With all the politics and the mind games

I love skies. Cloudy skies, sunny skies, night skies. Morning skies. Skies that look stained with coloured dyes; skies that are angry with rain.

It's funny to think that we're all under the same sky, even as far apart as we are, and with all the different lives that we lead. I like this about travel; no matter how far we are from home, the sky is still the same one that we look at from our bedroom windows. It's still the same one that all the people we miss can see.

That sky doesn't look very paxful. 

Whenever I'm going anywhere I (a) always take my camera, and (b) always try to photograph the sky, no matter if it's black and spoiling for rain or utterly blue and cloudless. With all the monuments and cobblestones and temples and gardens, rivers and domes and mosaics that rest at or below our eye level, we tend to miss the glory of a good sky: ever-changing, never the same way twice. The sky is as alive as we are.

It's always sunny in Montmartre. I hope.

My grandfather was a painter and a draughtsman, and his passion was clouds. He would sit outside in his patio in Woking and watch the clouds for as long as anyone could stand, and when he painted them, they were filled with that life I see in them. He saw the clouds as art, and the sky as a canvas, and rightly so.

Next time you're pointing your camera at your feet, stop and turn it upwards. What you will capture is something no one will ever see again.