It Was Yellow - Vesna McMaster

In the immortal words of the Iranian midwife who delivered my sister, who was also our landlady, ‘the baby is yelloooow’. In other words, she was jaundiced. The physical ailment did not last long in the Middle Eastern climes, but the twists and vagaries of the next forty-odd years left a distinctly jaundiced hue on interactions between the two of us. Causal factors included evasive, not to mention cowardly, tactics of some others of our nearest and dearests, which yellow streak left distasteful smears all down the sides of our relationships. For myself, having spent a small eternity moving from one rental to the next, when I finally got round to property ownership, I decided to banish the evils of Magnolia walls with a strong patronage of colourful Dulux paint. There was a green bedroom, a purple bedroom, a blight blue carpet, and the nexus of my existence, the study, was turned a bright, sunny, yellow and orange. The reflected glow gave even my pale skin the illusion of robust health.  The yearning for sun became overpowering, and Dulux finally proved inadequate: I moved from the UK to Australia. Trust La Niña to move with me. I watched as the walls of my new abode’s garden turned bright yellow under the diligent maintenance of my other half, without any prompting from me. We sit and sip our yellow wine there these days in the slanting evening light, and if the sun slacks on heat delivery, we always have a blanket. It’s not yellow, but it should be.