even grey is more

when I was a little girl, my grandmother gave me a book of "first hymns". I still have it. My favourite was:

Jesus bids us shine
With a pure, clear light,
Like a little candle
Burning in the night.
In this world of darkness
So let us shine-
You in your small corner,
And I in mine.

(It only had this verse in and I've only read the other two today for the first time)

I always loved the idea of being a little candle and being able to see other people's lights shining in the darkness.
When I started school my first ever teacher decided that I was a bit of a problem. As she told my parents, she liked "her children" to be "grey" - a sort of homogenous mass of little person all at the same level and all in awe of her. I was never one of her children, she loathed me. I could already read and write and do simple maths. Because of this I got told off for "showing off". I got taught that pretending to be stupid is good.
Luckily, I had contact with other, more rational adults and, also changed schools after one year. But this school was much bigger and much scarier. Instead of juniors and seniors being separated at playtime, we were all in one playground - a flat, tarmacked, mesh-fenced square with nothing in it. There was a more or less invisible divide between the bit for big kids and the bit for littles. But as it was more or less invisible it was possible for big boys to come over, steal your snack or glasses or punch you in the face, whatever took their fancy.

Why I am remembering all this you may wonder? Well, last night I had an odd dream that jogged my memory of my first day in school. In my dream I was on a bus with lots of people I knew. One person, who I like but do not entirely trust, called across the bus to me using my real name, something I rarely use. And then everyone in the bus went off on one about my name - they knew I hated it or were hearing it the first time and needed to discuss where it came from and if it was a real name. The only people not joining in were me and someone I like and *do* trust - our eyes met in one of those "oh not again" looks and I remembered the candle song....

On to my first day in that new school. I was put in a class of older children as I was ahead in most subjects. First thing I heard from my new classmates was "that's not a real name!" "are you sure that's your name?" And it all went downhill from there. Luckily, the teacher was a warm-hearted person who was quite happy to have a more "colourful" child in her class. Some teachers deserve the name "teacher" others should be locked up for be blatantly incompetent.

There are many little candles burning in this world and it seems that a disproportionally large number of them are on blip. Even though the borders we have to post into are grey (and sometimes the weather makes our photos grey too) the colours within the borders are wonderful.

The more obvious song for the day: R.I.P Funky Claude. Mr. Spitzi has some funny anecdotes about staying in the Montreaux Palace during the festival but I missed that trip as I was sitting exams. So, I'll leave him to tell his own stories.