Further festive falling things and Christmas crises, plus an Excite-ing Lynx discovery!

Well, it isn't long since the tree felling and Fille en Aiguilles spilling incidents, yet I have managed to clock up a slew of additional mishaps - enough to warrant this 'festive malfunction' sequel post.

Though 'crises' may be overstating it for some of the things that didn't go to plan. Like the fact that I was too late to catch the particular brand of mince pies that came top in a Good Housekeeping tasting test, for example (Iceland, if you're curious - they are apparently 'astonishing'-ly good). But the substitutes I picked up on Christmas Eve from Sainsbury's served perfectly well in the end.

Other incidents had wider repercussions, like accidentally putting an egg in vegan stuffing I made for a friend, who was giving me some spare nut roast in return. Actually, it turns out that her two sons are currently merely vegetarian, however, it had quite slipped my mind that my friend herself is allergic to egg, so she ended up having to make her own stuffing. I have since made it up to her in parsnip and apple soup.

I also did that annoying thing - which in fairness can happen at any time of year - of going to the supermarket without the '£4 off when you spend £20 or more in store' voucher, only to go and spend £20.08. So of course I had to go back specially on the last day of the coupon's validity to spend another £20 and get my discount. Which in practice, to comfortably qualify, only needed to be a bottle of Olay Regenerist serum and one of dry white.

Back up curry that was not actually needed in the end

The Christmas meal itself - for my two dinner guests, Clare and her Man City Santa-hatted husband Tony - went like clockwork. Or a clock that is running a bit slow, say. For they arrived at 6pm and I didn't plate up the turkey and trimmings till 9.30pm. Though in that time my friends had enjoyed a pretty substantial starter (did they sense what was (not) to come? ;-) ) supplemented by an emergency saucer of something that had already cooked, to take the edge off their returning hunger. The problem was the parsnips, which for space reasons were late going into the oven, and then took forever to go golden. The turkey, meanwhile, had long since come out, and was relaxing on the worktop under a blanket of foil. It was so relaxed in fact that it was fast asleep, only to be rudely awakened by the jab of a carving knife (which Tony - who had stepped up to help me at this point - candidly declared to be 'a bit blunt'). I must say those parsnips look remarkably nonchalant in the photo, despite having massively held up proceedings.

There really is some gravy on there...

Also during the meal preparations, I managed to bang the back of my hand on the edge of the utility door and burn my finger, which swelled and throbbed for a day or so afterwards. But the main malfunction by far was my unerring knack of knocking glasses over. Or do I mean 'erring'? Anyway, it proved to be a comical leitmotiv of the evening. The first full glass (of champagne) went over the edge of the table, triggering a four handed flurry of floor mopping over quite an extensive area. The second full glass I sent flying prompted the complete removal of the gold tablecloth, which was absolutely soaked in red wine, and in turn started to drip down onto the same section of newly mopped floor. I swear I wasn't drunk or anything - why, I had knocked over most of the available alcohol, apart from anything! - it was just that there were a lot of hidden table mats under the cloth, making for different levels and an accident waiting to happen, basically. By the end of the night we were all agreed that it wasn't so much a table as a mezzanine. Then within minutes of my guests leaving I had spilt half a can of Diet Coke and rescued two tea cups that were perched at a very perilous angle. To be honest it was a minor miracle they didn't also hit the deck.

After a promising start, it all ended up on the floor.

My lack of a dishwasher could also be construed as a malfunction, as I washed up afterwards for two days straight...though that acquisition will have to wait until I revamp the kitchen one day. I was, however, comforted by the realisation that, contrary to what I think every time I open my utensil drawer, you can in fact never have too many spatulas.

So what perfume did I wear on Christmas Day, you may be wondering? Well, I did toy with putting on Estee Lauder Bronze Goddess, you know, to help the turkey along - it also has a hint of myrrh, even if it might not be seasonally appropriate in any other sense - but I went in the end with Bois des Iles, by way of a thank you to my generous donors, Val and Tara.

The other notable perfume-related thing to tell you about the holidays is that I sniffed a friend at a party the other night and was very taken with the discreet woody oriental scent he was wearing. You could have knocked me down with a feather when I learnt it was Lynx Excite of all things! Further research on the Interwebs confirms my impression that Excite is punching above its weight. The men on Basenotes also give it a thumbs up. I was certainly impressed at the olfactory gentrification of this hitherto cheap and cheerful 'yoof' range. Excite (just based on my hazy recall of my friend's neck) reminded me a little of a lighter version of L'Occitane's Eau des Baux, which I encountered in Germany earlier this year. The perfumer is Ann Gottlieb and this is all I could find by way of description - on Amazon!:

"This sophisticated scent starts with a clean and fresh leafy green accord, then develops to smoother, caramel based notes and finishes with woody base notes, laced with amber and vanilla." 

Source: lynxeffect.com

So on that surprising note, it just remains to thank Bonkers readers everywhere for your interest and support in 2014, and to wish everyone a very Happy New Year! A special thanks is due to follower No 168 (Sarah), who recently replaced one I lost the other day for reasons I will probably never know. I have said it before, but I can't over-emphasise how nice it is to see the avatar of a new follower pop up in my side bar. As I understand it, you still have to consciously follow a Blogger blog to be counted amongst its official audience, so I do appreciate people taking that extra step.

Clare & Santa-Tony, a born again Man City fan who almost matches the sofa

Dropping pine needle perfumes and other festive malfunctions

The countdown to Christmas has begun. Well, strictly speaking - as far as the retailers are concerned anyway - it started some time in October, if not before, but I have definitely entered my pre-Christmas 'Oh, my goodness, I missed the last posting date for second class cards and I haven't wrapped anything and will all the chestnuts be sold out already?' headless chicken - I mean turkey - phase. And every year there is a new challenge involving the festive bird, as I always think there is a perfect cooking method still out there that is just beyond my grasp. The other day ex-Mr Bonkers inquired jovially: 'So is it going to be the Nigella brined or the tented foil Delia method - or some bet-hedging combination of the two, more like?' He has vivid memories of one Christmas morning where I additionally spent a frantic half hour googling which way round the legs of the turkey should point in the oven. I have in fact abandoned whole turkeys in recent years, gravitating towards the more manageably sized crown joints. But even though last year's bird was succulently successful, there will as ever be a twist this year, namely that I plan to use a probe thermometer to check the turkey's temperature. So I have been busy googling where to insert the thermometer I have yet to buy, given that there are no legs and the traditional spot of between leg and breast is not an option.

Time to get the shiny Roja Dove coffee table book out

But Christmas is about far more varied and numerous malfunctions than just the turkey. The mishaps kicked off last Sunday in fact - it took six hours from sallying forth with my friend Gillie in search of a tree for each of us to switching the lights on mine and declaring it decorated. For having brought my tree home, I quickly established that the trunk was too fat and knobbly to fit into the stand I already had. I attacked the trunk with a toy saw, then an axe, but to no avail. So I went collecting rocks on the allotments and put them in a silver pail, which I thought would serve as well. It didn't, and the tree toppled over, 'felling' me in the process, and smearing greenish mud on my sofa. I dabbed the offending patch with damp kitchen roll, which seems to have fetched the worst off. Then I went out and bought another, wider stand, and things started to pick up from there.

The next day, however, I was experimenting with a string of fairy lights in the hall, when I knocked my bicycle over, gouging out a small piece of the wood panelling under the stairs, just a few mm to the left of the previous gouging wound from an identical bike-knocking incident last year. The bike has now been banished in disgrace to the corridor behind the kitchen.

Oh, and my pretty Chanel Christmas card that was the last present to me from ex-Mr Bonkers appears to have lost some of its dangly charms. ;(

But some good things have happened as well this week, relating to perfume and Christmas, you will be pleased to hear. Even a fragrance-related accident proved to be a happy one. For yesterday I spilt a vial of Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles on the mantlepiece.

Luckily, it didn't attack the paintwork as I feared, just leaving a slight shadow of a stain. This in turn gave me the bright idea of smearing the puddle of Fille en Aiguilles on a small wooden tree ornament Gillie had recently given me - as in one shaped like a tree, not intended to go on the tree - and now it smells wonderfully piney and aromatic, a bit like your better class of sauna.

Out of the blue this week I also received a medallion-shaped tree ornament from Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays, perfumed with a trio of scents: frankincense, myrrh and citrus.

It looks uncannily like a ceramic Love Heart for anyone familiar with that nostalgic confectionery line - well, you can still get them, actually. I have a tube in my handbag indeed.

And in addition to the 'bridging decant' Tara slipped me at the Les Senteurs event I attended the other week, I have now received two further atomisers of Bois des Iles from Val the Cookie Queen. I know I mentioned that I had run out in an earlier post, but it genuinely wasn't a sneaky way of 'crowdsourcing' some top up supplies, honest! But now I have supplies all the same, and am very grateful to both.

Oh  look, I have just noticed the sticker on the back of one of the vials, keeping our heart theme going...;)

As this is probably my last post before Christmas, I would like to take the opportunity of wishing readers near and far a very Happy Christmas-stroke-Holidays-stroke-Bah Humbug let's just go for a curry! (as per linked post below). I hope all your perfume gifts - should you receive any - are what you wanted. For further reading on this theme, here is a link to my post from four years ago for Cafleurebon on the subject of Christmas present giving and attitudes to the festive season generally.

In that article I note that I include a 'gravy separator' as one of my worst ever gifts. How times change! Why, a gravy separator is on my current Christmas list. So what the heck did I do with the one I already had...? ;)

An amewsing game of aroma-counselling 'tag': review of The Scent of Possibility by Sarah McCartney

I did a quick tot up today and I have in fact written reviews of seven perfume-themed books on Bonkers. SEVEN! I promise that that's as much a surprise to me as it is to you - I would have guessed about four tops. Maybe I am being influenced by a recent downgrade of the designation of these posts from 'review' to 'bitesized not quite reviews', which was the case for the last two: 'The Rottweiler' by Ruth Rendell because there was next to no perfume in the book(!), and 'Chanel: An Intimate Life' by Lisa Chaney, because I couldn't even finish the blessed thing. Though I guess you could say that - assuming I have an average attention span - my failure is as indicative as anything of the book's readability. But yes, it turns out that there were five proper, full length book reviews prior to that.

And here is review No 8, of a novel which was both fragrance-forward and finished fairly fast by me. That said, my review may not be appreciably longer than bitesized, for the simple reason that I couldn't figure out how to say too much about The Scent of Possibility without it acting as a spoiler. But here goes...

Sarah McCartney, as regular readers will doubtless know, is the quirky and colourful owner of 4160 Tuesdays, who has been acclaimed as one of the up-and-coming stars on the perfume scene. She was recently dubbed - in a superb article on the UK's artisan scent industry in Management Today - as a 'punk perfumer', and I have previously featured three of her creations on the blog: Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers (the scent which spurred my friend Clare on in her charity bike ride) and Tart's Knicker Drawer & Doe in the Snow, following Sarah and her husband Nick's visit to Bonkers Towers in the summer.

Sarah and Nick at a Les Senteurs event this week

Without further ado, here is the blurb from the back of the book, to give you a little taster:

'Down a cobbled mews off one of London's rare tranquil rare tranquil backstreets, people come to talk, gaze at the garden, have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, then leave with a small blue bottle of perfume. Captured inside it is a scented memory of happy times.

What could be the harm in that?

London is a big city, but paths cross, and get all tangled up. A small misunderstanding leads to a seriously large one.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This is the novel that accidentally launched a London perfumery, 4160 Tuesdays.'

The Scent of Possibility is divided into lots of short chapters, devoted to - and toggling amongst - the various characters. All of whom sooner or later fetch up at the office - in a mews near Holborn - of a lady called Unity Cassel, who helps them solve their personal problems. The characters don't know this when they arrive, mind...The trigger for their visit is being given a business card with an appointment on it by someone (usually known to them) who has already been, found their own session helpful, and decided that the other person could do with Unity's services more than them, prompting them to pass their card along. I can best describe it as a game of aroma-counselling 'tag', for as well as having a cathartic heart-to-heart with Unity  - plus high calibre refreshments! - each 'client' takes away a little bottle of perfume which she carefully selects for them. Each bottle captures in olfactory form a past memory of a happy occasion that is specific / personal to them, the idea being that the scent will simultaneously comfort and galvanise them into tackling their issues head on.

Pied Bull Court / Galen Place ~ Source: mouseprice.com

The fun in the book, which is very cleverly plotted, is that the stories turn out to be far more intertwined than the reader at first imagines...and that is about as much as I can say about that without really giving the card and the game away!

So instead, I will say that I devoured The Scent of Possibility in a week, which is the sign of a seriously engrossing read. Timewise only Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty has come close. I can't stress enough that this is a truly remarkable feat, because in the past year I have only managed to read a derisory seven books in total, which equates to a laughably slow rate of about seven weeks for each. So to finish Sarah's book in a fraction of that time or less is accolade indeed.

The other thing I appreciated about The Scent of Possibility is its easy-going, naturalistic style. Sarah has a sure touch in conveying the 'voice' of each of her characters, so for example, Jessica, who is a schoolgirl, speaks in a breathy stream of consciousnessness blurt, with minimal punctuation. I am pleased to report that Sarah doesn't pepper Jessica's internal conversations with 'like' or 'you know' every few words, to which young people seem inordinately prone.

The characterisations themselves are economically and deftly drawn, for example when Phoebe describes a man she was going out with as being handsome in 'that dark, Celtic, smouldery way'. Elsewhere, she mocks her own appearance in trainers, comparing herself to 'those American women in the last century who came over to the City and went to work in tea-coloured tights, Burberry macks and big hair, with a pair of bright white Reeboks at the bottom, to make them look like they worked hard and played hard and all that rubbish.'

Five of the scents featured in the book are from the current range

Oh, and a quick word on grammar: Sarah loves the semi-colon, and though I haven't conducted a poll as such, I am pretty sure she favours its use over the dash by quite some margin. The semi-colon is a bit of an endangered species in modern usage - and is even considered archaic in some quarters - so I rather warmed to that touch, says she, without actually using one...;)

There is also a fair bit of gentle humour and wry observations of life's foibles, together with some pretty helpful relationship advice along the way. I could very easily imagine Suzi Godson of The Times coming up with the same diagnoses of these familiar - and familial - problems.  Yes, the book is part agony aunt column, part perfume consultation-stroke-aromatherapy session, and part soap opera-cum-thriller. In short, The Scent of Possibility has something for everyone...except a shedload of dashes, obviously. Though it does have a shed.


NB In the spirit of full disclosure, I bought my own copy of The Scent of Possibility - that's it in Sarah's hand, in fact! - before or after she autographed it for me.

The Lidl effect: Woman Suddenly falls for Chanel No 5 again - and doffs bed socks

The time has come to mention the unconventional boyfriend again, the one who described my eyes - most imaginatively I thought - as the colour of 'foetid puddles', and my legs as 'serviceable'. It was 30 years ago, but I still remember a few salient facts about our relationship. The eight year age gap meant that when I popped a Sade cassette into his car stereo on a long drive north, he inquired brightly: 'Is that Wham?' And after I had my wisdom teeth out, my face was so beaten up that he walked right through the ward without recognising me and out of the hospital again, assuming he had got the wrong one. He also broke into my mother's house once, and left a bottle of port on her kitchen table to thank her for visiting him in hospital. Well, I use the term 'broke' loosely - my mum had accidentally left a window open, apparently. And he gave me some good presents in the course of our four year relationship: a little wooden trinket box, a Barbour jacket, and a copy of the controversial book 'Queer' by William Burroughs. On the flyleaf was this facetious inscription:

'Some in-flight reading. I chose it in 5 minutes. One glance says "this book cannot possibly be dull". And so I hope it proves. In any case, reactions of fellow passengers will offer a secondary source of entertainment.'

Oh, and most importantly he also gave me Chanel No 5. I sense it may have been as snappy a purchase as the book, but it was only the second bottle of perfume I had ever been given, and I was very excited to receive it - to my twenty-something self it seemed the last word in luxury and glamour. I remember the bottle as a sleek, black rectangular column like the one in the photo below, but have no idea if that marks it out as the edt or edp. I wore No 5 happily on nights out, but only as a 'civilian', to reprise Tara's great word for a regular member of the perfume-wearing public, in her comment on my Suddenly Woman 1 post. I don't know whether I finished the bottle or what happened to it, but my interest in this iconic fragrance quietly lapsed, such that when I was smitten by perfume mania seven years ago, my attitude to No 5 was regrettably cavalier - very much one of 'Been there, sniffed that'. Until Lidl came along and launched a smell-alike, that is...

Source: eBay

But before elaborating on the effect of Suddenly Woman 1 on my current perfume-wearing MO and beyond, I thought it might be interesting to do a quick summary of my takes on the previous launches, going right back to 2009:

SUDDENLY FLEURS - I only vaguely remember this - as a sweetish floral that didn't particularly remind me of any other mainstream perfumes on the market. Maybe Lidl hadn't got its act into gear at this point and it wasn't a deliberate dupe of anything. If anyone remembers Suddenly Fleurs and has an idea of what it might be imitating, do let us know in the comments.

SUDDENLY D'OR - a very decent copy of Ghost Luminous, not that I am a mad fan of the Ghost range generally.

SUDDENLY MADAME GLAMOUR - a superb copy of Coco Mademoiselle. I wouldn't bother with the real thing, although I can tell the difference - the Chanel does have more depth - and more patchouli. Suddenly Madame Glamour is sufficient for me, should I ever wish to scratch a Coco Mademoiselle itch. I probably won't though, as it is so darn ubiquitous these days. I would guess Coco Madeomoiselle has overtaken No 5 itself in popularity by now, amongst all age groups too. Certainly on a 'whiffs caught in passing basis', if not in sales terms necessarily.

SUDDENLY DIAMONDS - another very close copy, of BOSS Orange this time, though as with Suddenly d'Or above, I am not a fan of the original, so wouldn't buy either.

SUDDENLY WOMAN 1 - the least similar copy to date imho - of Chanel No 5. For the very first time, the Lidl version has made me want to own actual Chanel No 5(!), and indeed I have now inherited a nearly used bottle from my friend Clare, and also invested in a 3 ml roll on-on Ebay for the princely sum of £6.99.

Coincidentally, the other day I saw an article that explained how people sleep better with fewer bed- and night-clothes on - something to do with optimum core temperatures versus that of your extremities. The article recommended sleeping naked if at all possible, or at the very least swapping bed socks for a hot water bottle, as the latter can be kicked away if you get overheated. The timing of this piece with my Suddenly Woman 1 and No 5 trials seems most fortuitous - indeed the post even mentions that well-known titbit about how Marilyn Monroe was reputed to go to bed in the nude, save for a comforting cloud of Chanel No 5.

We are in the middle of a cold snap here in Britain, so I don't think I could possibly countenance sleeping in the buff. But now that I have re-bonded so unexpectedly with this famous fragrance, I will seriously consider wearing a nocturnal spritz and losing my bed socks, especially if they go the way of the last pair any time soon...

Lidl Suddenly Woman 1 review: the fifth women's scent from the discount chain is no No 5

For some years now I have been a big champion of the own brand range of perfumes from European discount chain, Lidl. I have followed the releases with interest, from Suddenly d'Or and Suddenly Fleurs through Suddenly Madame Glamour to Suddenly Diamonds - respectively very creditable dupes of Ghost Luminous, Chanel's Coco Mademoiselle and BOSS Orange. Not forgetting the men's scent, G Bellini X-Bolt, which is a fine imitation of Hugo BOSS Bottled.

In my Suddenly Diamonds post I expressed disappointment that Lidl had gone from copying the iconic Coco Mademoiselle to a fairly middle of the road BOSS perfume, instead of going for 'the big one', ie Chanel No 5. Along with the likes of Guerlain Mitsouko and Shalimar, No 5 is regarded as one of the leviathans of the perfume scene. And thanks to a tip off from an anonymous reader I learnt that the store had now taken on Goliath(!) and brought out Suddenly Woman 1, an apparent knock off of Chanel No 5... Well, it seems I had missed Suddenly Woman 1 in stores first time round, for it had already been and gone by the time I caught up with the news. However, the same reader kindly alerted me to the relaunch on 27th November, carefully scheduled to catch the run up to Christmas.

So I hotfooted it down to my local store the other day, where there is currently an offer on of two for £7 as opposed to the usual price of £3.99 each for 50ml. And assuming I would be as impressed as I have been up to now with the other scents in the Lidl stable, I bagged a couple of bottles, thinking I might give the other one away to a friend who loves Chanel No 5, and fancies something inexpensive she can splash around during the day.

It took me a few minutes to find the product, mind, as Lidl seems to have a habit of initially showcasing its perfume releases in a prominent spot nowhere near the toiletries aisle. I was about to beard an assistant about why they weren't stocking Woman 1 though it was comfortably after 27th November when I stumbled upon a display right next to some condiments and cruets. But of course!

Before getting into the scent itself, a word about the packaging. Like No 5, the box is monochrome and pretty classy-looking - with added silver edging. The bottle is the best yet - a pleasing rectangular yet elliptical shape, with a thick glass base and chunky black top. I could believe the packaging is worth £3.50 on its own, and to think it might not be makes you realise how big a profit margin is built into some high end scents.

But as for how Suddenly Woman 1 smells, that is where it all begins to unravel. I first tested it blind against actual Chanel No 5 edp on a friend in the next street whose cat I feed. She is a completely 'normal' member of the public (ie not a raging perfumista like me and many Bonkers readers). My friend owns a few bottles (eg Shalimar, Gucci Envy) but isn't nuts about scent as such. Anyway, she immediately spotted which was No 5 and which the imitation. She described the Lidl scent as flat and monotone, like a 'single malt' (but not in a good way ie with the emphasis on 'single', or one-trick-ponyness!). The No 5 she said was multi-layered and fresher.

From my own subsequent trials I would add to that that No 5 was more floral, and more cleanly soapy - in a luxury milled soap sense - whereas Suddenly Woman 1 was sort of 'musty'. The aldehydes seemed rougher - less finely milled if you will! - and the base (to which the scent immediately defaulted) reminded me slightly of an Estee Lauder scent you don't see around much for very good reasons - Spellbound. I remember that one as a dark, spicy, sticky number, which Luca Turin dubbed 'medicinal treacle'. The base of Suddenly Woman 1 is nowhere near that bad, but it has an odd borderline 'off' character. I'd liken it to those 70s orientals (Lentheric Mystique is one that springs to mind) that have a challenging bottom end if you know what I mean - and which if you do come across them now, might not be in perfect nick either.

Source: fragrancedirect.co.uk

After an hour, Suddenly Woman 1 does mellow considerably, but there is simply not much going on on my skin by now other than a vague prickle of aldehydes and a faint murky undertow. No 5 meanwhile continues on its soapy way, less fizzy now, with more pure soap at this juncture. Suddenly Woman 1 was a bit brighter on my friend, so it is quite possible that YMMV.

That all said, Suddenly Woman 1 is arguably a perfectly good take on a retro style of perfume that just isn't to my taste. I would love people to try it to see what you DO think it smells like, especially during the crucial first hour. Something vintage, a bit spicy - maybe with moss?, musk? I really ain't sure - I am so bad at deconstructing scents that we need keener noses on the case. And when you think how complex the formulation of No 5 is said to be - for it is reputed to contain no fewer than 250 ingredients, of pretty high quality one may infer - it was always going to be a big ask to come up with a decent dupe in nice packaging for £3.99...

Source: fragrantica.com

One and a half hours in and Suddenly Woman 1 has lost all its bite and darkness and is just a gentle hum on my skin - nothing remotely objectionable about it now, but nor could I tell you what it smelt of at this point. It's soft, with this puzzling vintage vibe. I am not 'high fiv-ing' it, that's for sure. Or 'high No 5-ing' it, even. I do like my perfumes to smell actively pleasant long before this point. ;)

I tried to find some other views on Suddenly Woman 1 and at the time of writing I only came up with was this thread on Mumsnet - note that all the comments are favourable except one. That person got a terrible migraine from Woman 1 and thought it smelt ghastly. So I guess my experience of the opening is more aligned with hers. And as I say, if you are prepared to sit out the first hour or so, it is much more congenial, and as both the No 5 and the Lidl scent are more indistinct at this point, there is a greater resemblance from this point on, though I wouldn't overplay it.

Definitely something you have to try for yourself and make your own mind up, so for the sake of four quid, please don't be put off by my review, but buy a bottle if you can and come back and tell us how you got on.

I say, you don't suppose it could be a copy of Mitsouko, by any chance? Nah, surely not....;)

UPDATE!

Last night I was round at my mate Clare's, helping her retrospectively cost dog cakes, since you ask. She happens to own a used bottle of No 5 - a bit longer in the tooth than the sample I had been using as a control, but still very nice. I got her and her husband Tony to comment on how the Lidl scent smelt vs both the No 5s (on my wrists), and the findings were interesting: Tony thought the two scents were somewhat similar, but that Suddenly Woman 1 was 'sharper', as in spiky, and also a bit 'old lady'. Clare preferred the Lidl perfume, and promptly gave me her old bottle of No 5(!), partly as a reward for my financial services, but also because she rarely feels a yen to wear it these days.

I must also say that I was surprised to find that neither version of actual No 5 is anything like as fizzily aldehydic as I remembered (I owned it myself in the 80s). I really do think Suddenly Woman 1 will appeal too fans of vintage scents from the 70s - or earlier? And of course it may behave quite differently on other people's skin.

Guerlain Après L’Ondée and Virginia Woolf: who’s afraid of melancholy scents?

Source: Wikimedia Commons ~ Christian Tonnis

The other day while messing about on Facebook I chanced across a link (see below) posted by Cheryl of Perfumed Letters to a little known recording of Virginia Woolf from 1937. In it the author speaks in the clipped, genteel tones you would associate with a member of The Bloomsbury Group about the mysterious mechanics of language and creative writing. I recommend in particular the section from about 4 minutes in, where Woolf describes words as 'irreclaimable vagabonds', and the mind as a 'fitfully illuminated cavern' in which they live. This discovery, coupled with my recent preoccupation with bathrooms(!), prompted me to feature this (slightly edited) post - which was originally published on Cafleurebon on 27.1.11 - on Bonkers. For anyone who remembers it from back then, some of the photos are also different(!), and there is the YouTube clip to enjoy. ;)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some people believe in love at first sight.  I wouldn’t say I don’t believe in it exactly, but it has never happened to me.  In the context of fragrance, you occasionally hear of perfumistas having experienced a similar sort of 'coup de foudre' with a particular scent, changing forever the way they view perfume and incorporate it into their life.  Overnight fragrance goes from being a casual accessory to a second skin – or a third, fourth or even a  fifty-seventh skin, for those with large collections. 

I also experienced 'sudden onset perfume mania', but for me it was not so much a fragrance which triggered this epiphany, as a review of a fragrance, namely Hannah Betts’ 2005 article for The Times on 'glacial perfumes'.  She starts by quoting former French Vogue editor Joan Juliet Buck’s comment about her heightened emotional response to narcissus absolute.

'Just a drop on each wrist and two in the bath were enough to send silver running down the walls. It set the world throbbing out of control when I wore it. I became a little weird.'

Photo courtesy of Linda Svendsen

Betts point outs that the sense of silver trickling down bathroom walls is all the more pronounced if the perfume already smells of silver – 'then walls course all the sooner'.  This leads her neatly into a discussion of her own favourite cool, metallic scents, namely Après L’Ondée and Hiris by Hermès, and how this effect is created by the use of orris butter, one of the most expensive perfumery materials of all, a creamy paste derived from the iris root.

Captivated by her review, I set about acquiring a sample of the first scent Betts had mentioned.   Après L’Ondée was created by Jacques Guerlain and released in 1906, with notes (from Now Smell This) of 'bergamot, neroli, aniseed, hawthorn, violet, heliotrope, iris and musk; there may also be carnation, rose, jasmine, vetiver and sandalwood.'

When I first smelt Après L’Ondée (just the EDT in case anyone is wondering), it exerted the same visceral pull as the description in Betts’ review.  It struck me as a dark, mournful, conflicted scent.  There is simultaneously an airy, damp freshness and an earthy dryness.  It is like rain that has been dragged through a hedge backwards.  Yes, that is it – elemental violence has been done to vegetation.  Broken boughs lie strewn in the long wet grass.  And what of the powderiness - the anisic heliotrope sweetness?  Well, it gives the fragrance a very retro, feminine quality, but this is no 'come hither' boudoir powderiness.  It is the scent of a woman with a wan complexion and a broken spirit. 

Source: Wikimedia Commons

So Après L’Ondée, this wistful, silver beauty, was the first scent I fell in love with after the mania took hold.  But metal is hard, and this scent should not be worn if you are feeling the least bit emotionally fragile, as I learnt to my cost.  Back in 2010 I was engaged in a difficult work project in California, and one bright and chilly morning unthinkingly spritzed on Après L’Ondée instead of a cosy musk or soothing sandalwood.  I had two appointments that day, but the first person wasn’t there, and the second person was wrong.  Aborting the meeting, I retreated to a nearby mall** to lick my wounds, cruise the perfume aisles of an outlet store and stock up on leisure wear in Gap.

It was a vexing day, and Après L’Ondée merely amplified my feelings of failure and frustration.  In short, my epiphany scent, the catalyst which had catapulted me full tilt into this all-consuming hobby, was making things worse...

This unexpected fragrant downer got me wondering who would have worn Après L’Ondée at the turn of the 20^th century when it was launched, bearing in mind that there would have been far fewer scents on the market in those days.  My mind instantly lit upon Virginia Woolf, who was a few years older than me when she walked into a river with her pockets full of stones some 70 odd years ago.  But when Après L’Ondée was released she would only have been 24, and its melancholy quality would have chimed perfectly with her intermittently depressive character.  At least I hope it would have stopped there – at chiming, I mean – and wasn’t a contributing factor to the final bout of depression that prompted her to take her own life. 

Source: Fragrantica

Now hold on a minute – I don’t know that Virginia Woolf wore Après L’Ondée – or any perfume, indeed.

As it happens, I have always admired Woolf’s writing. I haven’t read any of it, mind - it is all a bit too 'stream of consciousness' for me - though I did sit down for a good 15 minutes with 'To The Lighthouse' once.  But seriously, I recognize that she is a literary giant of the 20^th century – a modernist who has been hailed as the greatest lyrical novelist in the English language.  And an early feminist to boot.  So Après L’Ondée – with its haunting sadness and restless soul  – seems a fitting choice of hypothetical signature scent for someone who wrote a novel called 'The Waves' and met a watery end.

I tucked this idea away in my mind until I bumped into an unknown relative on Ancestry.co.uk one day - we were researching different parts of our family tree and eventually collided into each other at the intersection of our efforts, a mutual ancestor with the singular name of Edward Samuel Boys-Tombs.  I sent this distant cousin an email asking if she would like to pool findings, and the following day we had a long chat on the phone.  After bottoming out our own tenuous and convoluted relationship to each other, my new cousin made me a surprising offer. 

Source: ats.coloradocollege.edu

'Would you like to be related to Virginia Woolf and Charles Darwin?' she inquired brightly, as if they were the ancestral equivalent of a banded pack promotion.

My ears pricked up.  'Are you offering?'

'I can trace you back to both of them in - hold on a tick – 17 steps to Virginia Woolf and 19 to Charles Darwin - where a step is going up, down or sideways on the tree via a parent, spouse, sibling or child.'

It took some time for this information to sink in.  Now they do say that we are all related to everyone, however famous, in just six degrees of separation, and that may very well be so, but the flaw with this theory is that we don’t generally know what the six degrees are.   And here was my x-th cousin y-th removed handing me a couple of dead cert celebrity rellies (dead dead certs, admittedly) in under 20 steps!  Okay, as blood connections go, it was very, very thin – several intervening marriages meant that we are talking positively homeopathic levels of dilution – but no matter.  Even wafer-thin blood is thicker than water...;)

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Prior to this discovery, the only time my path had remotely crossed that of Virginia Woolf was during a research project for The National Trust (a charity that protects historic houses and monuments).  I stayed at Sissinghurst, an Elizabethan castle in Kent with gardens designed by Virginia Woolf’s lover, Vita Sackville-West.

And now, with the benefit of hindsight, I can speculate whether my exceedingly 'watered down' genetic connection with this fey novelist has something to do with my attraction to a scent that I had independently associated with her, even if that association has no basis in fact.  I was telling the wife of a much closer cousin(!) about the news, knowing her equally keen interest in family history, when she suddenly dropped a genealogical bombshell of her own:  'Well you know, don’t you, that my mother is related to the Sackville-Wests?'  I didn’t, but my mind suddenly went into overdrive, recalling Virginia Woolf’s unconventional relationship with Vita Sackville-West, before applying this extra twist.  'I know what you are thinking', replied my cousin-in-law, 'but just think how many steps that would be from Virginia to Vita, if it is already 17 from Virginia to you.  That’s hardly incestuous, now is it?'

Source: Amazon

'Wouldn’t it be funny if it was 39 steps', I replied, thinking to myself: “Now there’s a book I can get my head around.'

**Editor's note: I later learnt that this mall was only a short hop from where Undina lives, however, at the time I had yet to 'meet' her properly on the blogs. Which is a shame, as I am sure she could have cheered me up no end!

The Scent Crimes Series: No 14 - Screw it or lose it...!

Yesterday, to my great chagrin and despite a torrent of indignant mutterings, they turned on the Christmas lights in Stafford. I had already spied the unsettling presence of chocolate snowmen in W H Smiths the other day, and a potted Christmas tree in a local nursery. It may still be a long way off the festive season in my own mind, but I will concede that it is finally getting a bit colder. And so it is that I have found myself increasingly drawn lately to those fuzzy aldehydic scents that envelop you in a warm, pétillant haze. I will not liken them to a cashmere shawl**, and if any reader attempts to do so, I will 'wrap' them over the knuckles for peddling the simile equivalent of giving red roses on Valentine's Day or supporting Manchester United. ;) And I have been wearing a fuzzy jumper this weekend, as it happens, a cast off from not one but two friends in succession, who were concerned that it might contain that ethically dodgy and ultra fuzzy fibre, angora. Some deep googling revealed that the sweater was in fact a perfectly ordinary mix of wool and acrylic, but the previous owners had gone right off it anyway - tainted as it now was by their lurid visions of spiky combs and rough-handled rabbits. So I guess I lucked out...evidently one woman's supposed unethically sourced garment is another woman's woolly windfall.

And the scent that I felt would go perfectly with this cream jumper was Chanel Les Exclusifs Bois des Iles, precisely because of its cosseting cloud of sandalwood and aldehydes. I noted that I had hardly any left in my small plastic atomiser, but was unconcerned, as I knew I had a larger back up in long term storage. This morning, having finally drained the little decant, I went in search of the bigger one, only to discover that the juice had vanished, though I had no recollection of using it lately.

My thoughts instantly flew back to the days when I lived with Mr Bonkers, and how he used to drink the first glass of wine I served him remarkably quickly. We had an amusing little ritual whereby he would extend the empty glass to me in his outstretched hand as a signal that he wanted a top up. This gesture would be accompanied by a comically sad face, and a faux air of bafflement. 'Oh look', he'd remark, 'my wine must have evaporated!'

Eek!! A driftwood Christmas tree from Notonthehighstreet.com

And so it was that the sad realisation dawned on me that my beloved decant of Bois des Iles had pulled a similar evaporation stunt while my back was turned. The wood of the islands had drifted off, if you will...;( I examined the bottle closely and quickly established that the plastic collar was not very securely screwed onto the glass bottle itself, doubtless greatly facilitating the evaporation process. I don't know how it would have worked itself loose exactly - maybe by jostling against other decants in a box - but there wasn't a single drop left. I felt bereft. I could quite happily have gone on wearing Bois des Iles for another few days, especially if this cold snap kept up.

And then I spent the next hour or more systematically going through my decant collection, pulling out any other atomisers that looked as though they had also leaked their contents. (I am quite good at remembering roughly how much juice should be in there and whether I have worn a given scent recently.) I found a few more offendors, but still a happily small proportion of my decant collection. If I was Undina I would be able to tell you exactly how small, but I failed miserably on the census-taking front. Surprisingly, there were not one but two bullet-style atomisers of Séville a l'Aube that were completely empty. I suspect the first had leaked and I had filled another one thinking the first must just be faulty, only to have the same thing  happen all over again. Some bullet atomisers must not be air- / watertight, or 'dicht' to use the very versatile German word.

The other casualties were a pretty pink atomiser of Natori by Natori (there's a blast from the past!), Costume National 21, Tom Ford White Patchouli, and a glass barley twist decant of Armani Privé Rose Alexandrie. None of these had obviously loose collars as such, but evidently evaporation can occur given the smallest of 'gaps'. But a  half-screwed atomiser - as this Bois des Iles was - is clearly asking for trouble. I have now checked all the other decants for tightness, and they are as 'sealed' as that particular packaging format affords. To my mind the finger of suspicion points to the burnished metal atomisers in particular. Pretty as they look, I think the quality is quite mixed. Better off with the trusty Travalo.

Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon of unexplained evaporation - like ex-Mr Bonkers' wine glass ;) - or made the same mistake as me and left a precious decant in a semi-screwed state, with disastrous consequences?

** Note that I have historically been as guilty of the next person of using this descriptor, but I am now on a 12-step programme.

Unexpectedly reprising my 'Mata Hari' moniker on a visit to House of Minster gift shop & perfumery, Lichfield

Source: Wikimedia Commons

As I mentioned in my last post in reference to the reviewing of samples, the wheels on Bonkers grind very slowly. So much so that I am only now getting round to writing up a day trip to the jewel in Staffordshire's crown that is the cathedral city of Lichfield. Um...the day out in question was last May in fact, when a colleague D, who was similarly at a loose end workwise, invited me to join her for lunch and a mooch round the shops. Our tour was to include Lichfield's upmarket gift shop-cum-perfumery, House of Minster, of which I had read good reports in those local coffee table magazines you find lying about in dentists, but which in the past nearly seven years of my hobby, I had conspicuously failed to visit.

In anticipation of the very real prospect of a glass of wine or two with lunch - my colleague is a bit of an oenophile - I decided to use public transport. The route takes about an hour compared with 35-40 minutes in the car. Unfortunately, I added an additional hour to the travel time by waiting patiently for the bus on the wrong side of the street. As someone who has found a specific Nissen hut at the top of a mountain in the Mojave desert without the help of GPS or a map, and located a factory in Croatia purely on the basis of the wordless semaphore directions of an elderly lady selling tomatoes by the roadside, I felt extremely foolish to have failed to clock the correct bus stop not 200 yards from my house.

Source: visitlichfield.co.uk

Eventually, I made it to the terminus at Lichfield where D was there to greet me, seemingly unfazed by my spectacular navigational gaffe. We decided to repair without ado to House of Minster, where, after a quick shufty at the gift section - full of noble looking teddies, trays, trinkets, kitchen accessories and what it used to please Mr Bonkers generically to call 'stuff' - I 'hit' the perfume counter. The array of brands was impressive for a perfumery in the provinces, including Creed, Balmain, Atkinsons, Lubin, Trussardi, Miller Harris, Boucheron, Bvlgari, Cartier and many others. A really surprise inclusion was the range from Absolument Parfumeur, which I featured in my most recent post about Woodforde Perfumery in Sidmouth.

Sadly there were no samples available of the first scent to catch my eye, Miller Harris Le Petit Grain, though the sales assistant kindly scurried upstairs at one point to see if she might have one knocking around in a drawer. Obviously, any recollections of how a particular scent smelt are going to be woefully historic now, but Le Petit Grain was a bracing citrus I would have liked to have enjoyed at more leisure. Even now, there is a trace of something zesty on the blotter I kept... Other perfumes I tested on card at least were Trussardi Delicate Rose, Boucheron Place Vendôme, Bvlgari Omnia Indian Garnet, D & G Dolce, Balmain Extatic and Mercedes-Benz Perfume (the men's one)! I do remember that the Daimler number was a little bit like Puredistance M, so not my cup of tea really. In truth I was not wowed by anything I tried - and the spelling of the Balmain scent additionally troubled me - until I broached the Atkinsons range.

It was hard to miss really, as there was a stonking great factice on the counter as well as a prominent display with all the scents perched on it. I didn't dislike any of them, but the standouts on the day were 24 Old Bond Street (a crisp, G & T-style cologne featuring declared notes of juniper, rose, whisky and tea), and The Oddfellow's Bouquet, a spicy oriental. Pleasantly haunted by these two, I managed to buy a sample of the former on a visit to Roullier White with Sabine of Iridescents in July. And I have just caught up with The Oddfellow's Bouquet again when Sabine kindly sent me a little package of samples the other day.

I am sorry to report that subsequent trials with The Oddfellow's Bouquet have not lived up to my memory of the scent on that first testing - possibly because of the card / skin distinction. There was something 'oddly' mismatched about the combination of notes and something specific I didn't care for, though I couldn't put my finger on it. Having since clocked the notes, I am pretty sure now that it will have been the heliotrope.

Notes: heliotrope, tobacco, ginger, pepper, labdanum, benzoin

In fact I would align myself with this review by Kevin on Now Smell This. Like him, I feel that Volutes is a more successful fragrance by the perfumer, Fabrice Pellegrin. Persolaise also finds The Odd Fellow's Bouquet odd - but strangely compelling - and invites readers to picture 'a bow-tie-wearing gent wielding a cigar in one hand whilst sprinkling pine needles onto a child's chemistry set with the other'. The rest of his review is pretty off the wall and amusing, and I am further reassured that it isn't just me who finds the composition a bit peculiar. Sabine herself had more luck with it, and found it well blended - her only issue was with the undue manliness of the name.

Okay, so what's with this Mata Hari moniker malarkey, I hear you interject? Well, to continue my ongoing theme of the work-related 'spying missions' I used to carry out, I once acquitted myself very well on an acquisition project in the stair parts sector, prompting the Chairman of the client company to dub me 'The Mata Hari of the spindle world'. As for the relevance of this moniker to the post in hand, well it concerns the practice of taking photographs of respondents and their buildings, which was another aspect of the job - sometimes also on a covert basis, as explained here. 

Source: Wikipedia

And it was for this same reason that the visit to House of Minster started to unravel. As ever, when I think I might wish to blog about somewhere I have visited, I like to take a few photographs, so I asked the sales assistant's permission and she said to go right ahead. Because of the position of the Atkinsons display I needed to crouch down to take some of the shots, and this squatting pose immediately attracted the suspicious attention of not one but two of her colleagues in quick succession. They didn't stop to ascertain if I was legitimately snapping away, but just weighed in with their rather pointed questions. The first lady said snippily: 'May I ask what you are doing?', while the second actually squatted down beside me and inquired, with heavy sarcasm: 'May I help you?' I quickly explained that I had asked their colleague if it was okay to take pictures, and told them about the blog post I was thinking of writing, and how the photos would bring it to life. D chipped in by kindly bigging up Bonkers, and reiterating that my intentions were honourable, and that a blog post can surely only be good for retailers and potential customers alike. Well, except for the fact that the staff of House of Minster seemed to think that my perfume bottle 'papping' was at best unorthodox, and at worst the unmistakable MO of a spy - which on this occasion was categorically not the case.

So at that point we made a sharp exit and adjourned for lunch. Alcohol was indeed involved as predicted, together with a fine view of Lichfield cathedral (though you can't quite see it in this shot!). Somewhat more lubricated than is customary at that time of day, we ambled round the shops, where I made a purchase of a pair of very tight cropped trousers - know rather fittingly as 'bistro' trousers - or not fittingly known, more like.

Have you ever come a cropper in a perfumery trying to take photographs - with or without permission? Do spill the beans about the perils of the perfume paparazzi!