ANY COLOUR AS LONG AS IT'S NOT BLACK ......

 

It's got a bit giddy at Smiths today.

We're making the final decision about the colours we're going to use to redecorate the dining rooms.  For weeks we've been surrounded by large pieces of card painted in various shades,  mini pots of paint and a boxful of multi coloured strips in varying tones.  We've held the pieces of card against every wall, in all weathers and in every possible combination then, every time we thought we'd found exactly the right combination of colours, someone would have a niggling doubt and we'd start again.     

BUT 

Today we finally narrowed it down to the final three.............a bit like the Apprentice except that the paints are easier to work with. The Apprentices are an odd bunch this year aren't they ?   Especially, though it grieves me deeply to say it, the women -  who seem to take great delight in tearing into each other to shift the blame for every failure.

ANYWAY

Back to the redecoration. Well be doing it on Mondays and we're hoping to start next week. It's quite a big job but spreading it over a few Mondays means we don't have to close down even for a day or so.  With a bit of luck we'll have chosen the winning paint by the end of today  - and in a few weeks you'll see a bright new dining room in time for the Summer. The downstairs dining room's going to have to wait a little longer as we've not even decided on the long list of colours yet !

I've always collected / written down quotes that take my fancy and I found a couple of 'colourful' ones ( from more years ago than I like to think ! )  

This from Jack Kerouac's 'On the Road'

“Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.” 

And this, the arrival of the lightning conductor salesman, from " Something Wicked This Way Comes "  by Ray Bradbury 

"The salesman walked about three feet, stopped and hunched his shoulders.

'Howdy, boys!'  called the man all dressed in stormcolored clothes. 'Folks home?'
The salesman edged slowly up the lawn.   'Boy' he said. 'What's your name?'   And the first boy, with hair as blond-white as milk thistle, shut up one eye, tilted his head, and looked at the salesman.    'Will,'  he said.  'William Halloway'      The storm gentleman turned. 'And you?'    The second boy did not move. His hair was wild, thick, and the glossy color of waxed chestnuts. His eyes, fixed to some distant point within himself, were mint rock-crystal green. At last he put a blade of dry grass in his casual mouth.       'Jim Nightshade'  "

And I thought........   If only we had Ray Bradbury and Jack Kerouac here right now, we'd know exactly which colours we wanted. Though I'm not sure, despite the weird and wonderful names of paints, that even Dulux stocks   'Love and Spanish Mysteries'   .....