Seven days and counting

Only seven days now until the Big Day: Love and Marriage, our inaugural Moffat Book Event. Marilyn has printed some information strips to tell people that they can get their tickets from the Moffat Book Exchange as well as from dgArts at Mid Steeple and online. Tonight we have an organising committee and volunteer bonding session, courtesy of Moira Cox, House of Colour, (Moffat) debating what to wear. I have an alarming lime green leopard-pattern print dress and purple jacket on my short list. My dress philosophy often silently answers the question: what have I come as? Sometimes, in my brown cords and brown jumper I am a tree. In the lime green dress and purple jacket, I am a crocus. Most of last week in London I was wearing an acid yellowy-green cardigan with a purple cotton shirt. Who knows what flower I resembled but I was on trend with my blocks of colour. Going to House of Colour some years ago now, in Kent, with my two daughters was quite literally a life-changing experience. I had reduced my wardrobe colour to black. The House of Colour process involves choosing first by an empirical vote from the others present (in this case, our House of Colour expert and my daughters and me in turns), whether what suits one's skin tone best is white or ivory. This is achieved by the simple test of draping a scarf round the subject's neck. Time is saved after that by the experience of the expert, who tries scarves from a rack containing literally hundreds in oranges, reds, browns, blues, greens and every nuanced shade of beige to result in a little wallet of one's best colours for guidance when shopping. Simples. For your information, my colour group is known as 'rich autumn' but my blue group are the 'peacocks'. Quite fascinating and incredibly successful. I have never worn black or stark white since. So carried away by this post that I failed to realise that the aroma I took at first to be someone making toast in the house next door turned out to be my own porridge burning. There is probably an Uzbek proverb or maxim based on such an event, or if there isn't, there is now. It's another lovely day here in Moffat, by the way.