by Yesterday I read an article by Adrian Chiles – I remember when he presented the business news on the BBC – about how everything is turning grey. “Why has the world been drained of colour?” he asks. The comments were almost unanimous in agreement with him. With the exception of undies and socks, I never buy actual new clothes from actual clothes shops, one because I want to save money, but two because I want to avoid all the drabness. And cars. When I looked at cars before giving up, I didn’t want a grey (or “silver”) one. It didn’t use to be like this. Go into the men’s section of H&M in 2003 and you’d find clothes with every combination of colours and patterns you could imagine. Go back another decade and mad dayglo ski jackets were all the rage among blokes whose idea of piste was something else. I really wanted one, but I was still a kid then – “you’re not having that” – and I ended up with something frustratingly tame, though probably still much brighter than what just-teenagers would wear today. One theory for the modern world being sapped of colour is all the in-your-face advertising and blinking screens we get at every turn; perhaps we all just want to dim the lights. Another theory, relating mostly to our homes, is that we’ve become so obsessed with viewing a home as an investment rather than a place to live that we don’t dare inject any colour it lest it affect its resale value.
This morning I listened to the whole of Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium double album. It took me back to early 2007 when I regularly put it on while studying for professional exams. (Music and study didn’t usually mix, but that was an exception for some reason.) I took those two exams – the latest in a long line – in April, then I fell out with my Japanese flatmate and I moved into a place by myself, and (with a couple of exceptions) I’ve lived alone ever since.
Mum and Dad just gave me a surprise Skype call at 11pm their time. It was 3 degrees there and soon to go negative. (I’ve got that to look forward to.) The call was all about their banking and power bill craziness. Their building work is now in full swing – Dad showed me a photo of the impressive long arm of the cement mixer truck.
We’re half-way through 2023 – Timișoara’s reign of supposedly being the cultural capital of Europe.
