Christmas cheers are fading, Christmas dinners have been cleared away, and most Christmas trees will soon be demobbed.
But as soon as one annual ritual is over, it is already time for another one: we are entering the season of New Year resolutions.
If you are still looking for a cheering splash of coulour, here is a modest suggestion.
It was inspired by an encounter with an old acquaintance, the Rue du Retrait in Paris’s bleak East End.
This small side street, which connects two far livelier thoroughfares (the Rue de Menilmontant and the Rue des Pyrenees), has never been one of the city’s tourist magnets.
The little fame it has (the reason why I knew about it at all) is down to the fact that this is where Maurice Chevalier grew up (once famous all over the world as the quintessential Frenchman; look him up on Wikipedia, young readers!).
The street is most favourably characterized as “nondescript”, but if you are in a less forgiving mood, you could also call it drab, mousy and utterly cheerless.
The Rue du Retrait speaks of past austerity and deprivation without being romantically dishevelled like some fancier parts of the 20th arrondissement. It is mainly lined by grimly functional, modestly-scaled buildings from the interwar years, interspersed with architectural atrocities from a more recent age.
Or, I should say: that is what the Rue du Retrait used to look like. It no longer does, as we found out on a recent visit to Paris, and we would not have done so – would not even have dreamt of entering the street – if the first few houses on the corner with Rue de Menilmontant had not aroused our curiosity.
It was only on seeing the wall paintings that we decided to go further in – to find a street full of surprises.
While we had been away, a stunning metamorphosis had occurred. The Rue du Retrait, once enshrouded by a cocoon of ashen greyness, had turned into a butterfly.
This is all the more remarkable as the street itself had remained unchanged: no new buildings had been added, and suffice to say, the pattern in which these buildings were arranged had not changed either.
But suddenly, everything looked and felt differently.
So what was new? Only that somebody had decided to apply some paint to the worn and weary walls. A bit of a splash of colour.
A few inspired brushes was all that it had taken: there can surely be no easier way to brighten up a neighbourhood. And to give a whole new face to a community.
Is there perhaps an ever broader lesson to learn from this?
Colour is often misunderstood. We have been conditioned to see it as one of life’s luxury items, pleasant but unnecessary. But this is wrong.
Colour, after all, expresses and spreads joy – and without joy, life is not worth living. No life is possible without colour: only the grim existence of some “dark matter” in the outer expanses of our universe.
A splash of colour, meanwhile, is not only capable of giving new life to a drab street: it can also refresh more favoured surroundings.
Even buildings in a “très chic” quarter like Montmartre can benefit from a splash of paint.
On which note I was delighted to see that new paintings have been added to the stairway in the Abbesses metro station.
When we still lived in Montmartre, rather than taking the elevator on the way down to the platforms, I took the time – once a week or so – of walking down the stairs to enjoy the paintings.
All the colours of my favourite quartier were there: the hazy greys of a spring morning, the reds of the trees in the autumn, the dark browns of house fronts in the street lights at dusk.
But then the paintings fell into neglect and were eventually replaced by photographic images of the area’s tourist sites. I do not think that many people took detours to have a look at those.
Now, however, new paintings have been applied to the walls which are, once again, singing in the dark of the Paris underground. A ray of sunshine is falling into commuter hell.
So here’s the thought. No life is so drab that it is beyond redemption, and no life so fascinatingly diverse that a splash of colour cannot make it even more interesting.
Anything that adds colour to our lives – which includes, for the purposes of our blog, weekend escapes from the monochrome of daily routines and duties – are not just important: they are essential.
So let us look forward to more exciting escapades over the next twelve months with a bit of a splash of colour.
