Putrid Pastels

Now that summer is upon us, the pastel brigade is out in force. You know what I mean; middle-aged matrons - and their men – busting out of dresses and shirts fashioned from icky-ticky, eety-tweety pale pinks and lilacs and blues – uck! It’s enough to make you feel that way, too. Give me the deep, the bright, the vibrant, forever.

It is not so much the colours I object to as the collective age of their wearers. The reason you dress babies in pastels is because you don’t want to blind the little ‘uns before they can walk or talk. While there is nothing so cute as a baby’s nursery fashed out in pale pink or blue, and the teeny occupant dressed that way, too, there is something creepy about someone who expresses their age in decades all done up like a dripping ice-cream. They seem to be saying

Look at me! I’m young, too. And clean and pure with it.

Paradoxically, there is nothing ‘pure’ about pastels. Pinks and lilacs and lemons are actually ‘corruptions’ of primary colours, then faded almost into non-existence. This strikes me as being a metaphor for life – corruption followed by a steady progression towards the grave. Could this be why so many oldies veer towards pastels? Think about it, the next time you don that taupe and pale-blue shirt.

Aloha!

Years ago, I came into possession of a Hawaiian shirt, by virtue of a close relative that went on holiday to Honolulu. It was a glorious creation, bright red and patterened all over with those dinky little black and yellow fishes – I think they call them monk fish – swimming among reeds of the same colour.

It became my favourite summer shirt, comfortable and practical to wear – stains don’t show up easily – and it stopped traffic whenever I wore it. Over the years, however, the bright colours faded into insignificance and by the time I retired it into the recycling bag, it was but a ghost of its former self. It was only then that I became aware of the negative currents surrounding Hawaiian shirts, generally – be they covered in hibiscus flowers, palm trees, blazing suns or humming birds.

Thank goodness you don’t wear that shirt with the fishes, any more friends were wont to say. My astonishment increased when I uncovered an entire world of scorn directed at the shirts by fashion columnists and style gurus. Strange when this few square feet of Polynesian polyester is not exactly prevalent - outside of Waikiki beach, that is. These same fashionistas routinely endorse the crippling ladies’ shoes they call stilettos, puffball skirts and other frightful fads – what about those trousers that hang down from the nether regions, revealing what they are supposed to conceal and hampering the movement of the wearer?

In short, I will go on championing the Hawaiian shirt. I may even go to Honolulu for another one.

International File 1

“Is this any use?” asked Friend.

She handed me a small, paper backed book bearing an Open University tag and the publisher’s insignia, The Norton Library.

“Where did you get this? I gagged, as soon as I had regained control of my epileptically convulsing body.

“Our local college library is moving out old stock. If you don’t want it, I can always give it to a charity…”

“No!!!”

Friend narrowly escaped a clunk on the head while I clutched the volume to my quivering bosom. Quivering, that is, with concern for the poor charity shop browser who had just been deprived of the opportunity to read one of the earlier editions of The International Style by Henry-Russell Hitchcock and Philip Johnson.

Philip Cortelyou Johnson was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1906. At Harvard University he worked under Walter Gropius, German emigrant and advocate of the new International Style in building. In 1932 he and architectural historian, Henry Russell Hitchcock published the first version of International Style: Architecture since 1922.

The publication of this book was remarkable. Many books had been written on architecture in the course of time but all of them had been tomes on classicism and the gothic and other older styles, in short, hearkening to the past. This was the first time an historian had filled even a moderately-sized volume with essays and pictures on a style of building that had burgeoned in the preceding decade. And the book is still in print.

How does one describe the International Style? It is an essentially clean, stripped-down form of building, free from superficial ornamentation, with due attention paid to proportion and volume, typified by the work of Le Corbusier, Mies van de Roe and, of course, Walter Gropius. What is so darned special about volume in a building? isn't that what they're made for?

For answers, watch this space.

Curious fashions

I’ve just seen a telly-clip about a natty little company start-up, making trendy cycling gear for wimmin.

“Wimmin are image-conscious, said their spokesperson. They (the wimmin) do not want to look like men by wearing fluorescent jackets and helmets on the roads. Our fashions steer wimmin in the right direction.

Then, we were treated to a montage of all those trendy bits of gear; helmets, jackets, leggings, their predominant colour being pink. How curiously human, I thought. What proportion of the population do these mysterious wimmin make up, all universally slim and cute enough to do justice to that gear? And how come they are not afflicted by aching joints and other ailments, and are apparently unaffected by extremes of weather? Not only that, they are able to tackle ground rises and steep hills on their bikes and, most significant of all, they are fearless in the teeth of juggernauts and racing motor cars on overcrowded roads.

How I wish I could live in the land of wimmin, I thought, as the telly-clip drew to a close. If any one of you knows how to get there, please let me know.

Chocablog.

It’s that time of year again. You can’t have failed to notice that the entire world seems to be fashioned of chocolate; bunny rabbits, eggs, chickens and other symbols of springtime fertility are everywhere. If, like me, you are possessed of a sweet tooth, then temptation lies literally in every street corner shop. It is difficult to turn off the tap of a constantly watering mouth at the most quiescent of times, but the choice of programmes on television is making it even more difficult.

Channel 4 is currently screening Willie’s Chocolate Revolution, featuring Willie Harcourt-Cooze, an entrepreneur who has successfully launched his own brand of chocolate. If the confectionery has been successful, then Channel 4 executives have a recipe that must have them licking themselves in delight. In addition to the obvious play on names, ie, Willie Wonka, Harcourt-Cooze is faintly reminiscent of Gordon Ramsay and, together with the same missionary zeal as Jamie Oliver, sets out to prove that cacao – the raw ingredient of chocolate - is actually good for you.

To do this, Willie went in cahoots with a white-coated laboratory researcher. Armed with positive – from his point of view – test results, he came away smiling and ready to convert a posse of Cadbury addicts, with a brace of his own products. Willie H-C claims that their favourite sweet is not really chocolate. This is where I part company with WH-C because a chocolate snob I never will be.

I commit the heresy of believing that chocolate is meant to be munched, crunched, melted, slurped and manipulated into whatever disgusting form that the choc-eater actually enjoys. Any toss-pot concerned about the cacao content of his nutty bar is not only missing the point, he deserves to be coated in cocoa solids and flushed down his own loo. With that, I wish you the happiest of Easters, devouring any brand of chocolate that you so please.

Beavers: I'll be dammed!

You don’t often hear it for the modest, hard-working little beaver. That’s because they are , well, modest and hardworking. Lacking the glamour of, say, the cat family, they shun publicity and devote their time to building dams and houses – Zaha Hadid move over! The talent of the beaver is truly jaw dropping – you might add tree lopping to that. Using nothing but their teeth, they gnaw the trunk of a tree until that critical moment that every lumberjack knows; the trunk breaks and crashes down onto the ground. Then, beaver sets to work on newly-fallen tree, gnawing it into logs and chewing off the branches.

Using his skill as an underwater swimmer and navigator, beaver drags his material and inserts it into just the right area of his own dam to prevent the breaches and floods that might follow. Beaver lives in his lodge, again built by himself, address ‘Penthouse upon Dam’, together with Mrs Beaver and the little beavers. Some years ago, doyens of a television creature-feature placed a movie camera inside a beaver lodge. But a clever inmate came along, peered into the lens and, knowing an intrusion had happened, covered the alien eye with a branch – no Big Beaver House on television that year.

Truly, you cannot say too much in favour of this awesome little creature. What I want to know is, at what stage of evolution did they, their brains hard wired for tree lopping, building design, repair and maintenance, underwater swimming, detecting movie cameras, decide not to evolve any further? It’s my guess they stopped this evolution thing when some bright beaver realised the danger of giving rise to a race of Boris Johnson humanoid look-alikes.

We ought to be grateful for such a decision, else they would have built us all off the planet. Let’s give these enterprising little architects their rightful recognition, now.