What Colour is Your Toothpaste?

My toothpaste is turquoise – it used to have blue and white stripes. I quite like turquoise but it’s different. Turquoise is gentle, whimsical and imaginative. Blue and white stripes make you feel alert and vibrant and set you up for a positive day’s activity.

In my kitchen I fry the onions to a pale golden colour. My left arm reaches out for the handle of the wall cupboard to my left. What I am searching for isn’t there. Why not? Wrong kitchen. Wrong cupboard. Another life. My instinctive reaching out for what I need used to result in gratification – the herbs or spices I needed next, the cheese grater or the sieve. Now it’s all wrong. I must engage my brain and reject my body’s natural impulses.

In the bedroom – well, surely bodily impulses must rule there! But no, in the night I wake and direct my gaze towards the illuminated, red numbers of the radio alarm. Is it nearly morning? Should I stir and make a cup of tea? Or is it merely another waking phase at 3 a.m. in my current, rather annoying and restless sleep patterns? But the answer is delayed. My brain turns the problem over slowly, painfully and  finally arrives at the answer. Since yesterday the bed has been raised a foot, from its earlier state as a makeshift mattress on the floor to the superior position of a real bed with a wooden frame, a headboard and a footboard to bump your shins on as you round the foot of the bed. More change. The new wardrobes have been erected and are very beautiful and the bed can now take up its permanent position. The carpentry workshop has been transformed into a bedroom. The clock now stands beside me at eye level on a smart new bedside chest of drawers, instead of on a pile of bed parts on the floor where my eye was instinctively searching for it.

This is all change for the better. We have chosen our new existence. We have discarded other options and chosen this one. It is a good choice and we are happy. But sometimes the mind and body, let alone the subconscious, are not so easily satisfied. Changes can be good; changes can be bad. But all change has consequences and on a subconscious level there is strain. Maybe it is simply that the tree outside the window of my new home is two feet taller. Maybe the birdsong is different. Maybe the neighbours speak with a different accent and I buy my groceries in a different shop. It doesn’t matter; I will get used to it. But inevitably there is strain; there is stress. My toothpaste is turquoise – and my inner self knows it isn’t right. This is going to take more time than I thought. Moving house is quite a project, it seems...