On the perfect orange

There was I, toing and froing, and froing and toing, in an effort to discern whether the colours on my tablet were indeed true. It didn’t help that the light was so bad that the tablet must be balanced precariously on the narrow windowsill in my sitting room, much to the consternation of the Cat. This whole procedure interrupted her viewing pleasure. The Cat is of the very strong opinion of the necessity of hanging out the window to glare at the pigeons. Pigeons, it seems, require a good fierce glare several times a day. I left her to keep an eye on the tablet while I went to retrieve the items that I had bought previously from the site. And yes, the colours on the screen and the ones in my hand did indeed seem to be true. But this did not really answer the question… was it the right orange? A few moments of riffling in my scarf box produced what looked like a good approximation. [I have a thing for scarves, so much so that friends have even bought me a book on them. Very nice it is too, full of wonderful, colourful inspiration. And yes the box is quite large.] I held the scarf against the tablet. I held it against my face and checked the effect in the mirror. I toed and froed a bit more. There is nothing more wrong than the wrong orange but, really, I couldn’t just give in and buy white.

Now, it’s not that I don’t like white. White is perfectly acceptable. It’s just that I don’t feel anything much when I’m in white. Almost the first thing I did after my cancer diagnosis was to chuck out all my old safely white underwear and replace it with sunny yellows, peppery oranges, hot pinks and warm reds. Oh, how much better I felt, even when wearing grey on the outside. I have a couple of what I term happy dresses, dresses that I always feel good in irrespective of the weather or the state of the roads or the immeasurable foolishness and vanity of politicians. I also seem in a moment of inattention to have bought an unhappy dress, a dress I could wear perfectly comfortably before my diagnosis but since then, not. Now even my hair looks depressed in it. I haven’t had the heart to get rid of it for I hope, perhaps in vain, that we will be reconciled one day.

The revelatory effect of a hot pink bra (and matching briefs of course) and my experience at the Hockney exhibition really brought home to me that the vital importance when choosing colour, to wear, to sit on or to surround yourself with, is not whether it matches or is the latest trendiest shade of whatever but rather how it makes you feel. Truly feel. And if you trust how you feel, of course it will be perfect. For you. I can’t tell you how much better I am sleeping since banishing the off-white from the bedroom. It went with the décor in the room but still it had to go. Now all that remains to be dealt with is the slightly brooding sofa.

As Karen Haller explains succinctly in The Little Book of Colour… “Colour is not just about decorating. It is arguably the simplest tool we have at our disposal to enhance positive emotions and increase wellbeing, and it can do all this in an instant.” Karen wants to “create a global colour revolution in which we are no longer oblivious to this marvel that surrounds us.” And who wouldn’t want that? Have a read of her book. I bet you’ll be converted.

I took a chance and placed the order. The orange is… the perfect orange. For me.