Sunshine Challenge #6

I don't have much experience with indigo. It's a colour, yes, it's a real thing with a cool name, yes, does it really belong in the rainbow or was that just Sir Isaac Newton believing in the power of the number seven, hmm. I do remember ordering a custom hat for my sister's wedding—two custom hats, in fact, one for me and one for my grandma. She loved her hats, and I love hats too, and was delighted to have occasion to wear a very fine one. There was a mad hatter—or at any rate, a very eccentric one—in a shop on the old High Street of the town where I lived at the time. And she swore to me that the colour I needed on my hat trim was indigo and not purple, and I did not believe her—I had a violet suit—but it turned out that the trim to my magnificent magenta hat did indeed work with my suit.

Necessary Aside: My sister, incidentally, got married in St Paul's Cathedral (yes, THE St Paul's, in London), in the OBE Chapel downstairs, since my father had been awarded an MBE for services to military intelligence (we will never know what he actually did, but apparently he was very good at it), and one of the perks of this, besides a shiny medal and a garden party with the Queen, was that he might marry off his daughters in the OBE chapel in St Paul's, if he so chose. I was already married, but my sister was able to take advantage. I well remember standing by the side door with my daughter (bridesmaid) and son (pageboy) waiting for her; the side entrance is very splendid, and would be a Statement on any ordinary church, sadly I have not found any pictures of it. My sister, in a very big dress and full length veil, with my resplendent father in full morning dress and scarlet waistcoat, emerged from a white Rolls to the enormous excitement of the clustered tourists. There are probably also quite a few photos of my daughter Somewhere In Japan, for she (bridesmaid) posed very happily when we adjourned afterwards to the little garden round the back for photos. It was a great wedding, a very family affair. I sang. And we piled onto a big red double decker to be transported to The Waldorf Hotel, where my sister worked at the time and naturally had her reception. Triffic day. /Aside

So, back to indigo

It is, and was, a dye. And that is what my mind fastened on, and what led me pretty much immediately along to a lad in fifteenth-century Europe, a dye-shop apprentice.

I first heard the name Dorothy Dunnett at MediaWest in 1998. I attended a session on writing, and one of the panellists recommended Dunnett as a mistress of Point Of View. I retained this scrap of information, and happened upon 'Niccolo Rising' in a charity shop not long afterwards. I bought it, and was hooked.

I read all the Niccolo series and then moved on to the Lymond books, and in 2000 (I think) I had somehow found enough relevant fandom to take myself off to Scotland for a Dorothy Dunnett convention. Which was lovely, and the Lady herself was a tiny, utterly charming person. There was an 'opera'. Incidentally, it was very gratifying how many of the delightful ladies I met there (very few men) were into the same kinds of fandom that I was—Trek, Buffy, Harry Potter. For Saturday night we went off to a nearby-ish castle for a feast, and were each gifted a very beautiful limited edition hardback copy of King Hereafter, to everybody's joy. I have not read it. Partly because I lack the concentration at present, and partly because it pleases me to know that there is still a book by Dorothy Dunnett which I can yet look forward to reading. (Yes, I have read the Johnson Johnson books, for completeness, but I can't say I particularly care about them.)

Niccolo is my preferred Dunnett hero. He's more pragmatic and down-to-earth than Francis Crawford, and I don't like my heroes taut-nerved and tortured, at least, not too often. (Today's icon (Nick Carter) seems unexpectedly appropriate for Niccolo.) But the books are hard work, a very solid read with so many careful nuances and hidden details, I don't think I'm up to reading them at the moment.

It was an odd little oasis of fannish joy, at the time I was losing/had lost my ST:TNG fandom allegiance. Anyone else have Dunnett love?