It’s a comfortable jumper we might put on, a suit of armour we might don without really thinking about it too much. Blinkers on our eyes, the filters of childhood, the filters of experience, imprinting each subsequent experience with the same shade. Minds fixed and unmoving like concrete dividing barriers on a freeway – do not enter… wrong way go back……. always amused me that did, that sign ‘Wrong Way Go Back’. Our minds do not have such a flashing warning sign do they? No fog horn blaring – “warning judgemnet taking place”, no screeching tyres as we halt this hurtling vehicle of our own judegment.

90% of the time it’s not even because you’ve done something yet or met someone it’s just how it looks, some memory is triggered by the visual cortex and then you’re on a bridge with a series of sagging bungee ropes attached to your feet and it’s sheer panic, can’t jump, Don’t want to, long way down, commitment makes you wear a frown. Biting voices of opposition chew your brain and the walls come down and block out everything again.

You chew away on that prejudice, it’s a juicy steak , a dainty pastry, you relish it and indulge and tell your friends about it later and spread the virus, spread the disease, so when they encounter that same someone or something they are already loaded and ready to go. The person or scenario smells as apealling as a take away shop who has let the fat burn a little too long, the bread go a little past its use by date…….