by Stuart Flegg 

It’s been the holidays and I hope that everyone had a lovely break. Over the holidays I was lucky enough to go to Peru on an expedition organised by my college JCR. It was a great experience, but whilst there I had something of a revelation and I’m afraid it’s not going to go down too well.

While busy admiring the choice of paint used to adorn the outside of the nation’s classic buildings, I thought to myself “Isn’t deep ochre a nice colour, I want to paint my house that colour.”

This thought stayed with me for approximately one minute and thirty-seven point two nine seconds and then I realised that deep ochre would look ridiculous anywhere that wasn’t sunny or part of the Balamory set. And this doesn’t stop at housing colours. We live in the north east of England, not on the west coast of Scotland, and yet for some bizarre reason we all cover ourselves in stupidly-coloured clothing. Especially trousers. Not even the colour- loving Peruvians do this. Like us students they have a bit of a thing for knitwear, admittedly favouring the wool of the alpaca over that of the common sheep, but knitwear all the same. But their trousers are refreshingly bland.

However, here in England, the trouser situation is just a tiny bit, utterly, terrifyingly distressing. Let’s start at the beginning. The least offensive choice would have to be some sort of beige chinos, very similar to the colour I briefly admired in Peru, but thankfully still inoffensive. They will make you look like my dad though and given that his fashion sense is characterised by a penchant for ponchos and assorted anoraks this may not be a good thing.

The next step up is my personal favourite colour: blood-red-burgundy. I’d be wary about wearing it myself as, according to one author here at Palatinate, it distracts attention away from the face and I don’t want that. I never want that. But nonetheless I do like this colour. I saw a girl with a blood-red-burgundy cardigan this week and I have to admit that despite it being past Easter, it made me feel festive. She was also wearing bauble earrings which may have somewhat contributed to the feeling but the point still stands.

Now, however, to the core issue however. The problem I have is with the existence of every other colour ever. I hate them. Especially the colourful ones. I recently went to an event at Durham Castle and wandered happily into the Great Hall to look for house elves. All I can say is thank goodness there weren’t any there, because at just about house elf eye level were the colours. The event had had a strict ‘no jeans’ dress code. “This is great, everyone’s going to look so smart,” I thought. How wrong I was.

It looked like the rear end of a nyan cat. There was every conceivable colour and they were everywhere. If you ever thought wearing sunglasses indoors was pretentious, think again. I don’t understand it. Bright, block colours don’t work, unless you are an escapee from a psychiatric institution where you were incarcerated due to your incurable and uncontrollable urge to burst into a high-octane song and dance number at any opportunity (a result of watching too much Glee) and you have made this fashion choice as a non-verbal way of forewarning the general public of your rather alarming condition. In that case they work perfectly. I know I might be losing this one but I have to say it. You are not Tim; everything you touch does not turn to skittles.

Until brown comes back into fashion I might have to invest in better sunglasses or start taking weekend trips to Whitby. That’s where Dracula chose to live, after all, and from what I hear he’s all about the black and white and blood-red-burgundy.