Men see only ... green

IF George Clooney described your violet blouse as “purple”, would you care? Probably not. But what is it with men and colour?
I may be entering dangerously sexist territory here – but why is it that the average human male can see only around a dozen colours? Where women see emerald, jade and moss, men see only green. While we extol the virtue of our new coral shirt, a bloke will insist that it’s orange.
When we want the dining room chimney-breast painted ochre, they hate the idea of yellow. And I’ve learned that they’re not being awkward; they actually do think that cobalt is … well, just blue.
But why? Little boys were just as exposed to boxes of Crayola Crayons as us girls. Don’t they remember the sheer joy of all those gorgeous colours like magenta, raw umber, sepia and carnation pink?
I admit I was a tad obsessive about my crayons – lining them up in order according to the gradual change from one colour to the next, so blue-violet was next to violet-blue, green-yellow beside yellow-green and so on. But surely men must have learned a bit about colour back then? So where did it all go?
It might just be that precise colour designation is not important to men. If he likes his new sweater, a fella doesn’t care whether it’s charcoal or slate; to him it’s just grey and comfy.
Well, it might not all be their fault. While only a tiny proportion of one per cent of women suffer from a form of colour blindness, as many as eight per cent of the male species are similarly afflicted.
Which admittedly doesn’t explain the remaining 92 per cent, but there might be a legitimate medical answer here too. Some scientists believe that men’s brains may be less efficient at processing and understanding colours. Most women apparently see colours in the red-orange range much better than men – which might account for the female love affair with pink.
Women may have to accept that colour is just not as important to men. So it must be pretty annoying being subjected to that much detail when all you want is a basic description. And let’s be honest: does anyone actually know what “taupe” is?
But it’s not just our appreciation of colour that is so different. Take our approaches to shopping. I’m going to make sweeping generalisations here, so apologies in advance for those exceptions to my rule. For most men, a shopping expedition, when it cannot be avoided, is a matter of military precision: identify, locate, acquire, and retreat. But for women shopping is a more holistic experience. Yes, gentlemen, I know we drive you mad with our browsing and comparing, our coffee breaks and yet more browsing. Especially when we invariably return to the first item we tried in the first shop. It’s a girl thing and for that we’re sorry. But for us, shopping is an emotional issue. In order to buy something, we have to love it. We can’t just make do.
To balance things out, it’s time to admit to some genetic mutations in most of the females of my acquaintance. There is a little known, but highly evolved, area of the female brain that perfectly deducts 10 per cent from the cost of any item of clothing when required to announce it to a member of the opposite sex.
And another that instantly recognises any outfit previously worn by another woman. So you see we aren’t just being greedy when we want another new dress – it’s a genetic necessity.
If all this were not enough, there’s also a language barrier that exists between the sexes. Take that horrible and contentious word “fine”. When a man describes something as fine, he means that it’s perfectly acceptable, that it fits the bill precisely. The frock that looks “fine” is “just right”.
But to a woman, the word is poison. It represents the barely acceptable; it’s part of the “if that’s all you’ve got it’ll will do” range of adjectives. Men, if a woman tells you that your suit is fine, it probably isn’t.
It’s like a man’s reaction to the word “cute”. To women there is nothing disparaging in describing something or someone as cute; quite the opposite actually. But we’ve noticed that it’s not always a concept with which men are comfortable.
We do understand there are language difficulties and we don’t want you to panic when we ask you if we look “OK”. What we want is an honest answer. All right, absolute honesty should probably be reserved for the times you think we look fabulous. But please don’t say we look fine. Of course, if we’ve spent four hours getting ready and still look like a dog’s dinner, then a lie will be – just fine.

The Play's The Thing!

IT was Lord Olivier who said it: “I believe that in a great city, or even in a small city or a village, a great theatre is the outward and visible sign of an inward and probable culture.” So what does it say about Derby, that we have closed our only professional theatre in a Comedy of Errors, while allowing the virtual destruction of a Sleeping Beauty just down the road?
Because whether you prefer Shakespeare or Charles Perrault, Derby without a theatre is just plain wrong. It’s perfectly ridiculous to suggest that a city of almost a quarter of a million residents – and a potential audience catchment of twice that – cannot support a provincial theatre.
It’s certainly not that there isn’t enough interest; I used to be a regular at Derby Playhouse and the place was always packed. Neither am I convinced that the Westfield Centre is to blame for all Derby’s ills.
I don’t know the answer, but I do know why I eventually abandoned the Playhouse. Not because I didn’t enjoy the entertainment on offer – although there did seem to be a strange obsession with trying to incorporate the revolving stage into almost every production – but because the place was just so darned uncomfortable.
Anyone who ever ventured inside will tell you that the auditorium was always hot and airless, even after expensive “improvements”. At the interval you’d find scores of theatregoers heading for the exits to take the air before wondering whether they could bear to go back inside. What the refit did achieve was to remove any element of character from the building’s interior.
I’m not one of those people who dislikes everything modern; in fact I love modernity and I may be the only person left in the city who doesn’t yet hate the Quad.
But a theatre should feel special – not like the budget airline check-in area at East Midlands Airport. There’s simply nothing like a gorgeous, old-fashioned, dark, luxurious theatre. Nottingham’s Theatre Royal and Wolverhampton’s Grand Theatre are prime examples.
Returning Derby’s theatre to the then still intact Hippodrome would have been perfect. But when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter whether you’re in the Duke of York’s in London’s West End, or a former cinema like the Palace in Mansfield. It’s the thrill of the greasepaint that matters.
For some, of course, that thrill is too much. I’ve a friend who never goes to the theatre because she is so terrified that an actor might make a mistake that she cannot bear to watch.
Then again, I have another friend who is a passionate devotee, but who, 20 minutes into the first act, is always sound asleep. You can set your watch by him.
Yet even he would have struggled to doze off during one performance in Nottingham last year. There must have been a dozen large school groups in attendance. Hemmed in on three sides, I bemoaned my misfortune as hundreds of teenagers bobbed up and down, waved at their friends and chucked sweets to each other. I’d forgotten how loud you like things when you’re 15.
One girl had clearly never even seen a theatre before. She was so used to watching telly that her teacher had to explain to her that she was about to witness real, live actors, not a projection on to a screen. You couldn’t make it up.
As the lights dimmed, several embarrassed teachers hushed the exaggerated squeals of delight, but still I feared for the rest of the afternoon. I needn’t have worried: five minutes later, the teenage audience had fallen into silence, every one of them transfixed by what was going on before them.
At curtain’s fall they all jumped to their feet, cheering and whistling wildly. Their reaction wasn’t conventional, but it was genuine, and it was testament to the power of theatre.
Because, despite the apparent artifice of its props, plots and players, a visit to the theatre is one of the most “real” forms of entertainment. If the cinema is an escape from reality, then theatre is surely a journey straight into it.
There is nothing more intimate or immediate than watching a group of talented actors love, laugh, fight and mourn their way through a well-crafted story. You’re in their characters’ world, and each time it’s as thrilling and magical as the first.
That is perhaps theatre’s greatest gift, and it’s one on which the next generation of Derbeians looks likely to miss out.
But there is still hope. If the dream of a rescued Hippodrome is fading, perhaps we can count on a revitalised Playhouse, where touring, repertory and amateur productions could all find a home. We could even dedicate it to our own great dramatic actor, and patron of Derby’s theatre scene, the late Sir Alan Bates.

All creatures great and small?

I WAS waiting for a bus when I saw it: the most beautiful ornament in a garden by the bus stop. It was a statue of an eagle, or a falcon, or something like that. Or at least I thought it was a statue – until it swivelled its head and blinked at me.
It turns out that a bird of prey is resident in a seemingly ordinary suburban Derby street. Some people apparently keep the unlikeliest creatures as family pets. And I began to wonder why.
Take ferrets. I’ve been told they are affectionate, playful and, contrary to popular belief, fastidiously clean. But even though I’m told that you can take them out for a walk, somehow I can’t imagine ever curling up on the sofa with one.
And chipmunks. My cousin Jonathan kept chipmunks, and they were very cute in a Walt Disney way. But they spent most of their days asleep. Which is a common problem with rodents. When I was ten I longed for a gerbil and was excited beyond all reason when it was my turn to take care of Spike, the class gerbil, for the weekend.
Friday evening was fascinating: Spike explored his new surroundings, eyed the goldfish with suspicion, chowed down on his seed, sipped his water, even enjoyed an excursion around the family laundry basket.
But, come Saturday morning, Spike took to his tiny straw bed, curled up and went to sleep. And there he stayed until dusk, despite all my attempts to rouse him.
And so it continued all weekend. When we went to bed, Spike got up and then kept the whole house awake by running around and around in his exceedingly squeaky wheel. It was such a disappointment. Come Monday morning I’d decided to give gerbil ownership a miss.
Some animals just make better pets than others. I can’t help thinking that there are people who must be disappointed when their pygmy goat starts eating granddad’s prize begonias; or their alligator grows too big for the bathtub. There are some animals that just don’t suit being domesticated.
I mean, monitor lizards and geckos for goodness sake – should anything that can lick its own eyeballs really be a family pet?
And how anyone can keep a tarantula as a pet is beyond me. As a confirmed arachnophobic, I’m completely unconvinced by one pet shop’s promise that the pink-toe variety is “placid, cute and furry”, particularly once I’d spotted that it was also “fast and agile”.
And who in their right mind would want to give a home to a giant hissing cockroach?
Anyway, what happens when these exotic creatures escape? You hear about wallabies loose in the Peak District and panthers on Dartmoor. The traffic in Derby is bad enough without dozens of motorists rubber-necking because hordes of sugar gliders are now swooping low over Markeaton island.
Personally, I prefer my animal friends to be of the more cuddly variety. As long as I can remember I’ve had cats. You’ll notice I don’t use the word “owned” here, since any cat lover will tell you the first thing you find out about felines is that they belong to no-one but themselves. As they say: “Dogs have owners; cats have staff”.
But even cats can cause you extreme embarrassment. My first cat, Angie, was a genuine lady who absolutely refused to do anything remotely undignified. But she was skilled hunter and loved nothing better than showing off her catch to the rest of the pride, particularly if we had guests.
A birthday party of mine once descended into chaos when she brought a long-dead field mouse through the cat flap. I don’t think she understood that the high-pitched squeals of my friends were not cries of appreciation..
Cats have distinct personalities, too. Can anyone claim that of stick insects or snakes? Our current feline lodgers, Erin and Gracie, are sisters but couldn’t be more different. They’re charming, sweet as pie, and utterly enchanting. But Gracie’s an adventurer, an explorer who’s always looking for the next thing, the next game, a higher bookcase on which to climb.
Her sister is more cautious. While Gracie is the first to greet a visitor, be it a friend, neighbour or the gas man, Erin hangs back, looks on and mulls things over before introducing herself.
They do both like to sleep on a fluffy duvet and, as far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing more delightful than being woken up by tickling whiskers and kitten kisses, even if it is a couple of hours earlier than the alarm I set.
But that’s what worries me about exotic pets: it’s hard to imagine the owner of a giant African land snail cuddling up for the night with his or her slimy friend. It sounds, quite frankly, rather messy