Page 45 Review by Stephen
"The world around us is changing colour.
"I am always changing colour."
Delicious, delirious and drop-dead gorgeous, this is a neon-bright, rainbow, Day-Glo affair.
I don't use "delirious" idly, either.
Wide-eyed and innocent and fundamentally optimistic, it is light on script and bright on shared experiences: the wonder of nature.
This is one to meditate on.
At one point Dawkins quietly, solemnly and self-promisingly declares:
"I have to remember...
"Every single detail...
"I won't forget."
This rings ever so true to me.
Whenever I stroll through the Derbyshire Dales or even cross the River Trent on my way into work on some mist-shrouded morning, I honestly do consciously promise myself that I will remember every single detail. I soak up eye-candy for future reflection and remembrance. It will sustain me, nourish me and reinvigorate me when the city closes in.
Dawkins captures that aspect - that specific imperative - to perfection.
Santana and Chucho sneak off from a communal Summerland beach party where the seas sparkle with bioluminescent plankton and so do the shores they're washed up on as well. They kick its wet sand up into the air, and the all-but-invisible plankton gives off radiant evidence of its existence.
The stuff of stardust in the sand beneath our feet!
They visit the Graveyard of Exoskeletons: limpets and winkles and the dead carapace of a crab whose life lingers on through its extraordinary shape and its compartmentalised intricacies.
"The sunrise makes the rock cliff glow a brilliant red.
"And it illuminates the yellow leaves of the crab apple orchard."
Sunlight is brilliant, isn't it? And stars are heavenly.
Stardom and cities...? Perhaps not so much.
Many years later and things may have taken a turn for the kohl-crying worse.
