The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
True colours for 2021 yet to be shown – but my money’s on grey and yellow
Having learned many new things in 2020 ( how to mix a proper margarita, how to make Zoom calls, how to play the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata – badly – and even how to exist quite happily with about 50% fewer of the belongings that I hoarded so Scrooge-ily at the beginning of 2020), I am gratified to find that this process of self-improvement shows no signs of slowing down in a new year.
I have learned, for example, of the existence of the Pantone Color ( sic) Institute, an organisation of which I was hitherto happily ignorant. Yet how could I have lived so long without taking advantage of its sage advice and colourful words of wisdom about the shining Yellow Brick Road that is taking us into the future?
And yellow is apt in more ways than one, dear reader, even if it is still a bit of a stretch to see far enough down the primrose path before us to the prime minister’s wonderful Emerald City and its non-existent figment of a Wizard leader! It does not, perhaps, take too much imagination to replace The Great Oz with The Great Boz. So to speak.
Now, especially in these latter days of festivity when we were still allowed to import and panic-buy panettone, that luscious Italian cakey thing, you may think I am referring to edible delights of foreign provenance. But no. The purpose of Pantone is colour analysis and the provision of insights and solutions using said shades to influence thinking and, more importantly in these times of retail hardship, buying habits.
At the beginning of each year, a panel of experts in this field chooses the colour which will make the greatest impression on our drab, wretched lives in the forthcoming months. ( To digress for a moment, where do these jobs come from? They never offered this kind of thing in my day. It was either teaching or the Civil Service or, in my case, writing speech bubbles for teenage magazines.)
These experts do this ever y year, apparently, and in this Year of our Lord 2021, they have generously provided us with not one, but two colours to chew over – “Ultimate Grey” and “Illuminating Yellow”, the combination of which will, we are assured, provide “a marriage of colour conveying a message of strength and hopefulness that is both enduring and uplifting”.
I’m all for a bit of that and I am here to tell you that my stepdaughter has obviously spent lockdown far more fruitfully than I, in the study of human nature and the arcane arts of planning ahead. She presented me this Christmas with a lovely colour block sweater (which I am currently sporting as I write this), featuring contrasting sections of – you guessed it – grey and yellow. It’s a bit like wearing the works of AA Milne - a slash of Eeyore grey leavened by a stripe of bouncing citrussy Tigger. Although I have to admit that the main body of this forward-looking garment is navy blue, just to remind me that in the year when I will, very shortly, find myself at exactly the right age to enjoy the “birthday greetings, bottle of wine” of which The Beatles sang so jauntily to the tune of When I’m 64, I have finally turned into my Auntie Elsie.
The PCI also boasts of “creating colour strategies that fit your company’s unique needs.” In the case of Britain’s ruling regime, I suspect that the result there may turn out to look somewhat like the worst excesses of Jackson Pollock. And there, but for a typographical error, goes the latest confused and confusing 2,000-page content of the Brexit agreement which nobody seems to like much. It certainly is a bit of a relief all round, of course, on the principle that when you’ve been permanently bashing your head against a brick wall, it’s so nice when you stop. It would be funny if it were a TV script (Yes, Prime Minister?) but unfortunately, it’s our very own nationwide reality show.
It’s rather magnificent that Mr Johnson’s much-touted and much-quoted “ovenready” deal may well turn out to be the only turkey many unfortunate members of the populace have had a taste of in a largely cancelled Christmas.
But one should not, perhaps, credit these no doubt hard-working trend forecasters with too much of the gift of prophecy.
It might amuse you to learn that the shade making the grade for 2020 was Classic Blue, for the stated reasons that it possessed the sterling qualities – and I quote: “…of instilling calm, confidence and connection. It is an enduring blue hue highlighting our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era”.
In other words: “2020 will be a fantastic year for Britain” (copyright B Johnson). That went well, then, didn’t it…
Perhaps I’m just bitter because the only inhabitant of our house currently in possession of a generally acceptable European passport is our Romanian rescue dog, aka the Transylvanian tripehound. Ironically enough, it’s blue…