The "Scent Crimes" Series: No 1 - Bathroom Storage

As a serious lover of perfume have you ever found yourself visiting the bathroom at a friend's house, and being confronted with the disturbing sight of perfume bottles lined up on the window sill, on top of the bathroom cabinet, in the bathroom cabinet (if you are looking for aspirin or are just plain nosey!) or - shock horror - lined up on the edge of the bath? For a committed 'fumehead this is a really distressing thing to encounter, for we know that heat, light and moisture are the enemies of fragrance and the bathroom can often be the confluence of all three.

I remember spotting a bottle of No 5 (and another designer scent I will not name so as to protect my friend's identity!) tucked behind the taps on the edge of the bath. My friend's husband had just had a shower, so I could barely make out the bottles in the clouds of steam. What does one do in such a situation? One's instinct should be like that of a social worker, namely to file a report and have the bottles taken into care - or at least put them on the "at risk" register and issue their owners with a verbal warning. But on that occasion, I kept my own counsel, and left those fragrances to take their chances in the life-threatening steamy jungle of their suburban habitat.

Mind you, I have only recently learnt to care for perfume. Before the onset of this perfume hobby in February 2008, I owned precisely one bottle of Estee Lauder Intuition, which had sat variously on my bathroom and bedroom window ledges since 2001, and had quietly turned rancid without my noticing it some years previously.

But since my failure to act on behalf of the endangered No 5 bottle and its bathmate, I have become a more conscientious vigilante when it comes to the environmental health of fragrance - wherever I see it...For example, I got a friend in Germany to throw out a bottle of Bvlgari Omnia which had gone off in her guest cloakroom, and suggested to my hairdresser that he should remove his colognes from the window ledge of the en suite and transfer them to a bedroom drawer. A friend in Sweden no longer keeps her perfumes in the bathroom cabinet as a direct result of my intervention. At Stansted airport earlier this year, I complained to the SA that the fixture on which a tester of B by Boucheron had been placed was far too warm and brightly lit to keep it in good nick.

So go on, next time you nip to the bathroom at someone else's house, keep your eyes out for vulnerable perfumes and do your bit for the perfume loving community!