Mellow yellow? You would be far from mellow if you suffered from Xanthophobia, fear of the colour yellow. Xanthophobia from Greek xanthos, yellow .
If you could prove your condition you could opt out of work and many life situations. If we are to be an inclusive society we would need to take drastic action to help sufferers.
There may be a good reason for fearing yellow; which came first, the yellow warning signs or the danger?
In the work place even a cleaning job would be out of the question with those yellow plastic boards warning of wet floors. The police are no longer the Boys in Blue, but the Girls and Boys in yellow. High Viz jackets are standard wear for many jobs now and yellow tabards are worn by everyone from stewards at events ‘Look at me, I’m important and I’m not afraid of yellow’ down to school outings.
Even if you have obtained exemption from work, yellow lurks everywhere. Roadworks going on outside your house? All the council vehicles will be bright yellow. Going on holiday or a day trip? You are sure to come across a yellow bus or even an amphibious vehicle.
You will certainly not be safe in the garden, the Xanthophobic will pray for a cloudy day so the gazanias don’t open up and mow the lawn every day before the dandelions get a chance to pop up and attract those awful bees with their furry yellow stripes. Turning our lawns to meadows must be a nightmare for the Xanthophobic community.
Check before you visit your friends who have been decorating, what colour schemes have they chosen? It seems there is more to choosing paint than we imagined.
‘For all its decorating potential, yellow should be used with due consideration and care. Yellow primary action is to trigger emotional responses,’ says Karen Haller, colour psychology specialist. It has an impact on the nervous system. As a result, yellow is the strongest colour in psychological terms.
While yellow is a colour to use with caution, decorating with yellow has a relatively long wavelength and is emotionally stimulating, making us feel confident, positive and optimistic. but the wrong tone of yellow can lead to feelings of irritation, nervousness and depression.’
If you are Xanthophobic better not come round my house. But Xanthophobics would not be reading this as my website is yellow. I don’t know when it became my favourite colour. In the late seventies it was orange and brown, later it was pink. I’m not sure how I settled on yellow.
How does such a phobia start? Perhaps early exposure to Mr. Men books, the constant company of Mr. Happy and Mr. Tickle…
Do you have a favourite colour or a colour you cannot abide?
Many of us have been watching a new BBC Sunday evening drama, Ten Pound Poms, prompting friends to ask how it compared with my family’s experience. The brief answer is completely different and I have found myself being irritated by some aspects of the series, not enough to stop me watching it though! In the drama it is the 1950s and the characters sail out to arrive in Sydney six weeks later, six seconds later for viewers. They are taken on a bus to a migrant camp, winding through bushland till some Nissan huts hove into view. My first annoyance was we had no idea how far away from Sydney they were, all it takes is for a character to say ‘blimey, a hundred miles from the city…’
Anyway, there they were with Nissan huts, dreadful looking outside ‘dunnies’ ( toilets ) and shower blocks. My running irritation is that one of the main characters, Kate the nurse, has make up more suited to modern reality shows or a girls night out. Her eyebrows are ridiculous and in the Australian heat her makeup would be running down her face, not that matron at the hospital would have allowed her to wear such makeup!
The Australians they meet are mostly awful, but so are some of the migrant characters; there are a lot of running stories packed in to this series. They seem to be in the middle of nowhere, but also near a country town, a hospital, the sea and some very swanky houses. What themes do ring true in this drama are the treatment of the Aborigines, who were not counted as humans in the census till the 1960’s and the fact that English children were sent out to Australia as orphans, but many had parents who didn’t know where they had gone.
Perth, Western Australia in the 1960’s
My family’s story is not as dramatic, for any of you who are watching the television series. It took Mum and Dad only six months from the time of applying to us all getting on a chartered migrant flight at Heathrow in October 1964. They chose Perth, Western Australia and we had a ‘sponsor’ who was a chap Dad knew ‘from the office’, the two families had never met. He met us at Perth airport at 1am and took us to the caravan he had booked for us. A week later my parents had found a house to rent. If we had needed to go to a migrant camp I’m sure my mother would not have stepped on the plane! By Christmas they had bought a house on a quarter acre block in a new suburb. Migrants were told that all houses were built on a quarter acre block, that idea didn’t last, but our house had natural bushland.
My novel Quarter Acre Block is inspired and informed by our family’s experience, but not autobiographical. It is told from the point of view of the daughter, who may have some similarities to me… and of the mother. Mum helped me with the adult experience point of view. In the rented house in an older suburb Mum said the only neighbour who talked to her was Dutch, but at our new house we quickly became friends with our new neighbours, who were dinky di Aussies from the goldfields of Kalgoorlie.
The lifestyle migrants looked forward to..
We knew little about Aborigines, I guess we assumed they were enjoying their lifestyle out in ‘the bush.’ We knew nothing about migrant children and stolen Aboriginal children being abused in orphanages.
‘In the nineteen sixties many ‘ten pound pommies’ had never left England before and most expected never to return or see loved ones again. George Palmer saw Australia as a land of opportunities for his four children, his wife longed for warmth and space and their daughter’s ambition was to swim in the sea and own a dog. For migrant children it was a big adventure, for fathers the daunting challenge of finding work and providing for their family, but for the wives the loneliness of settling in a strange place.’
Only 99 pence to download to Kindle or buy the paperback for ten pounds.
Have you been watching Ten Pound Poms, or have you or your family had experience of migrating to another country?
New like! God liked your post Eurovision Eve. You might want to go see what they’re up to! Perhaps you will like their blog as much as they liked yours. Great posts worth seeing from God:Success
What better accolade could a blogger ask for?
This was our book club book this month and it was really interesting and an enjoyable read. Apart from learning a lot about Antarctic and Arctic exploring the many human snippets were fascinating. One of the leading officers would stay up writing till 2am , though he had to rise at 5am. As well as keeping his official journal he had promised a good friend he would keep a personal journal. Writers and insomniacs will empathise. I have enough trouble packing for a week’s holiday, imagine packing supplies for four years including live bullocks… I bet they did not worry about catering for the crew’s dietary requirements and allergies. It’s also of note that many serving in the navy had gone to sea at thirteen or fourteen, no snow flakes on board…
When at last you get that Tonka truck you always longed for.
I felt a rush of air and something or someone grabbing me, hoisting me, hoisting me up as huge claws and teeth were inches from my face.
A huge horse, a rider, my teenage fantasy. I was being hauled up behind the rider. In my fantasy I was lithe and young, rescued by the handsome hero to nestle safely in his arms and cling to the horse’s mane. In reality I was a forty year old mother who had been snatched away from reality into a dystopian future.
‘Hang on tight, I can’t stop’ ordered the rider.
Hang on to what? The man was encased in leather and straps and encumbered with weapons, so was the horse. Suddenly his arm swung up then down, there was a glint of steel followed by a primeval scream. I felt something warm splatter my face; before I instinctively closed my eyes I had seen the arc of blood. If I thought being in the bunker was a nightmare I now realised why Billings said the outside was dangerous.
It was getting dark, but there were lights ahead, a sign that this was a nightmare and I would wake up in my own bed?
The lights were not a return to normality, but flaming torches lining some sort of tunnel. I clung on tight to my rescuer; it was painfully uncomfortable, but better than being eaten by a strange beast. The tunnel sloped downwards and tiled walls were just discernible in the flickering light. Tiled walls that belonged to a civilised city, but where was the city? If I had only been propelled seventy seven years into the future it made no sense. The open wild land I had glimpsed so far had no signs of buildings. Buildings become ruins, they don’t disappear; London could not have disappeared.
I heard other voices, figures emerged from the gloom. We weren’t underground, but in a huge compound. Rugged walls, more torches and a couple of leather clad people with guard dogs.
‘What sort of hunting do you call this?’
A fierce looking chap stepped forward and grabbed the reins.
‘I have no idea who or what she is, but let Mazie take her to the hospitality room and get cleaned up and then I will be the one to question her.’
Hospitality sounded encouraging and two women sat me by a fire and put a bowl of warm water by me. With no mirror I could only guess what my face looked like; the rest of me was bloodied.
‘Do you have a name?’
Did I look so strange I might have been living in the wild, not on an evening out in London with my husband?
‘Lauren, Lauren Smith. I know who I am and where I come from, but I have no idea where I am now.’
‘You’re not from the bunkers?’
I shook my head.
‘Well you are certainly not one of us.’
‘Who are you please?’
‘Hunters of course, Survivors, not like them lot underground. You’ll have to strip off, we’ll burn your clothes, you can’t have the scent of blood on you, wouldn’t stand a chance out there.’
For a moment I thought they were going to send me back ‘out there’, then I felt an hysterical giggle rise in my throat. What would I wear to the theatre if they burnt all my clothes? They put me behind an animal skin screen, poured water into a tub of sorts and handed me a bundle of rough cloth which I had no idea how to put on. Shower gel was obviously not going to be an option.
The drink was welcome as I sat on a bench and saw the bearded face of my rescuer properly for the first time. He smiled, he could have been a chap on television presenting a living in the wilds programme, just a normal man a bit rough and ready.
‘Thanks, thanks so much for rescuing me. I know you won’t believe me if I did tell you who I am and how I got here, or at least I have no idea how I got here.’
‘You look so weird I would believe anything you told me, I mean what on earth were you wearing?’
‘Tell me first what year it is.’
‘2099 of course, can you believe we’re nearly at the end of the century, the strangest century in human history.’
‘I come from 2023, London. I was in a restaurant with my husband and I went through a door and ended up in the bunker.’
‘Okay, so I don’t believe you.’
‘In the bunker a woman declared I was a prophecy come true, come from the past to take you all back to change what happened.’
‘Streuth, of course, the holy book my mother keeps locked up. I never believed all that rubbish … have you come masquerading as Lauren of London to trick some of the gullible ones?’
‘I am not a saviour, just an ordinary person, but perhaps if I meet your mother she will realise I am not a prophecy.’
‘Well here she is, hey Mother, you didn’t waste any time coming to see the stranger.’
‘Of course not, great excitement out there, I guessed you would need my help. I hope you are treating her properly.’
‘Oh yes, I am very grateful to your son for saving my life and everyone has been very hospitable.’
I thought it best to keep on the right side of a mother who might be an important person in this strange community.
‘I have waited all my life for this moment Lauren of London.’
‘No you don’t understand. I am not a saviour, just an ordinary person who can’t believe she has been transported to the future, a future that makes no sense.’
‘Of course my dear, you don’t understand yet. We have a learning journey of months, maybe years, to go on before the great return. First we will open the Holy Book together.’
I was escorted royally to a wooden hut of sorts.
‘Welcome to my home Lauren.’
Inside she slid open a sort of hatch and produced a rudimentary key to unlock a small rectangular box out of which she took a book, kissed it reverentially then handed it to me. I nearly burst out laughing. It was a paperback book, yellowed with age, but I could still discern the lurid cover and guessed it was one of those romantic fantasy novels my sister loves reading.
‘Do you have other books?’
‘Oh no, all gone and what need to do we have of books, just this precious one.’
‘Do you read it often?’
‘I can’t read, my mother used to read it to me when I was little till her eyesight failed; then she carried on telling the prophesy and I learnt it from her, even passed it on to some in the bunkers. Please read it to me.’
I looked at the cover, Door to the Future, not a very original title… by J M Scribbletide, what sort of name was that for a novelist? I perused the first page to find a publishing date, 2028. I felt a chill, this was no holy book, but it was proof that it came from beyond my time. I turned a page and started reading it to the eager woman.
‘It was just an ordinary evening out with my other half, who would have imagined that ordinary me, Lauren Smith, was about to have her life changed beyond imagining…’
Saturday Alive, the magazine programme to start your weekend with a lighter look at dark news and a darker look at light news.
Gourmets and health experts alike are welcoming new rules making it compulsory for warning labels to be put on vegan food. Carnivores and omnivores will be able to shop safely knowing what they are buying.
Anglers are reporting a serious shortage of maggots as the food industry embraces alternate sources of protein.
A strike by Boutique Indie Authors has gone totally unnoticed. The select group of writers put down their pens, turned off their computers, ignored their WIPs and refused to blog for the third day in a row. An anonymous spokes person said long writing hours and no pay or pension rights had led them to the drastic action.
WordPress denied reports that some bloggers were not human and were created by artificial intelligence, although an inside source was reported as saying they had no way of knowing if any of their bloggers were human.
April Fools’ Day is to be renamed as April Fun Day to avoid offending the Foolish Community. Traditionalists will be further irked to learn that jokes will be extended beyond noon till midnight.
It’s never a good idea to wander through a writer’s mind, especially on a Monday.
Do you rush round cleaning and tidying when the in laws are coming, are you nervous when important visitors are expected? Spare a thought for President Macron who had to cancel the visit of King Charles III as the place was in too much of a mess…
Most of us worry about the cost of running our homes. This is nothing new. We are reading Jude the Obscure for our book club. Jude and Sue are going for a very long walk on the wild heathlands of Wessex and with no coffee shops in sight and poor Sue getting weary, they call at the only cottage for miles around. They end up sharing the mother and son’s dinner and staying the night. In conversation the cottager complained she will never get her roof fixed because the price of thatch has gone up so much.
Yes, I’ve been to the Giant gallery again.
I’ll leave readers to comment… while I take a wander down to the beach.
Charlotte was looking forward to open day at the Hambourne Theatre Royal. A rather grand name for a building that looked like it had seen better days. She had not seen inside, it was one of the places on her list as a new resident of Hambourne. Joining the Hambourne Players had not been on the list, but it seemed a good way to join a backstage tour of the theatre and get inspiration for another adventure for Lottie Lincoln, accidental crime investigator.
Mothering Sunday was best avoided this year and the open day sounded like a Mothers’ Day free zone. As she stepped into the foyer she hoped she would recognise at least one or two of the Hambourne Players and hopefully one or two of them might recognise her. If she ever progressed to an active role in the group they would soon find out she could not act, but hopefully she could paint some scenery, be the prompt or even contribute a few lines to the play they were hoping to write.
A man in a suit was herding people into groups; there was a good turnout and three tours were setting off at the same time. Charlotte sidled over when she heard Hambourne Players being called, she felt like the new girl at school again, especially when someone called out ‘Charlotte Charlington?’
Why did her parents have to ensure she was always going to end up being called Charley by everyone except her parents?
A few of the group stared, some didn’t even turn to look at the newcomer, but a few smiled. She was relieved when the theatre manager started addressing their group and she could avoid having to talk to anyone or worse still have no one wanting to chat to her.
What a lovely theatre, all plush red and opulence from another age, but obviously in need of a lot of loving care, as the manager was quick to point out. She trotted along enthusiastically with the group as they passed through narrow doors and down steep steps. What to stars and theatre staff were narrow corridors and shabby small dressing rooms, were to Charlotte scenes of mystery and dark intrigue for her new novel.
Her excitement grew as they climbed up yet more narrow stairs and came out onto the stage. Real ropes and pulleys and strange equipment in dark spaces high above their heads. A technical chap was now explaining how ropes, weights and counter balances worked and the dangers that lurked in an environment deliciously free of health and safety. Charlotte resisted the temptation to ask if they ever had any nasty accidents. It was then her phone emitted a jolly tune.
‘Mum, where on earth are you, looks like you’re on board a sailing boat.’
‘Shsh Maddy, you didn’t say you were going to Facetime this morning, thought you were going to spend all day in bed as it’s Mothers’ Day.’
Charlotte tried to become invisible and dodge behind some black curtains.
‘I am in bed Mum, they brought me breakfast and I am going to stay here allll… day till the roast beef is ready this evening.’
Charlotte resisted the temptation to say she never got a lie in when they were young, let alone languishing all day… but her main thought was to get her daughter off the phone.
‘Can we Facetime this evening…
‘Oh, okay, I thought you would be sad and lonely…’
Charlotte sighed, now Maddy was going to take umbrage.
‘…what are you doing and who’s that weird bloke talking?’
‘Shsh they’ll hear you, I’m on a theatre backstage tour…’
The technical chap was saying something about grand pianos and raising platforms as Charlotte hurriedly stuffed her phone back in her bag as if she had never taken it out in the first place. The stage floor felt rather uneven, very uneven, Charlotte felt herself go off balance as she heard someone say ‘SWITCH IT OFF.’
‘No I’m fine, just lost my balance for a moment. No please don’t call the first aid officer… ’
Charlotte looked up at the bemused faces above her and cringed, but at the same time her mind retreated into the world of Lottie Lincoln, a night at the theatre, an actor on stage mysteriously disappearing…
Today is the last post I’m sharing with Baz the Bad Blogger, for this month at least… it is the first in depth interview he has given or at least promised to give. He has at last revealed what his front door looks like.
Congratulations to David who was the first to guess correctly that this is the only door Baz sees the inside of and it also keeps everybody else OUT. But Baz’s home is surprisingly small for such a big personality…
…though he still has room for his hobbies such as model railways..
I asked Baz what he liked best about blogging.
‘Reading the spam comments.’
And does he have any tips for bloggers and users of social media.
‘Yes, always be honest.’
A selection of Baz’s comments on WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc perhaps best illustrate why he is so popular.
Your blog was two yards long, but at least I had something to read during my long wait in accident and emergency.
Your blog was mercifully short, but still the most boring blog I have ever read.
If my baby looked like that I certainly wouldn’t put its picture on Facebook.
If that is the cover of your book I dread to think what the words inside are like.
Yes, well Baz, perhaps we had better leave those comments where they belong. Thanks for being my guest, did you say you were off on holiday soon?
‘Yes, somewhere far away.’
Farewell Baz… I really enjoyed getting to know him better and my impression is that he is really just a big old softy who loves his teddies…
…and who will remember to send his mother a card on Mothering Sunday.
Today we discover an unknown side to Baz, his artistic talent. Some have compared him to Banksy, others to Anthony Gormley, but nobody actually knows anything about Baz. His works vary from street art to installation pieces. Enjoy just some of the highlights of his prolific work.
Don’t miss tomorrow’s blog when Baz will hopefully reveal which door was his and some more insights into his life.
Times and Tides of a Beachwriter 