La Roche-Posay Effaclar Duo+ Unifiant Tinted Moisturiser review, and an update on papal passings and parallel pustules

Source: Wikimedia Commons ~ Bekstet (author)

Topic advisory: I promise this post is not remotely anti-religious, but it does contain coverage of "dermatological derangement" against a backdrop of ecclesiastical turmoil.

Back in 2016 I wrote a post on a couple of skin issues, namely dark circles under my eyes (I don't remember ever having them in fact!) and acne. In those days I used a multi-faceted approach to subdue the spots, including antibiotics, probiotics, fish oil (to tamp down inflammation generally), and a suite of La Roche-Posay products: Effaclar Duo (a spot zapping cream), plus an astringent exfoliant of theirs and a spray called Serozinc, and finally, jojoba oil. 

For anyone who doesn't remember the original post - which I am guessing is more or less everyone reading! (otherwise skip down to "The antibiotic remedy I was given") - here are some extracts from it again (it's 52 rather than 43 years now...):

"...I have suffered from acne continuously for 43 years. A GP once described me, with perhaps a little more candour than was indicated, as, technically speaking - from a hormonal perspective - 60% man. Another breezily remarked that in my case, puberty might well segue seamlessly into the menopause and beyond. And blow me, but he was right too. I don't know what percentage of the population experience uninterrupted skin eruptions well into middle age, but I know that acne in adults, especially women, is more common than you might think. Spots tend to be confined to the jawline and chin in adulthood at least - when I was 18 I had them all over my face - topping out at 64 in total during the 'acme' of my acne, as it were. It is hard for non-sufferers to imagine the extent of pain and discomfort involved, not to mention the blow to one's self-confidence - even now, it isn't easy to socialise when I get major breakouts, as for one thing having acne seems downright incongruous at this time of life.

One unexpected upside of my problem skin was the fact that it turned out to be my passport to a year spent as a teaching 'assistante' in a school on the Riviera. At an interview to decide whereabouts in France I was to be deployed, I had a chance to defend my top choice of the Cote d'Azur. I think my reason surprised the judging panel, for instead of mentioning the usual suspects of a chance to 'swan about on yachts' or 'go celeb spotting at the Cannes Film Festival', I piped up: 'The sun will be good for my acne', and that was that.

...Oh, and following an overnight explosion of some 30 pustules(!) the day the Pope died in 2005, I managed to secure an emergency appointment with a German pharmacist, who - using only an enormous encyclopaedia and a winning smile - knocked up a wonder blend of two antibiotics in cream form, that had the rash subdued within a week or so. Meanwhile, I kept my back to the window in meetings at all times, and cupped my erupting chin pensively in my hand."

The antibiotic remedy I was given was really quite ingenious, and my doctor back in Britain said he would never think to make a paste out of two antibiotics, or even use antibiotics in cream form to start with. The handwriting was so sketchy on the red and white plastic "sippy cup"-style receptacle the mixture came in that it was several years before the doctor twigged definitively to what it said, and he made a point of telling me at my next appointment: erythromicin and metronidazole.  

Around that time I happened to be working in Germany near the town where the pharmacy had been, so I made a detour to go back and thank the lady concerned. She really was a star, even though the first couple of days were still cringe-makingly embarrassing while the cream got to work.

These days, at the age of nearly 66, my complexion is much better on the whole, and Effaclar Duo+ Unifiant is the only skincare product I use for breakouts now. It is a foundation-coloured cream that stings a bit and dries the spot out very effectively - often overnight or in a couple of nights at most. It can also be layered quite easily with foundation - it blends in well, and even on its own the colour happens to work with my skin tone. It is a little drying, so you need to keep your skin hydrated the rest of the time, but I tend not to moisturise that area at night when treating the spot, so as not to dilute the product's drying efficacy. It is worth experimenting to find the way to apply Effaclar Duo that looks unobtrusive by day, while allowing it to work optimally at night. Unless a spot is really bad, I tend to only treat it at night when I don't mind what I look like. The other great thing about the product, apart from how well it works, is that the tube has a very finely tapered top, so you can dispense minute amounts just where you want them.

As you may have inferred, the trigger for this post was the recent passing of Pope Francis. Since the death of John Paul II, which coincided with my original outbreak, there was Benedict XVI, though he retired of course rather than died, so I don't count him. Meaning that Francis is the only pope to die in office since that fateful day in 2005.

Well, you can imagine that on the day the news was announced I peered anxiously in the mirror to see what mayhem might have appeared on my chin overnight. There was one lone but quite red and angry spot that had yet to come to a head, so I'd got away lightly this time. ;) And let's hope the next pope is pretty young (as they go), such that when he finally joins the Holy See in the sky, I will at last be well past puberty in dermatological terms. 

Oh, and I can thoroughly recommend the film "Conclave"...!

1903 Conclave ~ Source: Wikimedia Commons (unknown author)

Editor's note

The timing of this post is in no way a predictor of future posting frequency, but I ran with it on account of its being "topical", plus my last post was only really an announcement of something in the press...

Photo at the top is of the cathedral in Xanten, where the original incident occurred.

Mike O'Shaughnessy's Perfume Stories prison workshops are featured in The Guardian!

Back in February 2023, I wrote a post about my donation of a 1960s bottle of Madame Rochas to Mike O'Shaughnessy, a senior lecturer in Graphic Design and Illustration at John Moores University, who is also passionate about fragrance. He added it to his collection of vintage perfume to use in workshops with inmates as an olfactory trigger of memories of their past, encouraging them to write stories or draw pictures evoked by the scents. I am a firm believer that rehabilitation is a necessary component of prison life, and salute Mike for coming up with such a novel and engaging initiative.

Madame Rochas does time...travelling, as the Perfume Stories workshops go "inside"

Out of the blue Mike DM-ed me the other day with a link to a recent article by The Guardian's North of England correspondent, Hannah Al-Othman, about his scent project, which is happily still going strong, and I thought to share it here. 

Liverpool academic's scent workshops help prisoners remember their past

It looks like the project has really taken off since I last talked to Mike two years ago: he has trained prison staff to deliver the workshops now, for example, and while they are still part of English lessons in most prisons, they have been rolled out to other courses in HMP Holme House in Stockton-on-Tees, namely hospitality, business studies and barbering. Also, a company called Carvansons has since come on board, creating bespoke scents in response to requests from offenders who wish to capture a particular scent from their childhood, say. 

I am not sure whether Madame Rochas has done her time now, and the scent collection is completely different these days, in which case she may be released back into my custody one day...;)

Finally meeting Linda Pilkington of Ormonde Jayne, 14 years after "train stopped play"...!

Linda Pilkington

When I first fell down the perfume rabbit hole in 2008, I started sampling designer brands by buying carded samples on eBay, and it wasn't long before I discovered Jo Malone, which acted as a gateway brand - or "back of the wardrobe" brand, if you will - to the Narnian land of niche fragrance beyond. And my first properly niche love was Ormonde Jayne, whose Signature Collection I likened to a capsule wardrobe (wardrobe metaphors abound!). I said to friends back then - and still stand by the comment - that if I had to pick one "desert island niche house" it would be Ormonde Jayne, whose original yet eminently wearable stable of scents nicely covers every season and occasion, compact as it was. I wrote a post on that theme, in which I paired each of ten original scents with a specific outfit. I am no fashion writer, but it's quite a fun piece if you are new to Bonkers, familiar with the OJ line, and curious to see if you agree with the looks / ensembles I have gone for!

Then I don't recall exactly how it came about, but somehow I had arranged to meet Linda Pilkington, the founder of Ormonde Jayne, in London at the Old Bond Street store...14 years ago almost to the day. It was not to be, however, owing to a mysterious lack of crew on my designated train, so I had to ring up and cancel at a couple of hours' notice. Fast forward to last November, when I was one of many people mailed by Linda's PR, with an invitation to chat to her on Zoom. She was setting aside a couple of half days, split into 20 minute slots, in which to try a particular scent "live" with her, or simply chew the cud about perfume - there was no fixed agenda. I wasn't quick enough off the mark to catch the first batch of dates, but due to popular demand Linda kindly released another half day not long afterwards and I was able to bag a slot then.

In preparation for the call, I had typed up a questionnaire, just as though this were a work project!, but ended up flitting around and going off-piste, only covering a fraction of what I had hoped to. And so at the end of the 20 minutes, Linda suggested I pop into their new flagship store (still in Old Bond Street, but in a different spot), and in the New Year I set up a date in late January. But before getting to that in-person meeting, here are some highlights from the Zoom call...

Royal Arcade, Old Bond St

ZOOM CALL - 26/11/24

Company overview

Linda was clearly proud of the fact that Ormonde Jayne remains 100% independent, with a loyal customer base, including different generations in families! She explained that the company had grown quite a lot in the last 18 months, but in a controlled way, keeping the same philosophy and team, such that she felt ready to go to the next level.

Most asked question in the Zoom calls? (I was one of the last participants)

Her favourite perfume in the Ormonde Jayne line! Answer: Ormonde Woman. "It speaks to me because hemlock put me on the map - it's my precious bottle of perfume. Makes me feel confident and one notch up." I remarked that Cristalle had historically fulfilled that "perfume as armour" role for me, and Linda replied that it is also a favourite of hers, and was the inspiration for Tiare, no less. "What did I enjoy smelling like when I was younger?"

"Retired" scents aka "sleeping beauties"

The discussion of Tiare naturally led us to consider reasons why perfumes had had to be discontinued or "retired". Linda likes to call these her "sleeping beauties". It turned out that this has always been due to regulatory or (occasionally) supply reasons. In the case of Tiare, the supplier of the tiare ingredient stopped growing it; mostly, however, the suspension of a perfume was because the formula had suddenly become non-compliant eg Sampaquita, Orris Noir, and Zizan (to take the original Signature Collection as an example). This is almost always - somewhat perversely, you could say - because of the luxurious quality of the composition, with higher percentages of perfume molecules, which on aggregate across the various notes exceed the new permitted amounts.

Linda explained that sometimes they are able to recreate a discontinued perfume with the right certificates and keep the same name - "we are 99% there with Orris Noir" - but with others it wouldn't be possible eg Sampaquita. "If I can't hit it perfectly I don't try."

She spoke of the perfumes they had made in the past for retail partners around the world, such as White Gold and Rose Gold. "They are great perfumes that all took a long time - I am not prepared to let them go. They too are sleeping 'in the library'." She also mentioned True Love, a scent with iris and rose I had not heard of - but having looked it up it seems very much the sort of thing I'd like - and said she definitely wants to bring that back.

Are these Zoom calls a bit like the fragrance PR equivalent of speed dating?

Absolutely!

Source: Ormonde Jayne

STORE VISIT - 23/01/25

The day of my visit was wild, wet and windy, yet the train was running, unlike the previous occasion - and was even on time. I arrived at the boutique with a sodden umbrella, but Linda's assistant whipped it away to dry somewhere and settled me at the table in the window you can see in the photo above, where Linda joined me shortly afterwards. I was struck by how pretty she was, and how petite and youthful and vivacious, a bit like a brunette version of Amanda Holden. She was positively fizzing with energy, and we quickly picked up the thread of our previous conversation, touching again on the retired scents, and what IFRA was so concerned about to have instigated these regulatory changes. 

Why the concern about molecule quantities in a fragrance formula?

Because of perfumes having too many allergens is the short answer. [I am reminded of cholesterol testing: mine was 6.5 about 15 years ago, which was considered normal back then, but my current reading of 5.3 raises an eyebrow because the goalposts have changed. Surely no one in either the medical or the perfume sphere can really know the exact point at which something becomes a risk to health? Same with our weekly units of alcohol guidelines. Plus we are constantly warned that this or that (insert your favourite drink or food ;( ) increases your risk of some quite dire diseases, though the increase in absolute risk is rarely if ever stated, and sometimes not even the nearly meaningless relative one. But I digress...]

Ormonde Jayne perfumes and home fragrances "in the wild"

Linda said in passing that she applies perfume liberally three times a day, including before she gets on the Tube, so that commuters might get a whiff of what she is wearing...in the spirit of spreading the love, ;) (And doing a spot of ambient advertising to boot, why not?) We also talked about the generally high quality scents you can "eavessniff" on the Metro in Paris - Linda fondly remembered one with a "vanilla-y amber-y" vibe. I also learnt that The Mandarin Oriental hotel in London uses an Orris Noir "parfum d'ambiance" (though I didn't catch where exactly), while Brown's Hotel opposite the boutique has Levant in its lobby, and Frangipani in its bathrooms. Linda also spoke of dinner parties at her house, where she was touched to note that all the guests had thoughtfully chosen to wear one of her perfumes. It must be rewarding to know that your creations have brought such pleasure to so many - as with artists and authors - or bands, indeed.

Source: Wikimedia Commons (Author - CVB)

Are any Ormonde Jayne perfumes vegan?

I told Linda that this is the question I get asked most by friends. Turns out there are 3-4 scents in fact, though they are not vegan by design. Linda didn't have their names to hand, but I could perhaps pursue this through her office if it was important to anyone.

What is behind the move to parfum strength?

As people may be aware, the whole of the Ormonde Jayne stable is being relaunched in extrait strength, and the 50ml bottle has been upgraded to 88ml, though a 10ml travel size and a set of 4 x 10ml in each scent are also available. Obviously the bigger bottle and greater concentration have meant a price increase. Linda explained the move by saying that she wanted the perfumes to last longer and offer better value for the consumer. I must admit I will miss the 50ml bottle, as it is a handy size, especially for those of us with big collections, but 88ml is still quite compact compared with those bumper 200ml sizes of the Chanel Exclusifs, say.

Who are some of Ormonde Jayne's celebrity clients?

Goldie Hawn ~ Tolu, Bryan Ferry ~ Ormonde Man, Emma Thompson ~ Ta'if, David Coverdale (Whitesnake) ~ Isfarkand.

How are your cats?

As readers may know, Linda has two cats called Teddy and Freddie. Teddy is a bold, very outgoing ginger cat, who regularly wanders onto the set of a local film company, where he is petted by the cast of whatever is being shot that day. He has even featured in a couple of ads by nonchalantly photobombing their shoots, eg one for M & S, and a poster ad for clothing company Uniqlo. Freddie meanwhile, most worryingly - and unusually, as he was not a wanderer - went missing recently. He was eventually spotted in London Zoo, and after concerted searches by the family in the grounds (aka "small game hunting") a rather dishevelled Freddie was found hiding out, and reunited with his owners.

Miscellaneous interesting facts I gleaned

Linda's husband speaks six languages(!), while Linda is learning German (doubtless with a bit of input from Geza Schoen, her co-nose, with whom she is in regular contact). Oh, and she is a big Woody Allen fan. Also, she wipes her desk down every Friday afternoon, to ensure a clean and unscented slate for the week ahead. 

Speaking of Geza Schoen, he came up a few times in the conversation, and Linda spoke warmly of their collaboration. I mentioned having met him in Berlin and how, at the gig he came along to that evening, the band leader happened to be wearing Ormonde Man, without having any idea that someone very closely involved with its creation was in the audience...

After our session, which was about an hour and a half but simply flew, Linda generously picked out some scents to go into a goody bag for me. Then it was time for her to leave for an in-store event at Selfridge's, while I was meeting an old friend - but not before I had my dry umbrella returned to me, and Linda had insisted in a charmingly motherly way that I close my handbag and zip up my coat in case the rain got in...

NB I deliberately didn't consult this wonderfully in-depth interview between Undina and Linda P, (conducted over Zoom in 2021) in advance of either of my sessions with her, so as not to be influenced by her earlier responses. Having just looked again at Undina's post, I see there is some crossover with my post, but we each covered different areas as well. And to be honest, when I got to meet Linda I realised that because of a multiple pairs of glasses issue I couldn't see both her and my questionnaire properly at the same time, so ended up ditching the latter and just shooting the breeze.

Scent and the Art of the Pre-Raphaelites: a wafty interactive exhibition at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts

The Blind Girl by John Everett Millais

Back in October, a neighbour kindly tipped me off about an exhibition starting that month at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Edgbaston. I recently remembered that it was due to finish on 26th January, so I girded my loins sharpish and bought a train ticket to Birmingham for the following day. I also carefully researched bus stops and timetables, and found the journey surprisingly quick and easy on public transport. As I got off at University North Gate, I noticed the sign on the driver's cab door advertising the different kinds of fare available.

"Oh", I said to him, "I should have bought a day ticket and saved myself a quid."

"Yeah, you should" he replied matter of factly, clearly not feeling an iota of regret that he didn't suggest that option.

From the bus stop it was a quick scurry through the jumble of concrete campus buildings to reach the Barber Institute itself, an elegant Art Deco building with heraldic motifs on the front facade, adding a welcome touch (note that this is a "pop"-free zone!) of colour. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons ~ Gavin Warrins

There are three important things to know about the Barber Institute: firstly, it was founded in 1932 by a woman - Lady Martha Constance Hattie Barber, née Onions - a scion of the Worcestershire Onions family of bellows makers. Yep, not the branch in Dudley, for those who know their Onions. ;) Lady Barber was 63 at the time, which goes to show that it is never to late to embark on new ventures. Sadly though, she died four months later, seven years before the Institute opened its doors to the public.

The second thing to know about the Barber Institute is that it doesn't have a cafe. Instead it has a sort of "cafe nook", such as you might find in the foyer of a budget motel when looking in vain for the breakfast room. There is a hot drinks machine and a fridge with cold drinks and a limited (rather sad looking) selection of sandwiches, plus a couple of racks of crisps, biscuits and chocolate bars, but you'll be disappointed if, like me, you were envisioning a bowl of piping hot pumpkin soup with croutons and a ciabatta roll. No, you go and pay for your items in the gift shop, including an empty cup, and take it back to the machine to make your own beverage. There is a pleasant seating area in the entrance hall, but it still feels a bit makeshift. I mistakenly thought I'd seen a knife and fork symbol on Google maps, but having checked, there is only one of an artist's palette to denote a gallery. There is certainly no food item you can buy there that requires either utensil, even if the gift shop had been able to dispense plates as well as cups. I should stress that the Barber in no way overstates its facilities: the unusual refreshment logistics are clearly stated in the FAQs of its website.

Apologies for that big catering digression! The third thing to know about the Barber is that back packs (even very small ones) are not allowed to be worn on your back, in case you knock over/into any of the exhibits. Backpacks don't have to be left in a secure cloakroom, not that there is one, but must instead be worn on your front, like those baby papooses minus the baby, or a ginormous fanny pack. The museum staff did not seem to entertain the possibility that you might still knock into things front ways on, which I could see happening as I leant over statuary to peer at the explanatory blurb of a painting behind. 

I decided to visit the scent-themed exhibition first, the interactive part of which came with this health warning:

I guess they have to cover themselves in case of hyperallergic visitors, and I hope it didn't deter anyone else who eschews perfume as something a bit "chemically". The scented component of the exhibition - of which more anon - was certainly very localised in a corner of one room. 

Without further ado, here is the background to the exhibition from the Institute's flyer:

"Paintings of the Pre-Raphaelite and Aesthetic movements are rich in references to scent. Linked with concepts of hedonism, beauty, and synaesthesia, fragrance is an often-forgotten aspect of these famously sensual works. Ideas of aroma and smell also intersected with the most heated issues of Victorian society, including sanitation, urban morality, immigration, race, mental health, faith, and the rise in women's independence." 

The exhibition is the brainchild of Dr Christina Bradstreet, author of "Scented Visions: Smell in Art, 1850 - 1914." The paintings she has curated fall into one of three sub-groups, each connoting a different scent experience - whether good or bad(!). In some pictures the scent link is more overt, for example a woman smelling flowers or holding a perfume receptacle of some kind, whereas with others you have to infer the olfactory dimension to the scene, such as the painting of a sex worker at her window, beyond which lies a whiffy sewage-ridden River Thames. (Thoughts of the Past by John Rodham Spencer Stanhope, painted in 1859, shortly after The Great Stink in London.)

Close up from Lilium Auratum by John Frederick Lewis

Spring Awakenings ~ A number of the paintings portray women in garden or pastoral scenes, surrounded by flowers, "lost in reverie" or in varying degrees of transport. There is a freshness and a dreamy quality to these pictures, with rainbows adding a spiritual dimension. As Christina Bradstreet explains in her introduction to the exhibition, the Victorian physiologist Alexander Bain believed that multisensory experiences were the appropriate response to imagery, whereby a picture of flowers "gives an agreeable suggestion of the fragrance", triggering memories of smelling real flowers.

Gentle Spring by Frederick Sandy

All Smell is Disease ~ There is, however, a darker side to scent in the Victorian era, and certain smell memories are ones that you really wouldn't want to invoke, not least because they were thought to be linked to physical or mental decay. Until the discovery of germs, there was a widespread belief that miasma - the stench of decomposing matter - was a direct cause of diseases like cholera or typhoid, and even a cloying, animalic perfume was capable of inducing lethargy and moral turpitude. In the painting below, there is a poisonous potion emitting violet vapours in Medea's hand (about to be deployed on her murderous spree!), and a discarded rose at her feet, possibly symbolising her broken relationship with Jason. Violet perfumes were very much in vogue at that time, making this scented concoction the very essence of toxic femininity.

Medea by Evelyn de Morgan

Bells & Smells ~ There is only one painting in this group, which represents the furore over the use of the liturgical trappings of Roman Catholicism in High Anglican churches - things like bells, altar lights and incense censers. By 1876, incense burning at any point in church services had been banned.

A Saint of the Eastern Church by Simeon Solomon

The AirParfum Experience

This brings me to the immersive aspect of the exhibition: visitors press a button on a machine and release a puff of a particular scent that is associated with a specific painting, thereby enabling them to experience it in a multisensorial way.

There was also the option to sniff the end of a stopper instead if you didn't want a whoosh of scented air in your face, even fleetingly. It was clever how each scent disappeared so quickly after activation, allowing many visitors to use the machine in quick succession.

Christina Bradstreet collaborated with Gregorio Sola, a Senior Perfumer at Puig, which invented the AirParfum technology. He is an expert in the field of developing fragrances for public spaces, and created a similar installation around a single painting at the Prado in Madrid (The Sense of Smell by Jan Brueghel and Rubens), with no fewer than ten scents all conveying different aspects of this work. Here there are three in total, of which two relate to Millais' The Blind Girl. The first of these conjures up the rain soaked meadow / petrichor, clouds, the ditch, and a cotton T-shirt, with added aldehydes to suggest luminosity and brightness, while the second homes in on the blind girl's wool and cotton shawl, which her sister is discreetly sniffing. The third scent evokes the scene in Solomon's A Saint of the Eastern Church (a mix of incense, brass, candles, wooden columns, vestment fabric, and the sprig of myrtle held by the saint). Sadly only this last one worked for me, while the other two were more like air freshener or a rather pungent functional fragrance.

It may be that the team did indeed capture the very things they set out to, but those scents were simply disagreeable to my nose and I couldn't get past that. The incense one, however, was so congenial that I would happily have worn it. It is a shame, because I love the concept behind AirParfum, and welcome any attempt to promote fragrance to the public, as well as the specific aim of bringing these paintings to life through an added sense. Apparently the installation at the Prado increased the dwell time in front of the scented paintings from 32 seconds to a whopping 13 minutes! I know reactions to fragrance are very personal, and the gentleman who stepped  up after me liked the other two and not the incense one ;), plus it isn't even about liking a scent, but rather parsing its elements and making a connection with the corresponding painting. Having read a detailed account of the creative process behind each scent, including which notes were used to convey which aspects of the paintings, it is clear that the fragrances were meticulously and thoughtfully crafted, yet for whatever reason I could only "read" one as a match to its art work. Maybe I should have spent longer, activating as many puffs as it took to fully experience The Blind Girl olfactorily, but I was conscious of people behind waiting to use the machine. Had I chosen to go in the week I could probably have taken my time.

Overall though, I found the exhibition fascinating and well worth a visit: the paintings were glorious, and could be appreciated even by those not interested in perfume. It also made me realise that actually, unless we are talking abstract art, pretty much any scene you cared to paint would have at least an implicit scent component...you just have to let your olfactory memory be jogged. To be honest, I wouldn't have associated fragrance with the painting of The Blind Girl off the bat, which is the main focus of the AirParfum experience, though I know better now. And having been primed to look for scented cues through the prism of Pre-Raphaelite art, I am raring to apply it to other paintings in the gallery, and beyond - whether intentional or not...!

I would love to hear from anyone else who has been to the exhibition - or who catches it on its future travels (eg to the Watts Gallery in Guildford) - and am especially keen to learn people's take on the AirParfum trio of scents.

For more information, there's an interesting podcast with Christina Bradstreet here.

2024: My Bumper Bookish Year

Two of the many tsundokus fighting for my future attention

In 2009 I read five books all year; in 2024 I read 55! The difference being of course that back then I was working, and almost all my reading was confined to briefs on the next work project, and going over my interview write ups. It has taken me several years in fact to finally accept that I am "retired" - it's been a slow, subliminal descent into "economic inactivity" - to use the Government's thinly disguised pejorative - due to structural changes in my field of industrial market research, compounded by the pandemic, and my own ill health in 2022.

The upside of this is the newfound freedom to read whenever I want, and not just on holiday, say. Even now, I still feel a bit guilty sitting down with a book in the middle of the day, and am more comfortable reading at mealtimes or in the bath, when it counts as multi-tasking. Or in bed at night, when it counts as a form of sleep hygiene.

They're big, but not clever.

I thought I would share the list of what I read in 2024, as it would give me vicarious pleasure to think of someone else enjoying a book as much as I did. My favourite genre is the psychological thriller, and I deliberately despatched a lot of those so I could give them away afterwards and clear some much needed space. As you can see from these photos, the tsundokus are taking over the front room. The flaw in my grand plan is that for every thriller I gave away, I'd see four more I fancied in a charity shop, so it is very much a case of one step forwards and four back. One day I may get a grip, and resist the allure of the bargain book, but between charity shop browsing and online purchases of used copies, that day may not come anytime soon.

Tsundoku containers that slide neatly under a chair

Here and there I have consciously interspersed my usual fictional fare with what I perceive as a more "highbrow" or worthy tome, the 600+ page literary biography of Ted Hughes being the most obvious example of that. I did enjoy it, but it was very densely written and required a great deal of focus and commitment. I fear social media has atomised my attention span to the point where I am finding it harder to concentrate on a more challenging read. This year I will try to stretch myself again with more of these "difficult" books, perhaps with the allegedly easiest novel by Virginia Woolf, "The Years", or Hilary Mantel's memoir. I have left them in a prominent position on the coffee table to motivate me into picking them up.

Same tsundoku from another angle

I shan't give the books from last year (none of which feature in the photos) stars or ratings of any kind, not least because I can't remember what some of them were about. I don't know if this is an age thing, but due to creeping cognitive decline of some sort I forget the plot of books almost as soon as I have read the ending - it can even occur when I am only part way through, haha, if there are numerous strands to the action or it has been a while since I last picked the book up. So I have decided to mark in bold type the 15 books I distinctly remember enjoying very much and would highly recommend. There will surely have been others, but 15 is a good number to settle on.

Under sofa stash, not even in a container!

And oh look - two books called "Trespass"!

2024

Robyn Harding - The Party

James Bowen - A Street Cat Named Bob

Jonathan Coe - The House of Sleep

Lucy Atkins - The Night Visitor

Penelope Lively - How it All Began

Jean Ray - La Cité de l'Indicible Peur

Lucy Atkins - Magpie Lane

Michael Mosley - 4 Weeks to Better Sleep

Lucy Atkins - The Other Child

Rosie Walsh - The Man Who Didn't Call

Anne Enright - The Forgotten Waltz

C L Taylor - Sleep

J P Delaney - The Girl Before

Sally Rooney - Beautiful World, Where Are You?

Terry Darlington - Narrow Dog to Indian River**

Arlene Hunt - While She Sleeps

Rose Tremain - Trespass

Tony Hawks - A Piano in the Pyrenees

Harry Bingham - Talking to the Dead

Catherine Cooper - The Château

Alex Michaelides - The Silent Patient

Nicci French - Saturday Requiem

Catherine Cooper - The Chalet

Jon Ronson - Lost at Sea

Lucy Atkins - Windmill Hill

Paul Magrs - Puss in Books

Shaun Bythell - The Diary of a Bookseller

Michael Mosley - Covid-19

Kate Atkinson - Big Sky

Monica Heisy - really good, actually

Penelope Fitzgerald - The Bookshop

Jonathan Bate - Ted Hughes: The Unauthorised Life

Sarah Rayne - The Murderer inside the Mirror

Sally Vickers - The Librarian

Stig Abell - Death under a Little Sky

Richard Osman - The Thursday Murder Club

Louise Kennedy - Trespass

Erin Kelly - The Skeleton Key

Terry Darlington - Narrow Dog to Wigan Pier**

Hannah Jane Parkinson - The Joy of Small Things

Minette Walters - The Echo

Barbara Pym - Some Tame Gazelle

Peter Mayle - A Year in Provence (a re-read)

Jane Shilling - The Stranger in the Mirror (a re-read)

Hillary Waugh - Last Seen Wearing

Ursula Parrott - Ex-Wife

Peter Mayle - My Twenty-Five Years in Provence

Lisa Jewell - None of This is True

Nick Pettigrew - Anti-Social

Lucy Foley - The Guest List

Celia Imrie - Not Quite Nice

Cathy Kelly - Other Women

Lizzy Barber - My Name is Anna

Elizabeth Taylor - Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont

Linda Green - While my Eyes were Closed

Bag for life temporary accommodation

I should say I enjoyed everything I read, and there were no "DNF"s. The last time I did that was with a biography of Coco Chanel, a fact of which I am not proud, but there was just too much detail about Russian ballet dancers. (Click on the link for a photo of yet another bookcase!)

I would have done a collage of all the books in my "Top 15", but I am not sure I could readily find them, and some I have since lent out, or left in France (where there is another bookcase, and more piles). There are three other bookcases in this house that aren't pictured here, which are largely full of unread titles . ;)

Have you any good books to recommend from your recent reading? 

Not that I should be encouraged to acquire any more, obviously, but there's always the library...

Another bag for life full

**The author, Terry Darlington, was my old boss at Research Associates, and the reason I relocated to The Midlands nearly 40 years ago. The Wigan Pier book is especially autobiographical, and there are even references to a couple of projects I worked on, and a vague reference to "female staff".

Simon sniffs: a pioneering perfume protégé is doused down under in a fragrant Fitzroy foray

Fraser Island by David Stanley (Nanaimo, Canada) via Wikimedia Commons 

It's been over a month since my last post, though there has been the Christmas runaround to contend with, plus it took me several weeks at least to come up with that title. The wags amongst you might say I should have taken longer. 

Regular readers may remember my friend Simon, whose growing interest in niche fragrance I have been privileged to help fuel: his perfume collection is featured on the blog - kept in the tiny fridge on his narrow boat, despite space being at an absolute premium! - and I have also covered his various brand epiphanies, namely those of the unexpectedly exclamatory Fragrance Republic, Creed, and the unexpectedly capitalised BEX London. He has now been interested in perfume long enough to be upset by the discontinuation of favourite scents - nay, whole brands - in the case of FR!. (That may well be its own exclamation mark.)

In late November Simon travelled to Australia to spend time with his daughter, who had been working on a nine month contract out there. During his trip, covering Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, The Blue Mountains and The Gold Coast, he sent me a running photo reportage, which included the amusing leitmotiv of "Australians telling it like it is". (All the following photos are by him.)

None of this "tall" or "grande" nonsense...and be careful what you do with the cup afterwards!

Scissors - it needed saying, I guess, as there is of course the alternative of clippers.

Simon's favourite spot of his whole itinerary was the upmarket Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. He is a bit of a "cafe lizard" and coffee aficionado, and I sense he was well served there in its sybaritic watering holes. 

I don't care for coffee myself, but could totally see the appeal of the squishy sofas, vibrant art works, and architectural pot plants placed at strategic intervals. Those are just the sort of comfy cafés where "doing a bit on work on your laptop" could all too easily segue into full time squatting.

The gorgeous photos of Fitzroy kept coming...

And it's not just hats the Aussies hang corks on!

One morning, Simon popped into a perfumery in Fitzroy called Lore, on Brunswick Street. It makes me happy that someone I nudged down the rabbit hole should choose to visit a perfume shop 17,000 km away with no prompting from me - I was actually asleep at the time. ;) For Simon is a fully fledged fumehead, sniffing stuff I have never heard of, such as the Australian brand, Goldfield & Banks. Not only that, but he made a purchase of a scent from the line, Wood Infusion. 

Notes: Australian Exotic Woods, Sweet Orange, Orris Italy, Agarwood, Lavender Australia, Patchouli Indonesia, Musk, Amber

(Origin Woods: Fraser Island - Queensland)

The creative director for Goldfield & Banks is Dimitri Weber, and the perfumer is German/Iranian nose, Hamid Merati-Kashani, whose other credits include several perfumes for Amouage, Marly, and Piguet. 

Helping him home in on a perfume he would love, Simon was under the expert guidance of Clea, one of the store's sales assistants, who mentioned that she knew and admired Dimitri Weber. She explained his artistic vision and how his fragrances reflect the region in terms of their choice of ingredients and/or general vibe. Simon even showed Clea my blog(!), a promotional manoeuvre that was entirely spontaneous on his part, I swear.

I see that the Lore Perfumery website also "tells it like it is", with the headline: "We Love Perfume", and the injunction to "Stalk Us". There's a Q & A with Clea on there in which she mentions that her favourite scent - if she absolutely had to pick one, which we all know is a deeply disturbing concept - is Nasomatto's Blamage, "Not only for the fragrance, but what it stands for." Now that intriguing statement had me immediately diving into Google to find out what she meant, and the result is very interesting - sounds like the sort of stunt Geza Schoen would pull! This quote is from Sydney fashion retailer, Sorrythanksiloveyou:

The creator wants us to know: “From our mistakes, can come something beautiful”. Legend has it that Gualtieri blindfolded himself and picked several ingredients at random, determined to create something from the chaos. The result is Blamage (the German word for ‘Disgrace’), a metallic, woody, and floral affair. 

Now though I had not heard of Goldfield & Banks, I immediately thought of someone who would have, namely Portia, the doyenne of antipodean perfume writing. He is doubtless familiar with Lore Perfumery, along with readers of his late great blog, Australian Perfume Junkies. And sure enough, I found a review of Wood Infusion and other scents he owns from the line over on Perfume Posse, and told Simon that he was in distinguished company with his choice.

And of course, if he is a perfumista worth his salt, Simon will want to go back to Australia one day and check out the inspiration for Wood Infusion, Fraser Island (or K'gari, the traditional name by which it is now known again)...

The end of a second summer...

NB I do not wish to suggest by my use of the word "doused" in the title that my friend was in any sense spritzed to excess during his visit - he may have been sampling things on blotters, or trying a discreet spray on a single wrist, or sniffing nozzles of testers, I don't know. I deployed the word purely - and shamelessly - for its alliterative value. For an instance of my being literally doused in perfume in a shop in Paris, see here.

PS There wasn't an obvious place to insert this earlier, but my mother is from Australia! She was born in a suburb of Perth, but also lived in Sydney and Broome, finally leaving for England in 1928, at the age of eight. I have been myself, in 1993, and would love to go back one day, having long since forgotten about the pesky flies. ;)

Fleetingly floofy: Color Wow Dream Cocktail Carb-Infused Leave-in Treatment review

It's been a long time since I last wrote about a hair care product on Bonkers, but my recent quest to find something to give my fine, limp hair a bit of a lift in the crown may be of interest to any other seekers of volume, oomph, or anything vaguely resembling an artfully tousled look.

In recent years my hair had been steadily growing, and I rather liked it long. However, lately the ends had been getting wayward and starting to point in random directions, while the sides were flat to my head, pulling my face down with them, and making me look a bit like a downtrodden housemaid. An opportunistic hairdresser in Bognor Regis decided to cut these ends off, while my regular hairdresser back home decided I'd look better with my hair even shorter, in a chin length bob. He said I needed to go this short in order to grow my hair back again in a better way. It was all rather over my head, despite being all around it, hehe, but there was much mention of layers being either too long or too short, my fringe being in fact two fringes laid on top of each other - both of them also wayward, kinky, and overly thinned - and the need to be patient.

So I now have a shortish bob that still lies flat to my head and is fuller at the bottom, moreover it sits away from my head in a sort of triangle shape rather than the bouffant ball of my imaginings. Maybe I would have needed to go shorter still to achieve that look, but I wasn't daring enough to ask. Do I mean "triangle" in fact or "trapezium", bearing in mind that the top of my head is not quite as pointy as the apex of a triangle? But you get the picture. I think I still look like a downtrodden housemaid, just a shorter version - though occasionally I think I might pass for a minor character in Upstairs Downstairs or a Molly Keane novel. What I do have now is definitely a style, but I'm not convinced it does me any favours, and I am forever tucking bits of hair behind my ears in a bid to reduce the width of the base of the triangle. I was tempted for a moment there to say "hypotenuse", but the top of my head isn't a right angle after all. ;) 

This dissatisfaction in turn prompted me to pay more attention to the many hair and beauty ads and reels that appear in my Facebook timeline...there are an awful lot to do with extreme weight loss, face lifts, miraculous shaper pants, inspiring life advice from female celebrities who are aging gracefully, wigs, and other hair transformations in salons filmed in real time and partly speeded up - these are invariably in Spanish or Italian for some reason. I do also get more off the wall ads, such as ones for hydrating jelly sweets for dementia sufferers - Facebook may know something about my future that I would prefer to disregard, but I did buy some regular Midget Gems the other day as a precaution.

Source: Color Wow's YouTube channel

Then I spied a video from the US company Color Wow - obviously I feel the need right off the bat to explain the lack of a "u" - for its Dream Cocktail product, a gel spray which you squirt onto your hair before styling - it is heat activated, and needs a jolly good blow dry to work. It also has a bit of inherent heat protection as an added bonus. This isn't the exact same video as I saw on Facebook, but it features the same woman, who goes from flat to mega flouncy in a couple of minutes. Her projectile fringe looks like a Donald Trump combover on steroids, and I thought: "I could do with some of that!"I have since heard that Dream Cocktail is endorsed by Chris Appleton, celebrity stylist to the Kardashians, but I promise you that wouldn't have influenced me either way had I known that nugget at the outset. ;)

I tell myself again and again to be wary of Facebook ads, ever since I bought some Fairisle patterned Nordic socks that were pictured against a rugged backdrop of fjord-forward scenery, giving me the impression that they were hand knit by pleasantly gnarled old ladies in wooden cabins lit by oil lamps 24/7 owing to the lack of natural light at that latitude. What actually came were nasty acrylic numbers made in China, with a return shipping address of a warehouse in former East Germany.

Hoping firmly that I wasn't making a similar mistake, and that I would receive a tin of crazy foam or squirty cream or at worst perhaps, WD40, I placed an order, which arrived the next day. I couldn't wait to try it out. I am not a very competent blow dryer, I should perhaps say, though I do know the principle of lifting sections of hair and blowing the roots across the top of the head as the woman is doing in the video.

Finished result - floofy housemaid?

To be fair, I did achieve a lot of extra volume, including some around the crown of the head, though the effect was more generally dispersed. And the gel product, which stays in the hair as its name suggests, was not in the least sticky or greasy, like many things I have tried before - so that is a big plus. I do still use craft clay to style my hair when dry, and the quantity needs careful gauging to avoid the hair feeling claggy with sticky stuff.

However, sadly the floofy look was very shortlived, and within minutes of walking around my hair was lying flatter to my head again. I think it was still thicker - and with cumulative use, I am hoping that it might even build more volume that way - but there is no way that the outlandish volume the woman is sporting in this video was my experience, even briefly. Perhaps she managed to keep it in place with lashings of hair spray, which is a product category I have never engaged with.

So in summary, I would say that Dream Cocktail feels nourishing, and did "pump up the volume", but only temporarily. Is it "extra hair in a bottle", as some reviewers have claimed? Well, kind of, though my jury is still out on the matter. As I say, I do quietly harbour the hope that I might gain lasting extra body with repeated use. Also, at £18 odd on Amazon it wasn't cheap, but for my length of hair I only needed a couple of pumps, so I imagine it would last ages.

If you have fine hair, have you found a holy grail volumising spray? I'd be curious to know what may still be out there that works!

Might look better when my fringe has grown

Editor's note: I realise I haven't included any "before" photos, either of the woman in the video or me. The woman appears at the start with wet hair, which doesn't tell you anything, and I have yet to capture my hair looking quite as flat and triangular as it did at the start...so maybe the product is hanging around and helping!