What’s in a colour? How does it affect our mood? And why am I asking stupid rhetorical questions?
Well, we talk about ‘seeing red’, ‘getting the blues’, finding ourselves in a ‘brown study’ being ‘green with envy’ or feeling ‘in the pink’, so what about orange?
Yesterday’s piece from our onboard blogmeister and garden machinery guru Dick Roberts, featured a small but perfectly formed selection of Oleo-Macs’ wonderful orange lawn mowers. These beauties are popular with customers for reliability and value, excellent cutting and performance. However, they have also attracted many favourable comments due to their colour and I have seen at least one comment comparing them to that most iconic of Italian of sportscars, the mighty Lamborghini.
So, orange. What does it say? What does it mean? Are you one of those annoying people who can peel one in one go?
The world is, in fact, pretty much full of famous orange things. Songs like Agent Orange by Tori Amos, Frozen Orange Juice by Peter Sarsted or Orange Crush by R.E.M The book and Film A Clockwork Orange, the novel and TV series Oranges are Not The Only Fruit and Orange is the New Black.
Cara Kilbey of TOWIE has her make-up surgically removed
Not to mention Tango, pumpkins, certain members of the royal family, the make-up worn by the female cast members of The Only Way Is Essex and Garfield the pizza eating cartoon cat.
Or what about Cheesy Wotsits (the snack that is so vividly and scarily orange I can’t imagine what it is doing to your stomach) mature cheddar cheese and, of course, since we are talking of cheese, the undisputed king of orange, the crown prince of antique jiggery-pokery, with the face that glows like a thousand nuclear power station accidents and a northern catchphrase delivery that stirs the hearts of women well over a certain age everywhere, the legendary real deal that is David Dickinson.
Oranges are David Dickinson’s only Fruit
However, this gets us nowhere, so here are a few interesting facts about the colour that unites TV prison uniforms, Northern Irish chaps in bowler hats and Dawn French’s favourite snack.
- Orange is a stimulating colour, creating vibrance, appetite and activity.
- Ryanair, Flymo, and that well known, eponymously titled ‘phone company as well as Oleo-Mac have used the colour as it grabs the eye and the attention very effectively. Orange is an attention grabbing colour, the colour of lifeboats, lifejackets and so on.
- Associated with joy and energy, orange is also associated with youth.
- Naranga a Sanskrit word, is the etymological derivation of the modern word ‘orange’. This is due to the fact that the Seville, was introduced in Mediterranean region by the Arabs in the 10th century. Naranga is, as it happens, nothing to do with the colour but comes from the tamil word naru, meaning fragrant.
- Generally, in Feng Shui, orange represents fire and biblically the colour is often associated with saints.
- Elizabethan nobles were the only people allowed to wear orange during her reign.
None of this makes any sense in terms of Oleo-Mac except to re-iterate that the colour orange is vibrant, exciting, attention grabbing and warm, the colour of the summer – well the summer we dream of at least, and those kind of words pretty much sum up what we feel about Oleo-Mac and their excellent range of gloriously orange lawn mowers. So take a look at them and do go and read Dick’s blog. It’s well worth well worth a peep… or is that a pip? See ya! Holly.
