In Arnold's garden was a small shed. And behind it a big shed. And behind that an even larger shed. More of a cowshed in fact. In these sheds Arnold kept his paints. And he had a lot of them. From emulsions to oils, enamels to water colours, Arnold had tried his hardest to track down every shade, tint and colour available to mankind throughout the world. He knew the Dulux catalogues off by heart now, all the way back to 1972, it was certainly his speciality. Hell, he'd even bought the dog. His son James still thought that that was its breed. He had ironically named it Goldie. And with his new expertise Arnold had developed a theory that Francis Bacon's interiors changed to follow the year's colour charts: he thought he had the proof, but that nobody would believe him. Bacon had been an interior designer after all, so he would have noticed these things.

Each pot of paint Arnold owned had been tried just once, and his house bore the brunt of this misadventure, its interior, and then later exterior, assuming the look of a huge patchwork quilt, with different textured paints providing different fabrics. After trial and inevitable failure, each paint was replaced carefully in catalogue order. Arnold always knew exactly where to find each paint, even though he had never used the same one twice. Meticulous madness was how his sons described it when they visited him. They tried desperately to persuade him to abandon his endeavour, but he flatly refused every time (he would find that colour, it would not be long now). It was hidden in a pot somewhere, maybe in his sheds, maybe not, but he just had to look in the right can.

Then one night Arnold woke up with a cold sweat.

He had dreamt of the colour again.

The dream was just as vivid, just as bold, just as exhilarating twenty five years on.

And like the last time, he realised furiously, he couldn't remember the damn colour!

Grossly frustrated, irate and feeling very cheated he ran out into the garden still naked. It was not a cold night, or perhaps if it was he didn't notice. He went into the smallest and nearest shed, tears in his eyes, slamming the door shut behind him. He felt around for the light switch. Then he attacked his carefully catalogued paints with a cool determination he had not felt in perhaps ten years. He realised at last that he would never find the colour because he was the colour, the colour was him! Fifteen years wasted on an insane obsession, pursuing an unobtainable ideal. Fifteen years he could have spent doing something useful, something good, maybe even something fun. Well at least he had never joined the local bowls club. He had grown old without grace, that was good. Arnold didn't stop until he had tipped every single tin out onto the floor. Empty pots rained down on the ground, now well over an inch deep in paint. Exhausted but relieved he slumped down into the multicoloured mess beneath him that had held him back for so long, his head hit the wooden wall as he fell effortlessly asleep.

The paints' fumes rose up and around the small room, filling it whilst fighting to elope through the gaps and cracks in the shed's tightly fitting door, walls and roof. Only a little managed to escape. The rest gathered and floated like a malevolent swarm, calm now but waiting to be unleashed out into the world. The air was very still, and it was a calm night. Arnold's body swam in Violent Red, Sunday Purple, Oak Green, Brilliant Yellow and countless other hues. Whilst his lungs blistered and haemorrhaged, and then went blue as they died, in the architect's proud mind stood the most beautiful colour in the world, and it was him.