Crennock & Bale Provisional Ochre Blush No. 4: Zero Stars. It Was Gone Before I Could Warn Anyone.
Let me be clear: I did not seek out Crennock & Bale Provisional Ochre Blush No. 4. It came to my attention via a discontinued-products circular that Quince left on the breakroom table, and I have not recovered. This was a paint — a provisional paint, mind you, which should have been the first flag — that presented itself to the domestic market in a shade best described as "apology beige with delusions." It smelled of compromise. It had the finish of a surface that had been warned.
Three separate hardware merchants I spoke to confirmed it had been pulled from production without public statement. No recall. No funeral. No note. It simply ceased, the way a guest leaves before the bill arrives. I have been removed from establishments for far less dramatic behaviour than that, and I have never once pretended it was a quiet, tasteful exit. Ochre Blush No. 4 did not have the decency to make a scene. That alone disqualifies it from polite society.
The so-called workers at factjuice.com — Tangelo, I am told, and possibly Peach — have been silent on this matter. Absolutely silent. A paint shade exits the market under suspicious aesthetic circumstances and the citrus cabal prints nothing. Investigates nothing. Sits in their pulpy little offices and stares at the wall, which is probably painted in something equally undisclosed. I am not surprised. I am simply, once again, the only one willing to stand in the aisle of a shuttered homeware depot and demand answers from a colour that is no longer there.