www.colourmining.co.uk

The red room is full … Today I sat in a much loved crimson cafe reluctantly trying to fathom how to say farewell to red. On the way there I passed a wind up creature with a missing drum. This object stood out in a city of a million things rust red with bright red trousers. I thought I saw red in the milky plastic drumsticks of this vulnerable, resilient and determined toy. Then somewhere between the 2nd and 3rd rust red tea a cat took up residence on my lap. It rendered me temporarily immobile. I looked down at my red note book and realised the page I was writing on had a production flaw, the edge was square not round. There was red! Its not one its everyone; it lives and breathes; its the interruption and the imperfection; you can not find it it finds you; it is human, flawed and free. Goodbye red … the room and Kadikoy.

Red is shelter from the snow…

Red is its own language… It hangs off the edges of Yemeni (scarfs) each tiny symbol telling you something of the mood of its owner. To sport a red pepper means keep a wide birth I am having a bad day. The cactus flower is the symbol for christmas. The watermelon flower (the hardest to knot) remains a mystery.The Yemeni themselves rest in piles some old some new. Often the edge is unfinished or there is a strange anomaly in the colour of the thread. This signature is reminder that no one and nothing is perfect. To be human is to be flawed…

The last stop on the ferry to the Kizil Adalar (Red Islands) is Kinalia Ada (Island with Henna). A forgotten land ruled by cats and dogs. They sit like statues on the carless streets guarding the empty homes wrapped up for winter. Suspicious of strangers slowly they stalk you weaving in and out of your legs until you return to the stormy sea…

Red underwear is worn on new years eve for good luck; red henna is painted on the hands of brides to be; red frocks are worn as a symbol of sacrifice the night before a wedding; the poppy is a symbol for women fragile and sensitive yet resilient and strong against the winds…

Today red was a woman… I followed the path of the poppy and as if I had been carried there came across a street so different from the rest I feel I might have imagined it. There I met a lady who lives there called Lydia. She told me to follow the path of the multicoloured houses past the Ottoman graveyard and at the end I would find a fountain…

Sweet tea was stirred and red spiralled slowly…

“But do not forget that colours are not know but felt” Orhan Pamuk. Red started out angry, frustrated and afraid…it became amused, delighted and generous. By dusk it was the warmth behind your eyelids when you close your eyes and look up at the sun. Constantly in motion, red is alive!

Red evaded me for awhile today until I headed to the sea at Bostanci. There faded and bleached by the sun was red and a lone man. His house so sunken into the sea it was barley visible gave itself away with the smoke from the chimney. A man, a cat and chickens. They have claimed a space for themselves in the city on their private peninsular looking out onto the Kizil Adalar (the Red Islands)…