The spirit of the beige...

There are so many things to write about, or so I keep telling myself. But as soon as I'm in front of a keyboard, I forget what they are. I was going to write about the colour beige. Is beige a colour or a state of mind? It's both, but for the purposes of clarity, we'll stick to it being a colour. The colour beige features very strongly in my life because it's a kind of default fashion setting for so many people, especially people in my family. I remember reading somewhere that the older you get the beiger you become. And that last turn of phrase, for some reason, reminds me of an old Joe Walsh album, The Smoker you Are, the Player you Get, or perhaps it's the other way around; I think Rocky Mountain Way was a key track.

But let's get back to beige, as opposed to 'back to black'. When I was a kid, my mum was very keen on beige. "Ooh, why don't you buy yourself a nice pair of beige trousers?" Or a beige jumper. It's so neutral and safe and it's taking over the world. I am surrounded by beige. Beige curtains, beige floors, beige carpets, even beige food. The other day I figured out that I exist on a diet of beige. Think about it for a minute: Weetabix = beige; a cup of tea with milk = beige; a slice of brown bread = beige; an egg (on the outside) = beige; a banana, well, alright, not exactly beige, more a kind of 'beigey' yellow, but let's say a banana is a variation on the beige theme. If you pay a visit to a paint shop you might find the colour 'banana', perhaps, and that, ultimately would dry to a kind of beige colour.

It's beige...

Old people wear a lot of beige. Marks & Spencer sells a lot of beige and if I was a fan of musicals and had a heavy cold, I'd probably sing the praises of Elaine Beige. If I was a guest at a wedding and still had a heavy cold I might have to ask the beige boys to bring me a tissue, or if I turned up at somebody's house dressed only in beige, it might be argued that I was showing my beige. Geddit? "Showing my beige" as in showing my age? No? Oh well.

I try my best to avoid beige, but I can't. My entire house is beige and whenever I'm anywhere, like, say, in John Lewis shopping for curtains, while everything is, ultimately, beige, it's a colour with many aliases. Oatmeal. Hopsack. Champagne. Mushroom. The list is endless.

If I was a novelist, I think I'd have to write a book about my beige life. It would be called 50 Shades of Beige.

I am perched in front of the television, watching Channel Four News, sitting on a green armchair. But it's floating in a sea of beige. The television is perched on a beige-coloured wooden thingy with two draws containing DVDs and stuff. Diagonally across from me to the right is a wooden side table, but it's beige-coloured. To my left and right there are beige curtains, there are beige blinds in the conservatory, and a large rug in front of the fireplace is, yep, beige, but darker than the light beige of the wood floor underneath it.

I'm going to bed and fortunately the duvet ain't beige, the carpet is pink and the curtains red and I'm not sure what's worse.