A rose by any other name

My daughter (visiting from Australia) picked me this rose. My favourite rose colour. Indeed my favourite colour and one of my favourite flowers. So sweet.

My favourite colour is yellow

I may have mentioned before that my "official" favourite colour is yellow. I say "official" because yellow is the colour I chose to be my favourite when I was at that tender age at which grown ups insist that a child must have one. In fact I love all colours, especially intense or spectral colours.

A computer screen's attempt at a spectrum

A computer screen, digital or conventional camera cannot do justice to spectral colours because they are outside the colour triangle that encloses those colours that can be obtained by mixing red, green and blue. The following diagram from Wikipedia suggests that there are rather a lot of colours that our attempts to reproduce colour cannot display. Sad, because theses missing ones are amongst my favourites.

The RGB color triangle shown as a subset of x,y space based on CIE 1931 colorimetry

Mind you, the human eye is also subject to a similar limitation because it, too, has only a limited repertoire of colour receptors (called "cones"). It is generally thought that there are three types of receptors and they are sensitive to, of course, red, green and blue, with a second peak towards the UV end for the red receptors so that we can perceive violet in the spectrum. So I am not sure what this does to my missing colours argument. Just that if you look back into a prism splitting a collimated (focused) beam of white light, and move your eye along the spectrum so caused, the colours are so, so good, so much more intense that that on a screen or photograph.

Why all this theory? - because I am intrigued with colour.  Indeed when I left the beeb the only material I took away with me was their introductory course notes on colour - which I still have - somewhere.

Anyway - back to the subject of "my favourite colour is yellow".  There is, of course, yellow and yellow.  As a general rule I find that man made things that are yellow (e.g. cars, home decor, clothes) are not the right kind, indeed they often make me want to puke.

You can also see "good" and "bad" instances of colours in creation. A friend of mine, Steve Fouse, wrote a song about this:

In the beginning God said,

"Let there be light"

And in that light

He made many colours,

Each one was separate

And called by a name,

Given a nature in Him

The same.

We are colours

From the inside out.

It's God's nature within us

And it's working its way out.

We are colours

From the inside out.

It's God's nature 

Working its way out.

God, He saw that it was good.

Satan, he never understood.

And those under his spell,

They don't see so well,

They don't see the colours

As they should.

Green can be envy 

Or God's new life.

Blue can be self-pity

Or His authority.

Yellow is a coward

Or God's nature perfect and true.

Red is anger 

Or His blood cleansing you.

If you check out "yellow" in the Bible (KJV) you will find references only to it being a telltale sign of plague (leprosy?) in the law of Moses. But there are plenty of references to gold, the "good" yellow of the Bible, and gold represents the nature of God himself.  You could hardly imagine more opposite extremes. Gold - both the metal and that glorious glow we sometimes see in sunsets, although not a spectral yellow, will qualify as an OK favourite colour for me. Contrariwise the sort of drab and dirty yellow that one imagines is the telltale for plague, or the various yellows used to paint cars and or home decor, are as different as chalk from cheese.

Today I cycled 42.5 miles (max. speed 38.8mph, average 12.0mph and lots of hills in case you wanted to know) along country lanes here in County Wicklow. It was sunny and the hedgerows are full of wild flowers, with red campion and buttercups prevailing. And there is so much May blossom this year - it always reminds me of my father whose birthday was in May. But the buttercups in the sunlight along the way - little flashes of bright, intense colour against the darker green background - an extravagant riot of colour.

Buttercup yellow, I have decided, is my favourite colour.

Football

What football team do I support? The closest I can get to answering this is to claim Newcastle or Man. United on behalf of avid supporters I happen to know for whom it is perfectly normal to say "we scored" or "my team". To be truthful I neither support any team of any sport nor can I quite comprehend the concept of doing so. Mind you, I have played football and even enjoyed it in between loosing concentration and hitting the ball the wrong way or becoming thoroughly bored, but I did it solely for the sake of the others.

And yet... "Football is associated with passion, emotion, excitement and dedication across Europe. References to extreme emotional experiences at football games characterised all aspects of discussions with fans – some referring to the 'pure joy' and exhilaration of being at football games. Such is the intensity of the experience that two thirds of fans have cried at football matches – mostly through joy, but occasionally because of despair."  (SIRC)

Doubtless that makes me odd (along with running barefoot), but I learnt to live with that accolade from an early age. But is it so different from me insisting that barefoot is the best way to run, yellow is my favourite colour or claiming that Bruckner's 8th is the best? Is it just that we all like to carve an identity, to try to define "me"?

Some find their identity in patriotism. I used to think that "the English are best" - as so cleverly caricatured by Flanders and Swann -

until I moved to Ireland and heard their side of the story. I still love the people of and places in England, but then I have come to love Ireland too and what could be better than to live within walking distance of forests, a lake, a  river you can swim in, and mountains?

So who am I?

My favourite colour

A blog is "a web site on which an individual or group of users record opinions, information, etc. on a regular basis".  My offering is hardly regular so perhaps is not a blog even though it is published on www.blogger.com.


I am at least glad that the definition does not insist on daily news, like a diary.  Even so I was hesitant to write about my favourite colour here in the Posting section of my blog, so have added to my Pages section on Colour.