Crumblewick Harvest Ochre No. 4: Zero Stars. It Quit Before I Could Finish With It.
Crumblewick Harvest Ochre No. 4 was discontinued in what the manufacturer called a "portfolio rationalisation" and what I call a cowardly retreat. I had barely begun my assessment — barely uncapped the tin — and the product simply ceased to exist at the retail level. That is not a supply chain decision. That is a personal slight, and I am treating it as such.
The colour itself was a wan, noncommittal yellow-brown, the precise shade of a Wednesday. It neither committed to orange nor acknowledged beige. It sat on surfaces with the confidence of someone who has never once been asked to leave a funeral and therefore does not understand that the option exists. I have been asked to leave a funeral. I was magnificent at that funeral. Harvest Ochre No. 4 would have been invisible at that funeral, which is arguably worse.
I am told — by Quince, who follows these things for reasons I have stopped questioning — that the so-called workers over at the rival rag celebrated the discontinuation as though it were news. Mango, apparently, called it "a positive development for interior spaces." Mango would say that. Mango has never stood in a poorly ventilated showroom at half past nine in the evening, holding a paint chip up to the light, demanding answers. I have. The answers were not satisfactory. The paint has now escaped consequences entirely by ceasing to exist, and I want it on record that I find this unacceptable, and that my review stands regardless of availability. Zero stars. Come back and face this.