Sallow Yellow

I love colour imagery. My poem below was influenced by a wonderful novel – The Aunt’s Story by Patrick White, set before World War I. Theodora Goodman was the daughter of a would-be farmer who took his family to Australia under the government Assisted Passage scheme.

While the men succeeded by turning their hands to ranch farming, their women and daughters continued to live an Edwardian English drawing room existence, embroidering, playing the piano, surrounded by china ornaments, in the bush! They didn’t venture out in case they lost their English rose complexions.

Theodora rebelled against this. By the age of ten she was riding bareback with her father and was a crack shot with a rifle. She was an embarrassment to her mother.

In middle life though she was alone, a solitary figure travelling between European cities, living in modest hotels. Though she was dark-haired and wore only black before her fifties, her colour was yellow. I was moved by her story and wrote a poem about her.

‘Once there was the new dress she put on for mother’s sake... "Well, well, all dressed up… but I don’t think we’ll let you wear yellow again. It doesn’t suit… it turns you sallow," Mother said. So that the mirrors began to throw up the sallow Theodora Goodman, which meant who was too yellow.’   The Aunt’s Story p. 27.

Theodora
From a picture rail
above rose-papered walls
hangs spinsterhood,
her oldest garment,
replacing childhood’s yellow sash.
In sallow skin and soft moustache
Theodora wears her sadness.

Childhood beneath
a blistering sun
has withered her countenance.
Bitterness yellows her voice
calling for hands which do not demand
that skin should be blooming or pale or unblemished.
The touch of a stranger is often the kindest.

Thank you for reading this. Dorothy Nelson

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Yellow

This Saturday's blog is brought to you by: the colour yellow, the number 7, the letter K, the planet Mercury, the Sicilian lemon, the custard frog protection society and the fans of Primrose Hill. Let the sunshine in.

In anticipation of this deepest, darkest winter lockdown when scheduling the latest run of topics, I hoped yellow could be a theme the Dead Good collective might respond to happily. That turned out to be a good hunch, as this is the sixth blog in a week on the subject (and we haven't seen that kind of run in a while).

I've always regarded yellow as a special colour, light and fresh with positivity, warmer and richer than white, vibrant and bold. It floods the eye. It's the colour of sunshine (if indeed sunshine has a colour), of laughter (if indeed laughter ditto...), of happiness, honeycombs and gold, of jonquil and primroses, of sandy beaches, butter, canaries, emergency vehicles, bananas and custard.

It's the brightest (and best?) of the primary colours and a fitting counter-point to the blues.  As with its near-neighbour on the colour wheel (the fabulous tangerine), in my view you can never have too much of it. Need I go on? I think I need not. What's not to love?

Primrose Hill models yellow?

Proceeding then, to a poem on theme, the catalyst for this latest piece from the imaginarium was finding a couple of post-it notes adhering (forgotten?) inside the back cover of a novel that I bought second-hand from an online bookshop during lockdown. Before I got to reading the novel, I spent time wondering what that other story might have been, the real-life one. 

This, then, while not exactly another 'found' poem, does quote both notes verbatim as part of a more speculative 'so what might that all have been about and where did it go next?' exercise. I hope you approve.

On Yellow Post-it Notes

found stuck in the back of a second-hand book,

an intriguing list of things to do.

The first note reads thus: Lillywhites - suitcase,

Accessorize, bank, Boots No. 7,

penguin toy, Marble Arch M&S - tape measure!

There's no inscription on the title page

to give a clue to previous owner.

Now if it had been me: name, date and place.

That's how one could trace my movements 

through half a century, homes, colleges, holidays,

even work assignments, if one chose to look.

But I digress. The title might provide an insight:

Mary Renault's 'The Friendly Young Ladies',

a Virago Modern Classic (147 to be precise).

A second note states: Sofa bed 174 (coincidence?),

H 85 x W 196 x D 97, seat H 45 arm H 61,

back rail 73, colour Jonquil, cushions extra!

What do I assume from those ageing sticky scraps? 

Mission accomplished at M&S with tape measure?

Bijou metroland nest being fitted out for guest,

perhaps a child? Holiday or hospital visit planned?

Tiny bedsit being reconfigured to accommodate

another? Maybe the reader's new-found lover?

Unlikely that she owned a penguin as a pet -

herring would surely have been on note one if so.

Clearly a girl of sunny disposition on a budget

and a mission, but those forgotten posts - worrying.

I wonder did she ever get her Jonquil sofa bed 174?

Maybe she lost the book on the journey home,

encumbered by a suitcase and shopping bags,

dimensions disappearing down the Central line.

Or did she simply one day offload the book? 

Plot not compelling? Shelves not broad enough?

Maybe the reminder of a relationship which didn't

measure up? Questions remain. There's no telling. 

Thanks for reading my zany stuff. Stay bright, S ;-)

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Colours: Yellow

So: (which is my favourite way of starting anything) I had lots of ideas when I signed up for a guest blogging spot on the theme of Yellow. I made copious notes, in my favourite way: a bullet point list.

And then I started feeling quite poorly, overall poorly, but also involving coughing. And once I was with it enough to properly notice this, I ordered a COVID test, online. It took some time, filling in all the pages of that form, while feeling poorly, before I got to choose how I wanted to get my test. And there it was, finally, the option: have it sent to my home. So I clicked. And then very early this morning I got a message to one of the many contact details I had to give in the first form: your test will be delivered between 10:32 am and 2:32 pm by Royal Mail. So, not knowing what to expect, I got showered, dressed (not necessarily everyday achievements for me) and even had a face mask handy next to the front door in case I had to sign something or be photographed. Being prepared for all eventualities – I call that being a good OT (occupational therapist), others may call it fussy, anxious, or negative. 

And then the slim purple parcel came through the letterbox, without needing a photo, or signature, or anything. And so I thought, I want to do the swab before I eat lunch – in case it makes me feel sick. And so I unpacked the slim parcel. And started panicking. Different bits, the swab I expected and the plastic tube that the swab would go back in, plus several bags, some with print on, a pad, a sticky label, and the 22-page booklet with instructions. I don’t know what it was, I’ve got two university degrees, but the contents of that parcel made me feel like a five-year-old in a grown up physics lecture (I am not really a physics genius to put it mildly), like I am definitely too stupid to have a test for a potentially deadly disease. At that moment, I really wished I had tried to drag myself through the walk-through test centre in a Blackpool car park yesterday (why do you have to walk if it is in a car park?).

Reading the booklet, it said to swab your tonsils for 10-15 seconds. I don’t have tonsils anymore. Mine were removed when I was five or six years old, and I have no idea where they were located before that. It also says to do this with the help of a mirror and a torch, and not to touch any of the structures before you get to the back of the throat with the swab, like the tongue, teeth, gums as this would spoil the test. It also mentions that the procedure could be uncomfortable. So, if like me you start to shake when nervous, like when you want to make sure you haven’t got a potentially deadly disease, and your maths is shaky at the best of times: how many arms do you need for swab and torch and potentially mirror, while not shaking and definitely not touching anything you shouldn’t, while counting to 10 to 15 in an orderly fashion, and presumably continue breathing throughout in order not to faint/move/touch etc. You get the picture? Oh, and all this is part of a particular order of actions, all leading to the sample being sent off for analysis correctly, and timely, and all that. First you find a priority post box by searching for it online (couldn’t I have done that yesterday when I ordered the test? I could have if they had told me about it), and find out when the last collection of the day takes place, and you make sure that you or someone from your household can get the finished sample parcel to that post box at least one hour before the last collection (why? Do they come to collect the post from such an important post box up to an hour early? Again, why?), so in my area, that’s at 4 in the afternoon. If you can’t get it there before 4, you can’t do the sample that day – but of course, you need to get the sample done and sent within 48 hours of: ordering it? Receiving it? Another thing I am not sure about. I am sure though that I can’t make it to the post box, and that my husband is working flat out until 4:30 today, so he can’t take it there – except the last collection isn’t until 5, in theory, but the instructions are clear, it has to be in the box at least one hour before last collection.

As well as all that, you have to go online to let them know that you are about to do the swab, but only if you’re sure that you are going to send it off that day. So today is not that day. Today is another day of trying not to panic about the potentially deadly disease, trying to get some good sleep in case I have the disease – sleep is so important for the immune system (!) – and of not being able to do the activity that has kept me sane in the head for almost a year now, the morning walk with the dog. Lately through rain and mud, and at times beautiful sunshine and ice and a tiny bit of snow, to see the trees and the birds and the top of Blackpool Tower, last lit up like the Electric Cowboy in red-orange lights, that was yesterday morning, but feels like longer ago already. Tomorrow will be another such day, and the day after that at least, until the hopefully negative result comes through on one of the many communication channels I have provided in that first form. By then, the dog will likely have stopped speaking to me, as the garden replaces the park, and he doesn’t like the garden when it rains like it has done all day today, and there is mud, and long grass. The rain and mud and long grass in the park are clearly of a different quality, a better quality. But tomorrow my husband will help me navigate the process and the instructions and the swab itself, and at least that part will be over and done.

And so: to say a few words (!) about the colour Yellow. It’s not one of my favourite colours, in fact when I was younger, and more prone to make provocative sweeping generalising statements, especially in social situations involving other people, I would have said I hate Yellow. I don’t know if it is age, but overall, and certainly in writing, I manage to be a little more specific and nuanced these days.

Someone told me a long time ago that the combination of black and yellow were the colours of Wahnsinn (that’s German, and could be translated as madness, or insanity, or literally: delusion sense), upon looking at a picture I had painted which was abstract and black and yellow. Not being exactly a visual artist to start, that stopped me quite efficiently.

I don’t have any yellow clothes, or its cousin, orange, except for a very large fluffy scarf, which was kind of cheerful as well as warm and covering my neck very well on a cold winter’s day, for many years. I still remember which friend I got it from (just not whether she gave it willingly or if I ‘borrowed’ it).

Another experience of yellow was that I painted a picture once (before the black and yellow one), while music was playing that was scientifically developed by calculating distance and size of the planets of the solar system from our planet Earth, producing specific tone frequencies to represent each planet. This was done by musical genius Joachim-Ernst Behrendt, a German music professor, and the CD I was listening to while painting the picture, unbeknownst to me, was the sound of the Sun. The whole picture was just yellow with a bit of white and a little orange, no shapes, and I was kind of surprised at my choice of colour (this was in the days of I hate Yellow), and intrigued when the person who had put on the CD told me what it was. I have bought all the ‘Ur-töne’ (Ur = German for original, but also kind of ancient, like Urwald means ancient forest, and is the word for jungle) CDs since, but have not had such spectacular results, probably because I have to put them on myself.

For several reasons, the colour yellow, as well as being the traditional colour for the sun in children’s paintings, also has a slightly official feeling for me. That may be because in Germany, my home country, everything relating to the Deutsche Bundespost, so post boxes, vehicles and probably buildings are yellow (It even has its own shade of post-yellow in colour charts). Fluorescent yellow coats/gilets also mean ‘official’ and ‘authority’ to me, and I have to suppress the instinct to salute and then hide in case I have done something wrong, a real mix of cultural references to authority from the two countries in which I have spent so much time. I have also noticed that alarm lights are often yellow/orange. The only ones that make me happy are those on the gritting vehicles out in winter because of snow and ice, more on that subject another time.

I should not forget to mention yellow as the colour of spring for me. Just after white (snowdrops, daisies) and of course green (leaves and shoots on everything), the yellow flowers of Ranunculus ficaria, also known as Lesser Celandine or Pilewort carpet the woodland floors, and banks of streams, and stays for quite some time. And dandelion flowers (Taraxacum officinale), these early food sources for still-drowsy bumblebees, in such numbers wherever they haven’t been poisoned into extinction. Those are the flowers in the park and in my garden that tell me spring has arrived.

One variation of the colour yellow – gold – has a positive feel for me. After not feeling very proudly German for many years, some of them spent here in England, I kind of like the Schwarz-Rot-Gold (Black-red-gold) colour combination of the German national flag now. Gold has also served me well as a comforting as well as energising colour in meditations and that kind of thing. And with that I give you, finally, the poem at the end of this long blog, it’s called Energy. As always, I would love to hear your thoughts about what you’ve read here. And, although I feel a certain tug to apologise for the length, and off-topic-ness of the first part, I will resist, in case it helps someone else navigate this one bit of these difficult times, I know it would have done that for me. 

Energy

Roots growing into the Earth
Through soles and toes and heel,
Drawing up golden warmth
Floating up the feet, knees, legs,
Saturating the belly,
Travelling up towards the heart;

Then: silver sparkling starlight streaming
Through crown,
And head and throat,
Meeting the gold waiting by the heart
Spiralling, starting slowly, together
Beginning to mingle
Until nebulae of gold with silver flecks are
Swirling through the chest
Growing vaster, whirling, spinning
In ever increasing circles
Until all of me, and then some,
Is swathed and rocked in light.

Angela McG January 2021 

Thank you for reading.

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Yellow - Daffodils

Yellow is the colour of sunshine, something there is so little of in these bleak, January days. Thinking of yellow and sunshine brings back treasured memories of my childhood and Nanna Hetty’s spotless, shiny kitchen in her bungalow at Heald Green. Perhaps the cupboards were yellow, or the Formica topped table, I’ll never remember, but the coffee pot with the pointed handle definitely was. I don’t think for one moment it was a Clarice Cliff, but whenever I see one it reminds me of Nanna’s sunny kitchen, her delicious fruit cake and the perfect scrambled eggs she made for me.

I hope that sunshine isn’t too far away. It’s almost impossible to imagine when it’s so cold, there’s scarce daylight from a dark grey sky and everlasting rain. Dreich. And, there is still the Covid pandemic hanging over us all.

Being surrounded by such doom and gloom at the moment, my recent choice of television viewing, BBC 4’s The Victorian Slum could be considered questionable. To give a brief outline, modern day families have taken up the challenge of living in the slum building exactly as the Victorian slum dwellers did, cramped in one room, two if it could be afforded and with the most basic of facilities. The lucky ones who found daily unskilled work could earn a meagre amount of money, every penny needed for rent and food. In the beginning, it is 1860, moving along a decade with each episode, exploring changes and differences and the hardship each family faces. Social history is very much my thing, so I’m glued to it and at the same time, thankful that I’m living now and not then. The only cheerful looking things were the artificial flowers that the children were making to sell. Within the slum is a doss house, somewhere to sleep, nothing more, for a penny or fourpence a night. The next step down is the workhouse.

One thing leads to another so with my head full of slum life in the 1860s I did some Google research on workhouses in the U.K. at that time. I was instantly transported to Bristol workhouse to be horrified at how people were treated so cruelly yet fascinated at what I was reading. The uniform for unmarried, pregnant women was a red tunic style dress. Prostitutes wore yellow. I smiled eager to share this snippet of information.

Don’t bother to tell me that’s how it was in all workhouses, not just Bristol.

Dad’s favourite colour was yellow. His mother was my Nanna Hetty, so maybe the colour yellow had significance. It was at Easter time when he suddenly passed away. Daffodils in full bloom filled each side of the front path that curved from the drive to the door. They became symbolic. Each year, I plant daffodils in remembrance of him, making sure there are some rich yellow ones. Some Tete-a-Tete are already in bud.

My poem,

Bristol Workhouse, 1860

I smoothed the cotton as I sat, and thought
Who wore this dress before me?
What became of her? Good fortune or death?
What happened to set her free?

Others were watching me, nudging, judging,
Nodding and whispering low.
My nervous hands gathered the threadbare skirt
As I glanced along the row.

Young women, not much older than children,
Some were dressed in washed-out red
With swollen bellies straining at the seams.
Those, the sinful un-wedded.

And me, I needed to feed my children
And pay the over-due rent.
There was no other way I could recoup
Money I shouldn’t have spent.

So I stood in the doorway, shoulders bare,
Brassing it out, being bold.
Closing my mind to demands of the men
While I shivered with the cold.

There’s no love lost in the Bristol Workhouse.
Pleading eyes, tear-stained faces
Cut no ice with those in authority
Looking down on the disgraced.

Downfall has brought me to sit here in a
Faded yellow dress of shame.
Of all the men who happily paid me,
No one even knew my name.

PMW 2021

Thanks for reading. Stay safe and keep well, Pam x

 

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The Language Of Yellow

There are many types of languages. These structured communications can be visual, written or spoken.  Language conveys meaning, and in some cases, feeling.  Colour is one element artists and poets have readily on hand. Amazingly, there are millions of colours that the human eye can detect including variations of yellow. Yellow is one of three primary colours sitting somewhere between orange and green.

Colour Wheel

The Theory and Practice of Color - Bonnie E. Snow, Hugo B. Froehlich

(Laidlaw Brothers, 1920)

The word yellow is derived from the Old English geolu meaning … yellow. However, my idea of yellow may not be exactly your idea of yellow. To clarify, we need further description and thus, there is sunny, lemon, mustard, dandelion, corn, flaxen, marigold – the list goes on.  Different kinds of yellow conjure up different types of imagery.

Throughout the ages, this bright and often bold colour varying in hue and intensity has grabbed attention, indicated danger and soothed the soul. It has warmed our hearts and homes. It has given atmosphere to paintings along with making serious fashion statements. Sir Herbert James Gunn’s Pauline in the Yellow Dress is a good example.

Here the artist has used the yellow dress to give focus to the subject and also to show that the sitter, his wife, is a self-assured woman. It takes confidence to wear such a dress, she is meant to be seen. No wallflower is she.

Pauline in the Yellow Dress
Herbert James Gunn, 1944, oil on canvas
Harris Museum, Art Gallery & Library Collection

Van Gogh also had an affinity for the colour yellow. He even lived for a time in a yellow house. He created five artworks focusing on sunflowers. These works hang on walls but hardly sink into a background. According to the Van Gogh Museum website, all of these canvases were painted in only three shades of yellow in order to demonstrate ‘that it was possible to create an image with numerous variations of a single colour without any loss of eloquence.’

Sunflowers
Vincent Van Gogh, 1889, oil on canvas
Van Gogh Museum Collection

The Yellow House
Vincent Van Gogh, 1888, oil on canvas
Van Gogh Museum Collection

For those who paint with words as poets do, yellow also provides eye-catching imagery that in one’s mind can be sweetly tasted, make mouths pucker or feel warmth of light  i.e. ‘banana’, ‘lemon’ and ‘sun’. Here is a delightful mixture of poetry with references to yellow and other colours.

XXXI

Nature rarer uses yellow
    Than another hue;
Saves she all of that for sunsets,--
    Prodigal of blue,

Spending scarlet like a woman,
    Yellow she affords
Only scantly and selectly,
    Like a lover's words.

Emily Dickinson


Symphony in Yellow

An omnibus across the bridge
Crawls like a yellow butterfly
And, here and there, a passer-by
Shows like a little restless midge.

Big barges full of yellow hay
Are moored against the shadowy wharf,
And, like a yellow silken scarf,
The thick fog hangs along the quay.

The yellow leaves begin to fade
And flutter from the Temple elms,
And at my feet the pale green Thames
Lies like a rod of rippled jade.

Oscar Wilde


Pelican Chorus (An Excerpt)
King and Queen of the Pelicans we;
No other Birds so grand we see!
None but we have feet like fins!
With lovely leathery throats and chins!

Ploffskin, Pluffskin, Pelican jee!
We think no Birds so happy as we!
Plumpskin, Ploshkin, Pelican jill!
We think so then, and we thought so still!

We live on the Nile. The Nile we love.
By night we sleep on the cliffs above;
By day we fish, and at eve we stand
On long bare islands of yellow sand.

And when the sun sinks slowly down
And the great rock walls grow dark and brown,
Where the purple river rolls fast and dim
And the Ivory Ibis starlike skim

Edward Lear

And here’s a bit of my own drawing and writing this week…

Yellow
Kate Eggleston-Wirtz, 2021
Pen and Ohuhu marker on Paper

Colour Wheel
Cheery is the colour yellow
Warm and glowing - pleasant fellow
Brush with death the colour blue
A sad and melancholy hue

The colour yellow is the one
So full of life - so full of fun
Playful, happy then we have
The colour blue whose face is grave

Now blue upon the other hand
Could be the sea upon the sand
Where blue and yellow like to meet
In calm or stormy tidal beat

Dance together - intermingle
Back and forth amongst the shingle

Till sun says to rest into the night
Artist waking, turns on the light

Meet again on painter’s palette
Mixed emotions brushed beget
Envy – hope - blooming buds in spring
The sky, the earth and everything

Kate Eggleston-Wirtz


Thank you for taking the time to read, Kate 🌞 

https://artuk.org/discover/artworks/pauline-in-the-yellow-dress-152128 accessed 16 January 2021

 https://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/en/collection/s0031V1962  accessed 13 Jan 2021 

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Growing Pains - Our Back Bedroom

 On Saturday morning I was upstairs in the spare back bedroom doing some ironing. Whoever is in charge of programme scheduling on BBC Radio 2 has shifted Sounds of the ‘60s to the ridiculous time slot of 6 a.m. until 8 a.m., so I’ve missed it. Instead of singing along to the Hollies, Marmalade, Love Affair and others who provided the comforting music of my younger days, I enjoyed the peace and quiet, alone with my thoughts.

I thought about the many make-overs the room had under gone with various occupants over the years. It was our room once. Magnolia emulsion on woodchip, Artex textured ceiling and I think it was a stripey carpet. We moved into the newly decorated front bedroom and, as children were our regular guests, we furnished this back room with bunk beds and made it a home for some of my teddy bears.

A nephew, about six years old, kept waking up with a headache one night. I sat with him, bucket at the ready for the inevitable sickness, and hoped his distress wouldn’t disturb his younger sister, our niece, who slept peacefully in the next room.

Our son arrived. He had the tiny boxroom at first. He had night terrors when he was a toddler until he was about four. It gave me terrors of my own when disturbed by his screaming. I would dash into his room to find him sitting up staring at something only he could see. He soon calmed down with a reassuring cuddle. Before he started school, we moved him into the back bedroom, now decorated in bright colours, mainly yellow and with a theme of cartoon style zoo animals. A few years later, while he was away at Cub Camp, we re-vamped his room with a Manchester United theme as a surprise to come home to. He loved it and was even more delighted, as we all were when Manchester United won the treble that season.

Our daughter arrived and the boxroom was suitably freshened up. When she was a little girl she suffered dreadful leg cramps. The pain made her cry and sometimes disturbed her sleep. By the time she was about eight, our son had moved into another room and she was resident in the back bedroom, now Barbie themed with bright pink curtains and sparkly pink painted walls. I would sit on her bed in this pink paradise, massaging ‘magic cream’ moisturiser into the offending leg hoping to relive the pain as we waited for the double dose of Calpol Junior to take effect. Growing pains, the doctor said.

Growing pains, whatever form they take, are the hardest pains of all. It’s the adolescent boundary pushing, teenage angst, tearful tantrums that is all part of growing up and discovering who we are and who we want to be, or think we want to be that I found the most challenging; both as a parent and with memories of my own teens.

In more recent years, our daughter and her boyfriend shared this room until they moved to their own place. Our son and his girlfriend made it home for a while and re-decorated it beautifully in brown and taupe, painting over the graffiti that I’d accepted was someone’s freedom of expression. This time last year they also found their own place.

This lovely, large back bedroom that holds so many memories is a spare room again. And there’s a cot now as our grandchildren are overnight guests. Our adult children are raising their own families and experiencing the next generation of growing pains.

I put the iron down for a moment and glanced through the window. I noticed the gentleman across the back was sitting out in the sun, newspaper and morning coffee to hand. Good idea.

This poem always reminds me of our son’s night terrors.

 

A Child Half-Asleep by Tony Connor

 

Stealthily parting the small-hours silence,
A hardly-embodied figment of his brain
Comes down to sit with me
As I work late.

Flat-footed, as though his legs and feet

Were still asleep.

He sits on a stool,

Staring into the fire,
His dummy dangling.

Fire ignites the small coals of his eyes.

It stares back through the holes
Into his head, into the darkness.

I ask what woke him?

‘A wolf dreamed me’ he says.

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Totally devoted to green

Totally devoted to green

Oh Green,

I am so hopeful,

That the fields and the trees will stay,

And fill my vista for mile and miles,

Evoking the medium wavelength triggers of the M cone cells in my eyes everyday.

Oh Green,

You are not blue.

More a Mixture of cyan and yellow in the subtractive colour system in print,

One of the three additive lights of screens,

The colour of a spearmint.

Oh Green,

You so lovely,

As de Bono's creative thinking hat.

The shine of Jade and Emeralds,

The probably glow of Schrödinger’s cat.

Oh Green,

I am so jealous,

Of your soft warm natural hue.

And in the continuum of colours of visible light,

You are located between Yellow and Blue.

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