Si­mon Lee

I've be­gun a new year with a new pas­time: watch­ing my boy­child grow, in the same fash­ion as oth­ers watch their gar­dens grow.

I would have thought, as a vet­er­an pap­pi (be­cause Mas­ter Ben bar Levi is my sev­enth child and def­i­nite­ly "the last son of my right hand") that I might have be­come in­ured to the de­vel­op­ing in­fant syn­drome.

I'm cer­tain­ly out of prac­tice with the di­a­per chang­ing and have yet to give him a bath, but while I may be slug­gish in prac­ti­cal terms, the sheer won­der of watch­ing my new­born change hour by hour, day by day, re­as­sures me I'm not yet an en­tire­ly crusty cyn­ic and con­tra­dicts my usu­al mantra that I'm not sur­prised by any­thing.

Um­bel­li­cal­ly at­tached, as it were, to this mir­a­cle of the mun­dane, this life as a work in progress, it's im­pos­si­ble–at least for me–not to feel in a per­ma­nent state of ex­cite­ment, which bor­ders on awe. To feel Ben's tiny hand grip­ping my fin­ger, or to watch his lit­tle bow cow­boy legs still in their cra­paud womb po­si­tion kick­ing out with sur­pris­ing strength has me fan­ta­sis­ing about fu­ture glo­ry days in the Bar­clays Pre­mier League, a Cre­ole Jew strik­er scor­ing end­less goals for our very own club-the Yids, Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur to all un­be­liev­ers. Or maybe he'll be the crick­eter I al­ways want­ed to be and I can sit in the Con­crete Stand at the Oval, ad­mir­ing his bound­ary stroke play; proud­ly cheer him on at Lords, where a new age Windies will wreak the kind of hav­oc on the ole Mud­ders Coun­try I haven't wit­nessed since that heady oc­ca­sion in the 1990s when Am­brose and Walsh took out the en­tire Eng­lish team for less than 40 runs.

No harm in fan­ta­sy, which I find ex­cel­lent ther­a­py in my off-guard­ed mo­ments of life's en­er­va­tion. It's a de­li­cious sen­sa­tion, savour­ing the mag­ic of life mo­ment by mo­ment, which chil­dren and es­pe­cial­ly ba­bies in­duce in adults. Ac­cord­ing to the ex­perts, my Ben can't fo­cus on any­thing more than 30cm from the end of his de­cid­ed­ly Jew­ish-style conk–his nose. So it's fun to lock eyes with him, as close up as pos­si­ble and al­so to watch his re­sponse to sounds, like his big sis­ter's so­ca loud voice, which he ob­vi­ous­ly recog­nis­es af­ter many in-womb lis­ten­ing ses­sions.

See­ing with new eyes is some­thing we can all do, if we for­get that we've for­got­ten how to do it. But then this morn­ing I heard about a ge­net­ic mu­ta­tion which pro­duces a con­di­tion called tetra­chro­ma­cy in hu­mans, the re­sult of which is see­ing a whole range of colours rather than one. Where­as you and I will look at a leaf and mere­ly see green, a "tetra­chro­mat­ic" can pick out pink at the ex­trem­i­ties of the leaf, touch­es of turquoise and pur­ple to­wards the cen­tre.

A young woman in Cal­i­for­nia with tetra­chro­ma­cy, has turned her con­di­tion in­to a vo­ca­tion as a painter, as since child­hood she's been dri­ven by what must be sim­i­lar to a per­ma­nent state of pyschodelia, which us less­er mor­tals can on­ly ac­cess with the aid of hal­lu­cino­gens like mescalin, pey­ote or LSD.

Be­ing at the cen­tre of a Jack­son Pol­lock ex­plo­sion, or a pointal­ist land­scape might sound like the buzz of a life­time but what might make for a one-off ex­pe­ri­ence must sure­ly pall, when one has to en­dure it 24/7.

Al­though the Cal­i­forn­ian painter ad­mits that the con­di­tion can be dis­tract­ing, when she fo­cus­es on a can­vas, it's ex­hil­a­rat­ing. Some­times she doesn't even need paints, wa­ter will do. As a child she spent many hap­py hours with a buck­et of wa­ter "paint­ing rain­bows" on the wood­en fence in her gar­den.

As she reached one end of the fence, wield­ing her brush, the oth­er end would have dried out and she'd dash back to the be­gin­ning to start all over again, the dry­ing wood chang­ing ap­pear­ance and colour by the sec­ond. For us with reg­u­lar vi­sion, shade and shad­ow mere­ly rep­re­sent grey­ness. For her there's vi­o­let and pur­ple.

Here's an­oth­er gem of the new year, passed my way by a man I re­fer to as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, as he ad­dress­es all and sundry with the pedantry of an iras­ci­ble judge. There you go AG!

Maybe he was sim­ply tiefin' my head but what he told me ap­pealed to my shaky sense of log­ic. Ap­par­ent­ly re­cent clin­i­cal tests sug­gest that one of the most re­viled crea­tures on the plan­et–the com­mon fly–may be the an­swer to Ebo­la and a few oth­er dead­ly dis­eases. Ac­cord­ing to the AG, fly mu­cus is the uni­ver­sal an­ti­dote, the an­ti­body to end all nas­ti­ness. If you pause for a sec­ond to con­sid­er what the fly gets up to, or lands on, con­sumes with­out ap­par­ent harm, then maybe the AG is talk­ing sense. If he's cor­rect we may all have to re­vise our opin­ion of the fly–no sh.... Which leaves us con­ve­nient­ly at the end of this col­umn, hav­ing trav­elled from the sub­lime to the stinki­fu­lous.