Yellow Four Door

After yesterday's ultra gloom the sun returned again today so I just took a quick trip out to West Malling for a change of scenery and some fresh air. I had a lovely stroll around the town but hadn't spotted anything blipworthy until I literally couldn't miss this bright yellow door, with its wonderfully colourful Christmas wreath, as it was caught in the late morning sun.

I was so sorry to hear of the death of the poet and writer Benjamin Zephaniah. He published dozens of poetry collections, novels and essays throughout his 40 year career.
He was also known for his works as a musician, actor (with roles including Jeremiah Jesus in Peaky Blinders) and civil rights campaigner and is credited with bringing a genre, dub poetry, to a wider audience.
There was a lovely tribute from Cillian Murphy, who starred alongside him in Peaky Blinders: "Benjamin was a truly gifted human being - a generation poet, writer, musician and activist. A proud Brummie and a Peaky Blinder".
If you get a chance to find it there's a wonderful short film on BBC iPlayer  called "A Picture of Birmingham" where he revisits his home city to reflect on how it shaped his work.
I also found an article in the Independent by the journalist Helen Brown. She'd met and interviewed him several times and found him as open and kind hearted as his poetry and went on to explain how his poetry had a profound effect on her autistic son.
Dyslexia had cut Zephaniah adrift from regular eduction where he was stereotyped and patronised but by 10 or 11 years old he knew he had poems in "his head even then" and his sister began writing them down for him.
His struggle to make sense of written language formed a powerful plank in the work he'd go on to create. Helen Brown's son is autistic and was slow to learn to read and write, despite being very clever and she will always remember the day she realised her child learned to laugh at the adults who patronised him. She had found him holding a copy of Zephaniah's poetry called "Sunny Side Up". That particular poem is presented in the book upside down, designed to mess with the system. It runs: When people/See people/reading up/Side down/They think/Maybe/The reader/Can't read/But/You should/Smile now/Because you/Have found/A Poem/That's out/To Mislead.
He son learnt the poem by heart in only minutes, carrying it on public transport. After a day of being told he was less than his peers, he relished  Zephaniah's anointment of intelligence - it shifted the entire power dynamic between her autistic son and his teachers: it gave him the confidence to read on.
Benjamin Zephaniah's life was a testimony to the transformational power of reading. RIP.