Viva Brighton Issue #72 February 2019

COLUMN
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Lizzie Enfield
Notes from North Village
Illustration by Joda (@joda_art)
“It’s magenta!” said my ten-year-old son, without
hesitation and with supreme confidence.
We laughed and, several years later, were still
teasing him for no reason, other than the
unlikelihood of a ten year old having such a
descriptive colour palette at his disposal.
We’d been en route to Iceland when the
‘magenta’ incident occurred, boarding a WOW
air flight. Its pinky purpley livery prompted my
daughter’s question ‘what do you call that colour?’
Nobody expected her little brother to pipe up
‘magenta’ with the speed and surety that he did.
He was a little embarrassed afterwards, as we
ribbed him about perhaps having watched more
episodes of Changing Rooms than was natural for
a boy of his age, and covered his embarrassment
with jokes about the irony of calling Iceland’s
budget airline ‘WOW!’, as if the rigid upright
seats and no frills everything were something to
write home about.
“Wow!” he said, as we took off.
“Wow!” as he pulled the tray table down.
“Wow!” as we admired the ‘magenta’ fabric of the
seat covers.
The rapid colour recognition was displaced
but not forgotten. Over the intervening years
it became a bit of a long-running, family, joke:
A ‘what colour is that?’ cue given, whenever we
spot something mauvish-crimson, a ‘guess what
brand this is?’ when son brought home a new
skateboard, made by ‘Magenta’.
And, on one occasion, a discussion of what the
kids might call their children and his siblings
unable to resist saying that ‘Magenta’ was a nice
name for a girl…
I did say it was a ‘family’ joke. I realise that this
whole column might be lost on others with
children who call a magenta thing a magenta
thing – or think they should, but it seemed
strangely amusing at the time. And my son
continued, for a while, to strangely amuse us with
deliberate colour-coded observations about life.
The Simpsons are not ‘yellow’ but ‘ochre or is it
titanium?’ The neighbour’s grass is not greener
but ‘more verdigris’ and the newly painted
hallway is decidedly ‘anthracite’.
I have a reputation in my family for keeping jokes
going long past their sell by date (food too) and it
was probably time to forget about ‘magenta’ and
move on.
And I probably would have done had it not been
for a trip to the local Co-op.
A friend was in the queue in front of me, taking
her purse out to pay.
The cashier was a teenager; perhaps a little older
than my son is now, whom I vaguely recognised. I
thought he might have been at the same school.
And when my friend flicked through the various
cards she had in her purse, I became convinced
of it.
“I can’t seem to find the right card,” she said to
him, searching for her Co-op card. “What colour
is it?”
It’s blue. I know it’s blue.
“Cerulean,” he replied, without hesitation and
with supreme confidence.
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