Every so often someone writes in, usually new, usually polite, and asks why the Paddock Alert Level on the top of every page says MAUVE and what the other levels are. I am asked this more often than I am asked about Beryl, which tells you something about people, or about mauve.
So, once and for all.
How the level is set
The Paddock Alert Level is reviewed nightly by me, from the verandah, at or about 2:47 am, which is the time they came and therefore the time I am awake. I look at the sky over the Top Paddock. I listen to the dogs. I check the windmill against the stars to see if anything is in front of it. I consult my gut, which Dr Faraday has measured at a consistent 3 Fu and describes as “a reliable instrument, if rarely cleaned”.
Then I set the level. The level is mauve.
Why it is always mauve
Because the threat is always there. That is what people don’t understand about an alert level. It is not a weather report. It does not go up and down because something happened last night. It goes up and down because the situation changed, and the situation has not changed since 1994, because they have not brought her back, and they have not explained themselves, and the Men in Beige have not stopped coming, and the Bureau has not replied.
Mauve means: elevated, with a chance of hovering. It means bring the cattle in off the Top Paddock before dark. It means keep the camera on the fridge. It means if you see a white Commodore, do not get the tape out. It is the correct level. It has been the correct level for fifteen years and it will be the correct level until a cow comes down a beam in the other direction.
The other colours
I am asked what the other colours are and the honest answer is I would have to look. Shane made the chart in 1996 on a program that no longer exists, and the chart has been on the back of the pantry door since, behind the aprons, and I have not needed it.
From memory, and in order:
- Beige. The lowest level. No activity. Named before the Men in Beige, and I would change it now but Shane says the chart “isn’t editable”.
- Olive. Something seen, nothing taken. A light. A shape in the dam.
- Mauve. Elevated, with a chance of hovering. Here we are.
- Burnt orange. Active abduction in progress. Has never been declared, because by the time I’ve seen the beam and got to the chart, it’s over, and we’re back to mauve.
- Red. I’ll come to red.
Noreen says there was also a “teal” but neither of us can remember what it meant and the chart has a tea stain where it would be.
Why not red
People say, Warren, your cow was taken, your wife’s foil budget is in the thousands, you’ve got a woman in town who’s been lifted forty-odd times and a bloke with a doctorate from the Cayman Islands measuring the sky with his chest. Surely that’s red.
No. Red is alarmist.
Red says panic. Red says the thing is happening now, to you, and you should run. And the truth of it, after fifteen years, is that it is not happening now. It happened. It keeps nearly happening. It hovers. That is a very specific feeling and I think mauve is the colour of it. Not quite blue, not quite red, a bit purple, the colour of the sky about ten minutes after the beam goes up and you’re standing in the paddock in your socks with the camera running and nothing to point it at.
Red would be a lie. Mauve is the truth. Mauve is a lot of people’s truth, if they’re honest.
A word from management
The chart is laminated and on the pantry door and it does not have a teal on it. It has mauve, which I think is because that was the only colour the printer had left. The tea stain is Warren's. — Noreen
Could it ever change?
Yes. Down, if they explain themselves. Up, if they come for the rest of the herd, in which case you will not need the website to tell you, because I will be ringing the bell on the verandah and you will hear it in town.
Until then: mauve. Bring the cattle in. Keep watching the paddock.
— Warren
Document U8MC-09-0506. Status: CONFIRMED. This file is retained indefinitely, or until the Men in Beige ask for it, whichever is never.