Colour

 

How dull life looked in monochrome. My old photographs are all black and white, including my christening. I expect my family heirloom gown was white, but I’ve no idea what colours my relatives were dressed in and there’s no one left who would remember. I can understand why my grandchildren might believe there was once a world without colour. My dad, a keen photographer, though he often forgot his camera, preferred colour slides and I have his collection from the late 1950s until he passed away in the mid 1980s. I love the early ones. Memories of my childhood in a vibrant, colourful Lancaster. Through these, I will always know that my favourite dress, on holiday in Jersey c1961, was pale turquoise.

Television was black and white. Ours was rented, probably from Rediffusion, or similar. I think most people rented their television in those days. The first time I saw colour television was at the home of family friends around Christmas in 1969. I thought it was rubbish until told it wasn’t working properly and was being returned. We were watching a chat show, long before Michael Parkinson, but that sort of thing. Wide, horizontal stripes of separate primary colours slowly climbed the screen over and over again. I thought that was it, Colour TV, what a swizz. We got one the following year, rented, I expect. Lots of programmes were still broadcast in monochrome and those that weren’t were advertised ‘In Colour’, it was such a major thing. I remember being impressed seeing my favourite cartoon, The Flintstones, in colour for the first time. It was amazing and I was at least fifteen years old.

I don’t think I have an absolute favourite colour. It depends on the mood I’m in and if I’m choosing clothes or home décor. Our new bathroom, well, two years old but still new, is beautiful, high-gloss white with tangerine towels and mats. Perfect.

Colours are important. School uniforms, sports teams, businesses and retail outlets are all instantly recognisable by their colours and logos. When I went to high school, I wanted to wear the distinctive Air Force Blue uniform of Collegiate Girls Grammar, but I’d failed my 11+ so that was that. Navy blue for a disappointed me.

I found this amusing, colourful poem with no known author,

Five little crayons coloured a scene.
Yellow, blue, orange, red and green.
“Look,” said Yellow, “My sun is bright!”
Blue said, “Great! My river’s just right”
Orange said, “Flowers! I’ll draw something new”
Red said, “Great, I’ll add some too!”
“Sigh,” said Green, “I’m tired of trees,
And grass and bushes and tiny leaves.
I think I’ll draw a big green cloud!”
“A big green cloud should be allowed!”
The crayons all smiled and didn’t think twice.
A big green cloud sounded rather nice!

                                                                      Anonymous

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

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A Brown Study Of Brown

A ‘Brown Study’ is a mood when one is involved in deep thought and not paying attention to anything else. I am very familiar with this, particularly when lost in the midst of creative endeavours or researching something of particular interest. Writing this article caught me in this frame of mind as I researched all things brown.

Ancient Cave Paintings of Hands at Cueva de Las Manos in Santa Cruz Province, Patagonia, Argentina ©R M Nunes/Adobe Stock

Etymology
The English word ‘brown’ has been in use for nearly a millennia. The word is derived from Middle English ‘broun’, Old English/French/Old High German ‘brun’, Norse ‘brún’ and/or Proto-Germanic ‘brunaz’ all meaning that earthy colour that falls between the yellow and red spectrum.

The Colour
Brown is one of the first colours that humans used to create imagery as evidenced in cave paintings with pigments made from clay or hematite (a heavy and relatively hard oxide mineral that produces reds, oranges, yellows and browns). Some of the brown pigments found in cave paintings were made from a clay pigment called ‘umber’ dating back to 40,000 BC. Raw umber, a dark brown clay mined in Umbria, Italy (also found in other parts of the world) produces the colour brown with a greenish grey tint whilst burnt umber (roasted umber) creates a warmer hue. The use of umber as under-painting became popular among painters in the Renaissance. It continues to be popular with artists today.

Mia, Burnt Umber Underpainting and Final Portrait, Oil on Canvas,© 2021 Julia Swarbrick

Artists use an array of different shades of brown that can be created in a variety of ways such as mixing red, yellow and blue together or adding a splash of black to orange paint. In the printing industry and those using image programmes on a computer there are two colour systems, CMYK and RGB. Using the CMYK colour system brown is created by mixing red, black and yellow.

The RGB system mixes red and green. Both of these systems were developed during the early
twentieth-century.

When identifying different variants of brown, many have been named after something i.e. coffee, chocolate, peanut, walnut, sand, fawn, saddle brown and wood. Wood brown can be defined further into types such as ash, chestnut, mahogany and hazel. All this identification is advantageous as visual imagery comes to mind when the word is spoken. One can conjure up an idea of what shade of brown something actually is without necessarily seeing it, thus improving communication between folk. Humans seem to be obsessed with description and labelling which brings us around to people named Brown.

The Surname
The practice of using surnames in England began after 1066 eventually spreading throughout Britain and beyond. It is believed that people were originally nicknamed ‘Brown’ because of the colour of their hair, eyes and/or complexion that eventually developed into a nickname or surname. In Scotland, Brown as a surname is very common. In this neck of the woods the origins could also be derived from the Gaelic ‘brehon’, meaning judge.

There are many famous people named Brown including fictional characters like Mr Henry Brown in Paddington, Emmett Brown in Back to the Future and the cartoon character Charlie Brown.

Wikipedia lists well over three hundred people of notoriety with this surname. Included in this list are several James Browns with possibly the most famous being the American singer, songwriter and dancer James Brown (1933-2006) who had hits like I Feel Good and Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag (this musical titbit is for you Steve R.).

Other lesser known James Browns in contemporary circles, who were top in their professions at the time include James Campbell Brown (1843-1910) a British chemist, Dundee architect James Maclellan Brown (c.1886-1967) and James Brown (1832-1904) a Scottish poet/essayist who signed his works J.B. Selkirk (James Brown of Selkirk).

Selection From The Last Epistle to Tammus by JB Selkirk

And as a final fun fact, ‘Brown Cow’ is not just a brown-coloured bovine that gives milk, but a previously used playful name for a beer barrel in Selkirk’s homeland.

All Things Brown

Brown study, study of brown.
Run around in a dressing gown.
Brown like a bear - brown, brown, brown,
grr, grr, grrring in a run around town.
In and out of town through woods,
the forest, nature’s neighbourhood
filled with brown dirt, plants, and trees,
chestnut, hazel - fawns and fleas.
All things brown, all things good,
like them, love them as one should.
Brown, brown, brown and just like that
my bare bear foot stepped in scat.

Thank you for reading.
Kate

J

Sources
Ancestry, 2024. Meaning of the first name Brown. https://www.ancestry.co.uk/first-name-meaning/brown?srsltid=AfmBOorbWn5AS7LM5WLIQzwW3Tqq10Pn9gVceCOkyD78j0uW-KTvU_o8 Accessed 20 October.
Britannica, 2024. Brown. https://www.britannica.com/science/brown-color Accessed 20 October.
Cambridge Dictionary, 2024. Brown Study.
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/brown-study Accessed 20 October.
Canva, 2024. Everything about the color brown. https://www.canva.com/colors/color-meanings/brown/ Accessed 24 October.
Hansen, T.A., 2017. Natural Earth Paint through the Ages: The Prehistoric Era-. https://www.naturalearthpaint.eu/en/blogs/blog/natural-earth-paint-through-the-ages-the-prehistor/ Accessed 25 October 2024.
Harrington, J., 2020. How now brown cow. https://www.anchornews.org/2020/01/23/how-now-brown-cow/ Accessed 31, 2024.
Nova Colour, 2022. Understanding the Color Brown and its Shades. https://novacolorpaint.com/blogs/nova-color/color-brown-and-its-shades Accessed 27 October 2024.
Oleson, J., 2024. 128 Shades of Brown: Color Names, Hex, RGB, CMYK Codes. https://www.color-meanings.com/shades-of-brown-color-names-html-hex-rgb-codes/ Accessed 20 October.
Selkirk, J.B., 1905. Poems. R & R Clark Ltd. Edinburgh. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Poems_%28IA_poemsselkirk00selkiala%29.pdf Accessed 25 October 2024.
Wikimedia, 2024. Poems by J.B. Selkirk.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/83/Poems_%28IA_poemsselkirk00selkiala%29.pdf Accessed 25 October.
Wikipedia, 2024. List of people with surname Brown. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_surname_Brown Accessed 31 October.

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Feathers - Hair Cut

I did a stupid thing in 1971. Yes, another one. That year was full of it from start to finish and I’m still embarrassed by some of the incidents. This is one of them.

I wasn’t happy to be uprooted from my world which was the pub on the prom, my school, my friends, my nights at the ice-rink and everything I held dear. I would have done anything to stay and tried a few ideas, including moving in with a friend so my GCEs wouldn’t be disrupted. Nothing worked. I wasn’t taken seriously. I was a stroppy teenager. Yes, indeed, and who is to blame for that? It wasn’t all down to hormones. The family, such as it was now, moved to another pub in Cheshire. I was the self-conscious new girl at the local Secondary Modern, a school which I quickly discovered was taking an alternative path towards the exams than the one I’d been following – not too closely, I admit, but that wasn’t the point – there were changes between Lancashire and Cheshire education departments. The National Curriculum was years away. I soon knew that I was different on a personal level. My new friends, pleasant and welcoming girls, couldn’t help but nudge each other and give knowing looks about my embroidered jeans and floaty tops when we met after school. I don’t know what they thought, but over a short time I toned down a bit and dressed more like them when I got a Ben Sherman shirt and some two-tone trousers. I went to the weekly gathering at the town hall where the music was mod, soul, reggae and everything ‘not my scene’ but I wanted to fit in so I learnt the Dave and Ansel Collins ‘Double Barrel’ dance. This is the time that the stupid thing happened. I cut my own hair. I fashioned a feather-cut with nail scissors, taking it into the nape of my neck, leaving long straggly rats tails. I’m not a hairdresser, not even close, so the going blonde turned out hit and miss. No one said anything at home. My friends thought it was ok, even better after one of them went over a bit that I’d missed. What a mess, is what it actually was.

At half term I went to London on the train, on my own, to stay with family who lived in Roehampton. Whether my dad had said anything to my aunt or whether she just took charge I don’t know, but one of the first things I remember was being taken to her hairdresser and given the full treatment of colour, cut and blow. She bought me new clothes back in my own style and I felt like myself again. During my stay, Dad had been in touch to see how I was. My aunt gave me the good news that we were leaving Cheshire and returning to Blackpool to live in a house. Another first.

It was good to be me again with my Moody Blues and Rolling Stones and leave my hair alone for the properly cut feathers to grow out. I learnt something from those few months, ‘To thine own self be true’.  It didn’t stop me doing stupid things, though.

I kept in touch with those friends for a few years and I remember them fondly whenever I hear ‘Double Barrel’. I don’t think my ankles are up for the dance, sadly.

Here’s Emily Dickinson,

“Hope” is the thing with feathers -
That perches in the soul -
And sings the tune without the words -
And never stops - at all -

And sweetest - in the Gale - is heard -
And sore must be the storm -
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm -

I’ve heard it in the chillest land -
And on the strangest Sea -
Yet - never - in Extremity,
It asked a crumb - of me.

                           Emily Dickinson (1830 – 1886)

Thanks for reading, Pam x 

 (Not my photo, chosen for illustration)

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A country road. A tree.

 

The scent of pig is faint tonight

as the lime trees hang their heads against gradations of blue,

looking at the lone suitcase in the middle of the farmyard

with a sense of solidarity. Also forgotten. 

 

From Gradations of Blue by Matthea Harvey (2000)

There are many vivid images in this poem on memory and ageing.  Memories are described as weights that are carried with us as we age, a journey suggested by birds, a barge, a plane, trucks, a suitcase, a colony of ants etc.  The poet has described herself as "a general gatherer" and her poetry often contains collections of objects, glimpses of items retrieved from a shoe box. 

The first two couplets in Gradations of Blue remind me of the stage directions for a Beckett play.  An incredibly efficient use of image and word which perfectly sets a scene.  In fact, in the style of Hemingway's 'baby shoe' story, there is an entire narrative contained in those four lines, should you choose to imagine it. 

It strikes me that we could write similar scenes by creating a list. So, let's have a pop at it.  Here's what we need:

• a scent (pigs - faint)
• a time of day (night)
• a character/s (lime trees/suitcase)
• a colour (gradations of blue)
• an object (suitcase)
• a location (farmyard)
• a feeling (solidarity)
• a statement (Also forgotten)

You might like to start with the location and work the other details out from there.  Here's my list:

• a location - bathroom
• a scent  - bleach
• a time of day - mid-afternoon
• a character/s - skirting board
• a colour - metallic silver
• an object - lock
• a feeling - shame
• a statement - impersonal personal space

And two couplets:

The skirting board is no longer white, though bleach foam
eats at its feet. A crack where the door fits, slip of light;

cold afternoon.  Steel bolt points down in shame, to the sickened
board.  Off-white: no colour at all.



Give it a go.  See what you come up with then please do share.

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My life in Death - Poem inspired by the colour blue

This weeks theme is the colour blue. For some reason this poem came into my mind. I hope you enjoy it.


My life in Death
In many shadows I walk
The moon's smile showing me the way
Streets in silver highlight with whispered talk
Shivers of a long forgotten day

I miss the warmth of sunshine in my blood
Destiny deals such a heavy hand
To walk once more through the early spring bud
Hearing the brass blasts of the Salvation band

But of all the things I miss in light
The scape I still yearn to view
To look up in to an infinite sky
And blind myself with spread of blue

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Greenery

Good afternoon readers.

There are times as writers when we get caught out by a theme throwing too much at us. This week on the blog, we've been looking at 'green', which as you might expect left a lot to go at for a loudmouth vegan like myself. I'm trying to resist the temptation to go there as I'm still not sure whether I'm horrified or delighted at the idea of 'feeding the world' without having to feed the animals. I understand the need to provide for a population and I understand that meat requires grain production- it was a contributing factor in my going vegan in the first place. What I can't understand is the flavouring of 'lab meat' with beetroot and a shake of Sharwood's- especially on the basis of efficiency. Seven pounds of grain might be needed for a pound of beef but if we're talking efficiency, seven pounds of grain is seven pounds of grain- let's just all eat more of that!

I promised you I wouldn't rant... Here are my other two angles for the week then- one light poem, one more serious.

What colour?

Green like the giant that grows the best sweetcorn
Green like the logo for giant BP.
Green like the trees and the leaves and the peas
Green like asparagus- green like your wee.
Green like the summer-grown fresh football field
Green like the stain on the cricketer's knee
Green like the case on the game for your xbox
Green like the mould on the the crusty cracked brie
Green like the skins on the bodacious turtles
Green like the colour of infected feet
Green like the flesh of the unripe tomatoes
Green like the fashionable-once bathroom suites
Green like the edges of bushes and hedges
Green like the colour of most things I eat
Green like the sea or the pool in the forest
Green like a crocodile baring its teeth
Green like the colour described in this poem
Green like the mixture of yellow and blue
Green like my envy if you've got the hue right
For green is the colour of growth- always new.

----

Superheroes.

There's a green revolution
up in arms on pollution
but there's no constitution today.
For the fat cats that frack us
can pay far less taxes
and pay locals off in paltry ways.

But the mothers and fathers
not farmers with harvests of cash-
their kids suffer through greed
Is it not their birth right
to take in all the sights
That are here, still unspoiled to see

There's a right to protect
It is what they'd expect
So it's high time the government listened
They'll protest, it's their right
They're lined up for the fight
Because after all- no-one owns Britain. 



Thanks for reading,
S.

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ConFORM

Sonnet, Haiku, Senryu, Epic, Epistolary, Blank, Villanelle, Paradelle, Elegy.  Someone called Gary has counted 55 types of poetic form which makes me think that there the true number is closer to 555.  Some of these forms are rigid in their requirements of rhyme and metre.  Others encourage rebellion, such as Blank Verse, which requires only metre, or Free Verse which tends to follow no rules and Robert Frost described as "like playing tennis without a net".

As the quote above indicates, playing with form is a sort of game - an exercise.  It's one which is used in schools to familiarise students with form while allowing them to express themselves.  Below is an example of a sonnet written by Millie Shepherd, a high school student from Over Wyre. 

Shall I compare your love to refined art?

Not rendered by hue nor pigment but sublime.

Your composition plays a unique part,

In the remarkable mountains you climb.

You can't be broken by fragility,

Or overcome by the childlike spectrum.

Nothing you create hinders ability,

Instead it thaws with natural rhythm.

Your gentle golden brush of affection,

Hath expressed such bewitching imagery,

If such love would ever hint at rejection,

My entire existence would be a query.

If you only ever drew a rainbow,

It could never detract from your halo.

What Millie's poem reveals to me is the power of such an exercise on the direction of a poem.  I think you can see where the structure has guided the language.  This is no bad thing.  How many times have we started to write a poem only to find that the landscape, or chosen form, has redirected our initial efforts so that our final piece is removed from that first idea, sometimes radically so?  I think that structured exercises, and I cound adherence to form as such, is a time-honoured method of challenging those initial thoughts, of pushing ourselves that little bit further.  It's as if the paper is saying to us, 'Yes, that's an intriguing line of thread but let's see what happens to it when you wrap it about a new frame.' 

Of course, sometimes we don't want to be distracted by the frame - we want to communicate our idea in its first shape, without the twist of form.  But when you love to play with words (and we do love to play with words don't we?) there is a real joy in rising to the challenge of a complex structure, of hanging our ideas about a twisted frame. 

OK, it wouldn't be an exercise week without a challenge or two so here's a frame for you to try on... It's the Monostich form, which means a poem that consists of a single line.  Here's an example stolen from the interweb:

COWARD

Bravery runs in my family.

A. R. Ammons

And here is my attempt:

SWEET-EYE

Your licorice laces are untied.

Right.  Off you go...

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