Presents past

My father was contemplating his socks. Ordinary, bright orange socks. The small niece child had been interrogating him on the subject.

"Who bought you those socks? They don't go with anything you wear."

At the time she was wearing something floral in pink winceyette and lemon yellow leggings.

In the end she concluded that I must have bought them. I get the blame for all things because I'm "weird." Any conversation I have with her must include the following exchange:

"You bought me rhino poo for Christmas!"

"It had a banana seed in it. Have you sown it yet?"

"You bought me rhino poo for Christmas!"

"It makes the banana grow better."

"I'm not eating bananas that are made out of rhino poo. Rhino poo!"

Paintbox

Presented as a public service...

Gamboge	Bice	Ultramarine	Saxe Blue
Chinese White	Purple Madder	Silk Green	Tyrian Purple
Primrose Yellow	Raw Umber	Burnt Sienna	Vermillion
Donkey Brown	Mandarin	Crimson Lake	Cobalt Blue
Persian Blue	Naples Yellow	Raw Sienna	Hooker's Green
Indian Yellow	Prussian Blue	Lamp Black	Paris Green
Vandyke Brown	Duck Egg Blue	British Racing Green	Pansy Violet
Scarlet Lake	Sap Green	Venetian Red	Yellow Ochre
Cerulean	Salmon Pink	Viridian	Japanese Imperial Purple

For some unaccountable reason I have an urge to dig out the Oxo tin full of pastels...

When was the last time you saw bice?

Back in the old days, back when hedgerows were fringed with the scent of Riley Elf and Jowett Javelin, small children would occasionally be awarded a paint set. In them days a paint set was a gaudy bit of tin tray holding a confectionary array of teeny-tiny tablets of watercolour paint, each one exotically-labelled. There would be Gamboge, an earthy orange fire that did the business for ginger toms and ice cream cones. Chinese White, always the colour of colouring-book paper, would be there, too. As would Silk Green and Primrose Yellow and Purple Madder. And Bice.

What was Bice about? It wasn't Olive Green, because that was over there next to the Raw Umber. Bice wasn't quite brown, nor green, nor yet yellow. It was that strange not-quite khaki that you only ever saw in paint boxes and the stairwells of government buildings that had been redecorated under the Utility Mark in the forties.

I haven't seen Bice since the early seventies. Nor yet Silk Green or Chinese White. Nor fiery, exotic Gamboge. They have gone the way of all things. We must enjoy our Vermillions and Burnt Siennas while we may, we shall not see their likes again.