White with a hint of …j’accuse!

I’ve worked in the world of colour for 27 years, I studied colour at college, my father was a colour man, my grandfather was a colour man, and my cousin is a colour woman.

And yet……. and yet……. when my colleague Angela Brown was moving the furniture in her office here at the factory, I confidently asserted that the scrapes and marks on the office walls could be quickly and cheaply obscured with a brush and a dab of Barley White emulsion.

Guess what; I was wrong! For some (now inexplicable) reason, when we last redecorated the offices of our Export Department, we chose not to use Barley White. Nor did we use the ubiquitous Magnolia.

I don’t know what possessed us, but at the time we clearly thought it important to avoid the staple offerings and part with cash for “White with a hint of Ketchup” or something equally overpriced.

The problem now is that the error, whilst obvious to the painter at time, was rather “glossed over” (so to speak) by my confident but ill-founded assertion that any colour difference would disappear once the paint had ‘dried back’.

Of course the colour difference did not disappear. But my total confidence that all would be well along with a drying time of several hours had given plenty of opportunity for my colleague Steve to move around our various offices touching up other bits of wall around our premises – each of which now appears to have the paint equivalent of measles.

So it appears that a quick dab of the brush to smarten appearances has now resulted in the expensive need to thoroughly repaint several offices, or to purchase larger furniture, or maybe just dim the lighting.