It seems rude to pick up my laptop and decamp when the light is suddenly blotted out by a man in overalls and baseball cap looming outside the window; but it's impossible to work while he's doing just that over my right shoulder. Also there's the smell. He's putting oil-based gloss on the joinery and it's pretty powerful. But he's getting on quickly, hoping to have the soffit (I'm down with all this jargon now - eaves? Pshaw! Amateur) done by the end of the week; so that means time is running out for choosing the colour of the walls.
I'm afraid that after interior flings with lolly pink, aubergine, orange and butter yellow, I'm going to come over all Anglo-Saxon and plump for something boringly sludge-like for the outside: calling it Tea or Quarter Biscotti or Half Haystack doesn't help to make me feel adventurous, Resene. I wish I could break free of this convention and give the painter, who is a lovely man but very depressed about having been in this job for 30 years, the excitement of applying something vivid. How his eyes would surely brighten, given the chance to slap on Blue Lagoon, Tamarillo or Bright Sun!
He should live in Valparaiso, or Quito, or Lima, or on Reunion Island, or in the Cooks: they paint their houses such fabulously gaudy colours there: lime green, lemon yellow, pink and orange. And turquoise: most popular of all, everywhere. I wonder why that is?
It's the hardest colour to describe in an original manner in a lagoon story, that's for sure. I once even took colour charts to Aitutaki to help me: "...
the colour of the water is Mint Tulip deepening into Riptide with a band of Curious Blue under an Oxymoron sky..." Poetry!
2 comments:
In odd hemisphere synchronicity I was picking out interior paint colors with my painter as you posted this. Kyle Beige. Looked green to me, but he said it was popular.
How retro! All the colour charts I've seen absolutely avoid the word 'beige'. It's not a colour, it would seem, but a personality trait.
Post a Comment