#31: The Rainbow Maker
I live inside a multitude of mini rainbows, flying around my sunlit room.
This is my rainbow maker, a Christmas present from my grandfather a number of years ago. Yet I’ve never had a room with such plain white walls and windows that get direct sunlight for a large part of the day, so I’ve never actually had this rainbow maker in my own room. But now I have the perfect rainbow room, and I’m loving it.
Like fairy lights and kaleidoscopes, a rainbow maker is another interesting object to have in your room with no direct practical use. You have them because they’re fun to have around, either to play with or to help create a certain kind of atmosphere. For night time I have my fairy lights — for day time, I have my rainbow maker.
Durham, while in the North, shockingly gets quite a bit of sunlight, and in my tower room with its skylights like Eleanor’s, as well as a little tiny side window, light just fills the room right up every day.
It’s my dream tower room, the top floor of a three story house, a converted attic. One of my favourite books as a child was The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge, and I think of this as my own version of Maria Merryweather’s tower room. Now all it needs is its own fireplace and the magically appearing dresses that she finds there, and I’ll be set. Instead, I have my rainbows, and I think they do a pretty good job of adding a bit of the fairytale world to my student room.
Student life is busy. With two weeks left of term, I am looking at the enormous amount of work that I need to get done before the holidays and I honestly don’t know how I’m going to do it all. I want to hide away, to curl up and enjoy Christmas for the restful and cosy holiday that it is. But first, I have to work. Don’t get me wrong, I love my work, I just wish that I had a little more time to do it all.
So to help me, in these next two weeks, I have my rainbow maker, helping my room to be the sanctuary that it is and that it needs to be for all the reading that I have to do. On the top floor of a three story house at the top of Gilesgate hill in Durham, I can hide away. It may be a bit of a hike to get up here after that hill and all those stairs, but once I’m in my room, I can breathe. I can feel peace, as I curl up in my beanbag below the window, the rainbows flying above my head. I look out and see not land, but sky, with clouds and sunshine, and I feel safe. Me in the midst of my little multitude of rainbows.
