'Use it or lose it!': Travalos succumb to sub-post office syndrome

Danaus's Daughters ~ Source: Wikipedia

I am just back from a nine day trip to Germany, the run up to which was so very hectic that I uncharacteristically didn't have time even to do one of my quick 'Bonkers is off on tour again'-type posts before I left. Nor did I finish my work project in time, so I ended up spending the first couple of days of our journey across three countries typing up my remaining interviews on a clatter of trains (I use the word advisedly), that were more or less prone to sudden unexpected lurching manoeuvres.

I originally intended to publish this post before I went away, as it was prompted by the perfume selection process for my trip. In my state of general disarray, however, I didn't get beyond writing the first two sentences. But 'I have started, so I'll finish', to quote Magnus Magnusson on Mastermind. There will additionally be specific tour-related posts to follow. And one on the bathroom(!), which was a step nearer completion today. Just a step, mind. And one or two on perfume, before I get too off-topic to warrant the moniker of perfume blogger.

Can it really be nearly two years since my last post about Travalos? I do seem to have the urge to write about these handy travel receptacles from time to time - completely unprompted by any commercially driven poke from the manufacturers, I hasten to add - and today (for which read 'about a fortnight ago') is another such occasion.

I decided to wear Diptyque Volutes edt at the weekend (whichever that one was - w/e of 26th November at a guess), and reached for the Travalo rather than the full bottle, only to find it was almost empty. I did a slight double take at this, as I didn't remember using it very much, not even 4ml's worth. I got the bottle out and duly refilled it, before something prompted me to examine the fill levels of my other half dozen or so Travalos.

To my surprise they were all empty, with one or two exceptions. As with the Volutes, I couldn't remember draining them dry, or even wearing them at all lately, ergo the only explanation had to be that dreaded sword of Damocles which strikes terror in every decanting perfumista's heart, namely evaporation...the same mysterious chemical process by which ex-Mr Bonkers' beer glasses famously used to empty.

And when you stop to think about it, the Travalo is after all a container with a permanently exposed hole in the bottom, the very hole which enables you to just sit it on the atomiser of your perfume bottle and pump up the perfume without the added faff of having to remove any cover or top. Or bottom, to be anatomically correct about it.

Shades of Tiny Tears...?

If I may myself briefly lurch from Damocles to Danaus, the Travalo principle neatly illustrates the Greek myth of Danaus's fifty daughters, who were earmarked to marry the fifty sons of Danaus's twin brother Aegyptus - against their father's wishes - and I can't speak for their own. Hold on, would that not be a mass nuptial of first cousins? - but moving on...this is ancient history, after all. So anyway, at their father's behest, 49 of the women killed their husbands on their wedding night, and were condemned "to spend eternity carrying water in a sieve or perforated device. In the classical tradition, they come to represent the futility of a repetitive task that can never be completed." Much like the Myth of Sisyphus indeed, but involving a leaky bucket rather than a rolling stone.

So if anyone is not already familiar with the phenomenon of the evaporating Travalo, I hope this post will serve as a timely reminder. 'Use it or lose it' as they say of sub-post offices, muscles, foreign language skills, inkjet cartridges, and sundry other other items that need to be in regular service not to wither on the vine. But I will stop right there at the mention of vines, for that way lies yet another Greek myth - of Tantalus and his tantalising bunches of grapes - which perhaps have a tenuous relevance to the topic in hand in the sense that you reach for a Travalo, and another and another, only to be serially disappointed.

Oh, if anyone could use a Travalo (in gold) that had Chanel 1932 in it, or one (in pink) that once housed L'Agent Provocateur L'Agent, drop me a line, and it is yours. You know I don't believe in washing the blessed things.