Bonkers About Perfume Is One Today!

Well, well...it is hard to imagine that I have been blogging for a year already - it seems to have flown by, though Mr Bonkers might beg to differ. I couldn't resist looking back at my first post to remind myself of how it all began.

So I reckoned at the time that the underactive thyroid which flipped over into being overactive had a major role in precipitating "sudden onset perfume mania" and its associated symptoms of frenetic online research into fragrance families, splurging on sample orders from The Perfumed Court and scouting for unsniffed bargains (some of which I lived to regret) in T K Maxx. Having a newfound interest wasn't the problem, if only I could have kept it to myself...

"...my longsuffering, non-fragrance wearing partner has become heartily fed up with my talking to him about perfume all day long, as he hasn't the least interest in fragrance. He doesn't mind my having a hobby, even an obsessive one, but he doesn't want to know the minutiae of it. Which is fair enough, really...So I decided I needed an outlet for my random musings on perfume as a matter of urgency."

And so Bonkers about Perfume was born. Over the weekend, I asked Mr Bonkers if he felt I had successfully channelled my obsession into the blog. On balance, he thought not, and drew my attention to the the following areas of our domestic life which he felt had suffered:

Mealtimes have become increasingly irregular

Sometimes we sit down to a hastily improvised meal at 11pm or later. It will invariably be some form of fusion cuisine, fashioned out of scraps left over in the fridge because of my persistent failure to visit a supermarket. Innovative multi-cultural combinations of seafood sticks, cottage cheese, beetroot, a cold sausage, a samosa, a bit of quiche and some cold lentil splodge are not uncommon. Most recently garnished with slices of cucumber that Mr Bonkers brought home in error the other day when sent out expressly to buy a courgette. (And this despite having been issued with a store plan, diagrams of the chilled and ambient fixtures, and a sketch and verbal description of the target vegetable. "Glossy, dark green" clearly needs tightening.)

Some days you don't get dressed at all

I fully intend to get dressed, but often the research for a particular post ends up taking longer than I planned, or I struggle to find images to illustrate it...and before you know it it's 8pm and you might as well stay in your pyjamas. I spent an hour tracking down these cake pictures, for example. You wouldn't believe how hard it is to find photos of mad hatter birthday cakes in anything approaching the public domain. Let alone one with a single candle. The one above may conceivably say "Happy Birthday Briony", but I can't swear to it, and at least "Briony" begins with a "B". In putting it up regardless, I am banking on the deteriorating close sight of my typical reader. And a bottomless tolerance of eccentricity in all its manifestations.

Lie-ins are a thing of the past

The problem being that Mr Bonkers often retires to bed very late, as is the wont of musicians, while parcels can be delivered any time after 9am. Mr B is a light sleeper while I wear ear plugs, the net result of which is that Mr B usually staggers downstairs to receive deliveries on my behalf. Not always of perfume - it could be related paraphernalia such as decanting supplies or promotional material for my Perfume Studio sideline.

The house smells

Yes, I cannot deny that sometimes, after a particularly comprehensive testing session, there may be a bit of a cacophonous fragrance fug in my immediate vicinity - Mr Bonkers would say I contaminate whole rooms.

I am repeatedly badgered for my opinion on perfumes

Mr Bonkers has long since resigned himself to the routine and unpleasant task of sniffing my person in response to my request for a second opinion. Just occasionally, he doesn't have the strength and will tell me to go away. When he is editing a tune in his recording studio he mostly wears headphones and will simply not hear. It is perhaps only a matter of time before he tumbles to the benefits of wearing headphones all the time, even if this means missing the occasional offer of a cup of tea or a handful of chocolate buttons from my secret stash.

The "family-friendly" outlet theory is fatally flawed

It would be all very well if I confined my musings on perfume to the blog, as per the original idea, but the fact of the matter is that having written a post, I clatter downstairs, often in the small hours, to find Mr Bonkers cracking open the emergency Pringles, and exclaim excitedly: "Oh, you should have a look at this one - you'll like it - you get a mention - and you'll love the illustrations, especially the one with the meerkat holding a tester bottle. You see, basically what it's about is this....."

So, I have decided to set myself a couple of "New Year's Resolutions" for the next year of blogging - or however far into the future I get. I must be quicker and more business-like in my approach, and spend less time delving into a subject or agonising over photo choices. Perhaps I should blog a little less often, or make the posts shorter - or be less anal about spellchecking them. And when I am done, I should just go downstairs to join Mr B (hopefully before it's technically tomorrow) and ask him how his day was. Or how he rates Stoke's chances in the Premiership, or what he makes of the kerfuffle over Rooney. If I really get my act together, we might eat a meal that wasn't the culinary equivalent of a patchwork quilt. And if I could restrain my urge to test so many things, I might not smell of one either.


Photo of cake from sweetretreat.ca, photo of painting from yvonne.parcella.ws, photo of butterfly cake from www2.everybody.co.nz, photo of "Van's off the wall" my own (from a bar in the Algarve).