DON'T LOOK AT ME IN THAT TONE OF VOICE! IT SMELLS A FUNNY COLOUR.

I have synesthesia. It's not a disease, it's just a thing. A lot of people have it, and often don't really realise that they're synesthetic because it's not in any way detrimental to your health, nor is it particularly odd if you've grown up with it all of your life. It's a bit like having brown eyes, some people do, some people don't. But it's not the same for everyone. Synesthesia is when your brain doesn't communicate with itself in the 'normal' way, and your senses sort of get mixed up. Some people, for example, see colours when they hear sounds, and for some people it's very vivid. Some associate an actual tangible distance when it comes to concepts of time, for example Monday will always be two feet in front of you, slightly to the left. And I, I taste in colour; and when I touch things, I will taste a colour (for example, to touch an orange (the most hideous of all fruits) it tastes brown, with a golfball like texture, and crayon brown).

I never really knew this was odd until I went to the doctors a few years back. about something entirely unrelated, and he asked me to describe a taste, and I said it tasted really white. The whitest white you'll ever taste. He looked at me bemused, and I just went quiet. Not long ago I was asked if I wouldn't mind taste testing some products for a supermarket, and I said yes, because I like free food. And as lovely as some of this food was, when they were asking me to rate certain elements like the sweetness of the flavour etc. I suddenly realised I was having to translate what they were saying in a way that I could understand, because things don't taste sweet or sour or spicey. I was tryign to work out if it meant pale, textured, dull or bright. Eventually it got to the point where I was just getting confused, so I quickly guessed at numbers and got out with my free thank you chocolate bar.
to try and give an example by what I mean about tasting in colour, I'm going to share an extract from my diary (yes, my actual, real life, full on diary. Feel lucky reader!):

"There's a smell, it's a countryside smell, though I do not know the source, and it's a highly beautiful smell. It does not go all the way up your nose, rather it feels to hit a blockade at the top of your nostrils. It smells the most wonderful grey, like the clearing raincloud of grey, except with the texture of smoke, and for the brief time it is assaulting one's senses, it give everything one touches a most wonderful silvery tang."


I'll allow the lovely Stephen Fry to explain this further.