colours – Page 4 – don't confuse the narrator

colour me nostalgic

Looking through the paints at the art shop the other day, I had to check the names closely as the plastic bottles made it hard to tell precisely which colour paint they might hold.

I found a ‘burnt sienna’, but the closest to ‘crimson lake’ was ‘berry wine’, and there was no ‘Prussian blue’ or ‘ochre’. I definitely think my childhood was the richer for having the old names – I don’t think I’d have liked to paint with ‘glazed carrot’ or ‘pumpkin’.

I was a bit taken aback, though, to find both the bottles in the photo labelled as “plaid”.

Having decided that they were actually black and white, I consulted the Scottish Register of Tartans, but still haven’t worked out which clan they might belong to.

canary colours

You might expect the predominant colour in the Canary Islands to be banana yellow, but that certainly wasn’t my experience in Tenerife.

(As always, click on the photos for larger versions, then use your browser back button.)

colour me simple

In Welsh, the colour word glas is frequently coupled with mountains and hills – think of all those places, roads, B&Bs, schools etc, called Bryn Glas – but in other contexts it’s probably best translated as ‘blue’ rather than green. Of course, looking at the mountains in the photo – which is much prettier if you click on it to see it full size – that makes some kind of sense. (Not that they are Welsh mountains; it’s the Sierra de Gredos seen from the south.)
Continue reading “colour me simple”