
Thank you.

Then she begun to think of things she thought were sad that she could make better, except the world got a bit too big then so Patti stopped wondering beneath the tree and started to walk.

Patti remembered a note given to her by her friend Senay which read,

HUGS R BETTA
Than CHEESE!
Always
Happy
Smiling
Loving & Kind
My Hero & friend
PATTI
Love Smile Happy
Life is an forever wonderous Journey, Trust Your fEET!!
Loove “N”
Hugs
Senay
x

That’s funny I’ve been thinking with my head so much that I forgot to trust my feet, but feet you used to sing to me.

Which set Patti wondering again, what if feet could think well then they would think,
Sure we used to sing but then you used to play games with us and suck us and sing of how we tasted sweet.

Patti stopped thinking and trusted her feet. She walked past the woods and past a roundabout then past an old church and down a hill.

Two boys on bikes came speeding down the hill, the boy in front wore glasses and had short fuzzy hair, the one behind had on a straw hat and a bright red Woodstock festival T-shirt. The T-shirt had a motif of a guitar and a dove. It was an exact replica of the poster for the Woodstock festival which happened in 1969.

The boys on bikes were going so fast that the boy with the Woodstock’s T-shirt hat flew clean off his head.

The hat landed on the pavement right in front of Patti’s feet. She bent down to pick it up, it was straw and had shells around the brim tied on by a piece of brown string.
Patti couldn’t hear what the boys said to each other as they sped down the hill, but we can,

Whoah! There goes my hat
Your hat! Aren’t you going to stop and pick it up?
Nah. It’s someone else’s hat now. And if not ill just pick it up on my way back.


There was a knock at the door,
Splash!
Patti couldn’t believe it shed spent such a long time, longer than usual day dreaming in the bath. Normally Patti would get out of the bath and stay with her day dreams.
Today was different. She jumped out fast. As if the water was full of jelly fish and bristled into action. Quickly Patti dried her arms legs body and face with a towel, and then swung her head round and round, which flicked water off her hair onto the bathroom mirror where it landed to paint wet streaks.
“Hold on I’m coming” She shouted out to whoever it was at the door, “Just coming”
Patti didn’t bother getting dressed, she just wrapped a towel around her body and tied her hair up with another towel a bit like a Sikh’s turban. Then she went downstairs to open the door.

It was a Tesco delivery.

Patti didn’t remember any of her house mates mentioning a delivery, which was odd as they were all out at Uni for when the delivery arrived, but as she was in the moment Patti didn’t think this strange. The van driver a girl called Lisa with a long dark pony tail and glasses didn’t think it strange that the girl behind the door had opened the door wearing just a towel, or two towels, she really thought it highly amusing.
Just got up have we Lisa chuckled
I was having a nice bath Patti replied.
Lisa plonked a sheet of paper in Patti’s hand,
Heres your order form,
Already on the doorstep were a load of bags full of groceries that Lisa must have carried out from the van whilst Patti was getting out of the bath, or wrapping herself in towels.
Now this milk bottle was leaking, Said Lisa holding the offending item, which still dripped a little through the plastic shopping bag Lisa had placed it in to keep the milk from getting everywhere.
If you’ve got a bottle to put the milk in you can have it for free.

Patti said this sounded like a great deal, and whilst she crouched down to move the bags over the doorstep and into the house Lisa put the leaking milk in the shopping bag into the sink in the kitchen, then said goodbye to Patti at the door.

Before putting all the groceries away, Patti got dressed.

If you saw Patti in the park where she was a ballerina, balanced upon one leg planted on the top of the stump of an old tree trunk her other leg stuck out way behind her and her arms spread wide like a bird, a plane or angel flying. You would see what Patti had decided to wear today.

A pair of soft black boots, black stockings with a zigzag pattern running up them, a green skirt covered in pictures of white petalled flowers. A whitish grey sack hung down from Patti’s shoulder it also had flower patterns stitched on it but only one or two compared to the daisy field that was her skirt. Patti also had on a small brown buttoned jacket which was very wind in the willows and on her hands were black velvet gloves which matched her black boots and stockings. On her head was an opal coloured bobble hat.

In the eyes of the general population who hardly ever looked properly Patti wasn’t a ballerina or a bird, a plane or angel.
A knowing dancer passing by may have perished a thought over Patti’s bent knee and flexed foot.

Patti wouldn’t have cared a jot. It was what she could see and know with her own eyes and heart that mattered, and in Patti’s eyes and heart Patti was a ballerina. Patti often dreamt sometimes of a wandering dance lady that would one day teach her woodland ballet and they would create a show together that no other could.

After being a ballerina in the park Patti went to a cafe, which was playing James Brown, and ordered a hot chocolate.
She gazed into her cup reading patterns in the shapes that formed on the surface; it was a bit like reading tea without the use of leafs.

Outside it rained. The clouds were back.

Patti loved watching the rain. She reflected how she met a man in Kathmandu that taught her the joys of sitting under the shelter of a parasol during a monsoon whilst drinking tea and smoking. As they watched the rain together the man taught Patti to drag on her cigarette keeping the smoke in her mouth, and then to take a drink of tea, before blowing the smoke out.

Not the tea!

Patti thought how funny it would have been if she had blown tea out of her mouth instead of smoke, whilst sitting under the parasol watching the monsoon rain. As she thought it Patti laughed and very nearly succeeded in squirting hot chocolate out of her nose and onto a blue and white chequered napkin of the cafe.

Rain drops drip
Smoke tea sip
Exhale
Rain drops drip
Smoke tea sip
Exhale

In the cafe in drizzly Sheffield drinking her hot chocolate Patti Sunrise smiled. A lot of her friends and family, are they not one and the same? Were leaving today. Some by sky some by water. It was very very wet. Which made Patti think,
If it’s wet here then it must be wet somewhere else and if it’s wet somewhere else then it must be sunny somewhere else too, and if it’s wet here then it must be sunny somewhere. This made Patti think, that if you got the rain and the sun and tied them in a knot together you could easily make a bow filled with colour.

Patti looked out of the cafe window and noticed a red balloon and a blue balloon flying together in the sky.

Then she took a quick glance round the cafe to make sure no-one was looking, a guy eating a bagel in the corner noticed and stared,
what the hey! Patti thought and nodded her head forwards so she could sing to her feet.

The Weather, it’s beautiful just like you feet.

Patti’s feet purred and took Patti's song one step further by revealing their most treasured secret.

Patti, the weather is always beautiful.

In the same way sugar tastes sweet in both the sunshine and the rain.