While on the subject of clouds
Pol. My lord, the queen would speak with you, and presently!
Ham. Do you see yonder cloud that’s almost in shape of a camel?
Pol. By the mass and ‘tis, like a camel indeed.
Ham. Methinks it is like a weasel.
Pol. It is backed like a weasel.
Ham. Or like a whale.
Pol. Very like a whale.
– Shakespeare - Hamlet, Act III, Scene 2
As a child confined to the rigid, dull copper walls of primary school, the only outlet for my imagination was the large windows where shone the clouds in wondrous shapes. I would imagine them to be spaceships (yes SF was with me even at the age of 5!) slipping down through the atmosphere to attack us and cloaked, cunningly, as clouds; observing us, monitoring us, from above. Or sometimes I imagined them to be whole other continents, where races of ethereal creatures swept the skies in sailboats of wind. Or on other occasions with friends we spoke of the clouds, discussing the shape of them, just like in the quote above. It is fascinating how clouds reveal to us something of ourselves, because it is just our perception that dictates the forms we see, just our ability to group percepts together into wholes. Scientists recon that men prefer blue because it is built into our genetics, from our ancestors in Africa, who would look up at the sky locked above them - the major feature of their world - and blue means good weather, good omen, good luck. They recon also that women like pink, also built into our genetics, because they would be foraging for fruit while the men were away, and thus this preference for reds was built into women’s genetic code. So there we are, you learn something new every day.
