When Wednesdays are blue, numbers are as cities, and 5 + 2 = yellow … After one of the ‘incidents’ (panic attacks), Alyosha attempted to give his explanation of what had happened: “In the shop I heard black, then the word broke down into pieces and they entered my eye. I became blind because everything was black.” At the time I was bewildered with his explanation, and placed his ‘reports’ into the category ‘confusing’. However, in 2011, I came across the account by Brian King

Seeing or tasting sounds, hearing colours, being touched by sights… Alyosha was about 9 years old when he tried to account for a panic attack by saying: “I was scared. I saw a yellow ‘z-z-z’ sound.” This was confusing, until I realised he had synaesthesia. Synaesthesia (Greek syn – ‘together’ and aesthesis – ‘perception’) or ‘cross-sensory perception’ is an involuntary physical experience when the stimulation of one sensory modality triggers a perception in one or more diffe