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The rainbow does vanishing appearance. There one minute, gone the next. In your face in a blaze of glory. Guaranteed to make an impression. From end to end beyond measure. But it’s ends are never there. Spotted from anywhere, the rainbow could be anywhere. Try to close in on the end of the rainbow and – become the rainbow chaser. Admire it from wherever you are, be it close by, or be it far away. The colours display natures’ power the way nature knows best. The correct colours to showcase. From one end of the colour spectrum to the other. An arc of bendy creation.

So let’s try to get the perfect picture of the rainbow whilst it’s appearance is close to home. It’s weird though because the closer you move toward it the further it seems away. You can’t touch it and you can’t get inside it. But today it was close. It’s colours were seemingly more colourful today, and there was the rain (or not), perhaps more of a blanket wetness to highlight the greatness of it all, yet remain transparent. This one was very bright in colour, it seemed therefore of special appearance. Had I ever seen one this bright before?
No. It was a spectacle of electric like performance. The colours themselves resembling a voltage consuming force.
How could nature display that incredible vision on such a vast scale. It was so big it’s ends could not be placed; hard even to imagine where. The distance of span beyond measurable scale. Logically it would have to be a distance from one end to the other, as the reason is the prism effect of the sun and the moisture together. Thus so far as can be determined, the rain in the air and the sun in the rain will stop at some point. It is a moving prism however, a moving prism whose ends entice the chaser to find, and for that therefore: will be the making of the rainbow chaser.

This day it appeared in a field over the hedgerow on the way home from work. I could see the end, it was right there in the field. I kept driving and would pass it by as I drove. Too bad I didn’t have a camera to hand. But as soon as I passed that field the end of the rainbow was in the next field. The rainbow was moving itself as I drove. But not to worry, because the end was still close by. I was now the rainbow chaser. It’s a first for this, this teasing blend of nothingness. Because this rainbow was closer than ever before. My drive was not geographically in a straight line toward any particular pole, it was of course quite haphazard in that respect.

I was home now, parked outside the houses in the road. I could see the rainbow right over the house. It’s ends now miles apart (as they always had been), I suppose – who knew? But the arc was over the house itself. What a great opportunity to get a photograph of the brightest rainbow I may ever have seen. To be honest the ends looked miles apart and not even close to where they were when I first saw that one end. The ends therefore move with the weather? But hang on a minute, the weather is  …….sort of not weather at all, although it is, but not precise anyhow. It’s not raining, it’s not sunny; it’s inbetween weather – a bit of both. And that’s why the rainbow is there in the first place.

That is the theory I may as well accept. I was really interested right now in getting my snap shot of the rainbow over the house, so I dropped the missus off at the gate in order that she could retrieve the computer from its charge point in the house.
I did park the car in a hurry. As hurry as I could at any rate. I don’t like parking cars in forward aspect. The car must be parked in reverse. It will loose me time I know, you can’t however park the car forward, it’s not right. I just select reverse once I reach the point of stop ……… .right here, where I always stop, and select. Into reverse she goes, just back up a bit into the driveway entrance of one of the neighbours’ (she doesn’t mind, she told me once. She would rather I use the driveway than have it unused), and slowly slip the gears into the first gear and roll forward. Not too far because otherwise I won’t be able to seamlessly slip the gears into reverse in a slick and indiscernible change of wheel rotation. So smooth as always. Just the way it should be done. Now just back into the parking slot and park brake on. A quick check just to make sure the rainbow is still as great as it was just now. ……………….Hang on just a minute, the colours are fading. I check to see where the missus and the computer are.

It’s disaster. The missus’ fast walk hasn’t been fast enough, the colours of the rainbow aren’t as radiant as they were just a few minutes ago. But wait, a plan. A last minute attempt to capture this phenomenon right here over the neighbourhood.
I jump out of the drivers seat and race to the passenger door behind me. In my bag I have a camera – of sorts. It’s a smartphone camera. I will have that photograph before the missus even reaches me over here by the car. I grab my rucksack and undo the zipper where my smartphone is hidden inside. I grab the smartphone bag; it’s a smart phone in a hold bag with cord tighteners. It’s a struggle, the small holding bag is stuck in the rucksack, the chords are caught. Right now it’s not a panic, but it is a panic at the same time. With the camera bag stuck in the rucksack bag, it’s an intolerable situation. Under normal circumstances the camera (smartphone) would just fall out. I would scrabble to stop it falling on the ground. It would fall out when you wouldn’t want it to. But now it wouldn’t pull out. It was stuck. A quick glance over my shoulder and I see the rainbow fading.

Eventually the smart phone comes free. I release it from its bag and switch it on. I inadvertently have the wrong end of the phone as the switch is on the other end. I turn the phone over and use the switch. It’s all wasted time.
It doesn’t work! Why does it not work?
It’s a known pet hate for sure, especially with smart phones, as I was beginning to learn. I was more used to the old type of cell phone whose battery would last a whole week. The trick with these smart phones is to hold the switch down to jump start it  ….. if you previously had turn it off – and I mean off, when not in use, like I was in the habit of doing. The phone had been on charge over the weekend – all of Sunday, and here we were on the Wednesday. The phone had not even been switched on for all that time, and yet my old cheap no frills phone was holding a full charge and been switched on numerous times for the same period. I really wasn’t used to these new phones that couldn’t hold charge for more than a day, because this is what happens when the battery is ……..FLAT. Fuck it!  A quick glance over my shoulder and the rainbow almost wasn’t a rainbow anymore …… It appeared more in the form that we would normally recognise one, with the colours dissipated to pastel. I grabbed the computer pad from the missus who appeared by my side, then after wasting more time switching on, accessing camera app and focusing for optimum picture and aimed at the rainbow, and only after then was I able to take that most desired pf photos. But it was too late.
Yes, the rainbow was still there. It did have colours too. But they were fading away.

It was still over the house and it hadn’t moved. It did however do one strange thing before it dissapeared from view into the atmosphere. A strange thing that I was in time for. Before the colours went altogether, the rainbow brightened into a glare of dazzling white. It was ………….. an arc of white.  A rainbow glare of phosphorescent glow from one end to the other. It was a very special rainbow, unlike any other.