Aqua(marine)

As a child, my parents and I lived in a inconspicuous white house on a long road that led, naturally enough I thought later, to my primary school. But I wasn't at primary school at that point. I was in kindergarten.

The inconspicuous white house was a rental although it was never actually intended to be so. It was a solid brick number, an investment, that the owner had built next door to his own home, the intention being to sell up and still keep an eye on things, you know how it is. The story goes that the owner saw my dad's ad in the local newspaper's rental section. It said: 'Professional Couple Seek Rental House. Nothing Too Flash.' Intrigued, the owner made contact and we ended up living in this house with a round window in the front patio, a gum tree mural thing in the living room and wooden box cupboards either side of the fire place (where I once found hidden birthday treasures and felt sorely disappointed forever more.) In other words, pretty flash by some standards, but not, as it turned out, by the standards of myself at c. four.

You see, I had a real bad case of the grass in always greener. In fact, I had a house-crush. It was a house on the opposite side of the street, diagonally away from our own. And it was weatherboard. Aqua weatherboard. With white trim and loads of white pot plant holders and even (am I exaggerating? Unlikely.) white tyre swans. I was smitten. I can still even remember my parents rolling their eyes at my house crush. But I was reckless and didn't give a shit what they thought.

It was the colour that did it. Aqua. I have known the colour of aqua since then. It is now this weird type of eye candy for me and has morphed into the purpose of a bizarre hunt: for obscure colour references to this old legend of my childhood.