Brown

A few recent newspaper articles have reported the supposed resurgence of British seaside towns, highlighting in some cases how European grants are being used to renovate, restore and revive those resorts Morrissey despises so much. “Britain is full!” exclaim those favouring a British withdrawal from the EU. Perhaps, but only during half-terms and the summer holidays when you should all be in Benidorm and not Blackpool.

There’s a particular coastal town I need to travel to every fortnight as part of my job, and usually, a particular hotel I end up staying in (not by choice). Time travellers heading back to the 1970s, perhaps bored of traveling the world – future and past – and instead demanding a little nostalgia, would visit this hotel and hear its guests describing it as “drab”. It hasn’t been updated for some time. Fine if you want to kid yourself this is the 1970’s; not much use if you’re seeking accommodation that is less brown.

And this is my point (I do have one) – the colour brown when used as decor or worn anywhere but on the feet fades into the background. The hotel’s interior designers chose to paint its restaurant walls in brown and so I dine in camouflaged yet claustrophobic surroundings; the bright lights not so much reflecting as being subsumed by the paint.

This particular seaside town, as with several others, features a large retirement population. They also seem to favour the brown. Walls painted brown, inhabitants dressed in brown, all blending in like a bottle of curdling, aged mustard.

I write this dressed in blue, black and brown – hardly colourful but it’s a choice rather than an avoidance of one. Age doesn’t necessitate a predilection towards beige any more than it does a hitherto unknown love of ballroom dancing or a passion for bowling on beautifully manicured lawns.  Midway between being 21 and of pensionable age, I look at those who’ve made that journey and start to worry.

I may well change my mind when I retire. But my parents: 81 and 70-something at the time of writing reveal a different perspective.  Still cycling, still managing to go on holiday without Saga, and to the best of my knowledge, never embracing the brown outfit.

So embrace the red, the green, even the blue. Brown deadens the eyes, lowers the pulse and reduces everything to the feel of a wade through treacle. Monet had the excuse of cataracts when he thought the world was merging into a single, sepia-tinged hue, but he compensated through use of vivid colours.

British seaside towns then: not so much that they forgot to close them down (Morrissey again), they just forgot to redecorate them.