What's Your Favourite Colour?

People ask it all the time. It's quite probably in the top ten questions that people ask, in the sub-category of 'questions about individual preference to which the answer is often completely irrelevant to life as a whole, but to which the response gives some kind of character insight, however trite.' What's your favourite animal? What's your lucky number? What's your favourite colour? Questions that we are asked as children, that we learn, as a result, to ask others.

 Of course, knowing someone's favourite colour can be very useful. For present buying, for instance. For knowing which straw to put in which glass of banana milkshake.

I've never had a favourite colour.
Is it something you just pick and stick with? I decided, when I was nine years old, that my lucky number was nine. When I turned ten I quickly realised that to change it according to my age would soon become ludicrous, not to mention very obvious. And I'd grown rather fond of the number nine. So I stuck with it.

Is that how favourite colours work? Do you pick an orange t-shirt out as a favourite at age 4 and then just decide, "orange is my favourite colour for life and I will never like any other colour as much as orange. Unless there isn't anything orange, then red will do."

Whilst this worked for me for my lucky number, this was never something I wanted to ascribe to. I liked all the colours for different reasons, in different ways, for different things. I like the exact red of the door to the grain-shed on my Grandma's farm. I like the colours on pigeons necks. I like the colour of beetroot juice. I like the colour of his eyes, which is somehow green and brown all at once. But saying that, as an 8 year old, would have been a bit much. So when people asked me, I panicked. I picked whatever colour seemed the most appropriate. Red and blue were safe bets. Purple was a bit different, acceptable enough. No one really says green or yellow. Black or white were boring, non-colours. Pink is much too girly; gold is much too showy. I started saying different colours to different people, gauging what I thought would be their favourite.

Then I stopped caring and just explained that I didn't really have a favourite. Or mentioned a colour that I kind of liked at the time. Wine-red. Bottle-green. People don't expect it. They think you're interesting. Or trying too hard to be interesting. Then you know you've beaten the game. Or not played it the way they wanted you too.

Then I decided that enough was enough, and that my favourite colour, once and for all, was turquoise. But now I suddenly like pale greens, anywhere between duck egg and pistachio. Sage green. The green of shutters in the south of France. And I can't tear my eyes off things that fall into that spectrum of light green, and I find myself drawn to pale green pieces of paper and things like that. And now I'm scared that turquoise isn't actually my favourite colour and that I actually prefer these pale greens but I don't know how to define such a specific yet varied range of tones.

Never ask me again.