"The Lipstick Effect" in the time of Covid, plus my discontinued Burberry Nude Rose dupe merry-go-round

Readers will doubtless be familiar with the term "The Lipstick Effect", whereby in times of economic crisis consumers are drawn to self-comforting purchases of luxury goods, but trade down to smaller and cheaper options such as a niche scented candle or high end lipstick rather than fur coats or Louis Vuitton leather goods (to cite an extreme example). We've had nearly two years now of stop-start social isolation and travel restrictions, and as Christmas approached I found myself ineluctably compelled to buy myself all manner of affordable treats, from Blonde Chocolate Honeycomb pieces from Aldi to Turkish Delight from T K Maxx and fox-themed Fairisle socks from H & M. But beyond all that - and there were many more items than I care to disclose, some of which should perhaps be set aside till next year! - I also had a nagging urge to replace my go-to daytime lipstick, Burberry Nude Rose, which is as flat as a pancake now and which I have already re-bought several times.

A cursory squint on Google revealed that the price of Nude Rose (not the most recent lipstick of that name, which was a "Lip Velvet 405" and more of a definite pink, but rather the original Lip Cover No 25 version) had shot up to £28 since I last bought it, when I am sure it was more like £22, which I know is already quite steep for a lipstick. Yet I was bewitched by the haptic allure of the ruggedised Tartan bullet, and the easy-close magnetic cap, with its satisfying thunk...Anyway, my search also confirmed that the Nude Rose I had owned was discontinued, prompting another flurry of googling to hunt for any remaining stock knocking about in some remote corner of the Internet.

I quickly found an example of the correct Nude Rose for sale on a discount clothing site in the US for $30, which unfortunately necessitated a US address. I approached a friend in Portland - the driver on the West Coast leg of the Monochrome Set tour in 2019 - whom I knew to have plans to travel to Europe as soon as it was practicable. He was very happy to act as shipping address and onward mule once he was able to cross the pond again, should the postage (and/or customs charges) directly to the UK prove punitively expensive, as they may well have done.

As soon as I heard from my friend, I went back on the clothing site, but the lipstick was gone...This news in turn prompted a plummet down the rabbit hole of dupe identification, which swallowed up two entire evenings and drove me just shy of utterly exasperated and stir crazy.

First up, I found a YouTube video, where the reviewer, MrsTheDoll, presented a quintet of alternatives to my beloved Burberry:

L'Oreal Fairest Nude (800) / L'Oreal Balm Nourishing Nude (818)  / Maybelline Colour Sensational Nearly Bare (205) / MAC Hug Me / MAC Half 'n' Half 

Well, of course this triggered yet more googling to see if I could confirm these comparisons from other reviews, or even acquire "reverse dupe confirmation" eg by putting in "MAC Half 'n' Half dupe" and seeing if Nude Rose popped up in the other direction, as it were.

MAC Half 'n' Half ~ Source: Asos

What happened instead was that the "reverse dupe" tactic tended to throw up completely different lipsticks, which I dutifully proceeded to google and attempt to "dupify" in their own right, and so the trail went on and on and on...and on. Many of the lipsticks mentioned proved to be discontinued as well, though it might have taken me several hours of keen pursuit before this dawned on me(!); some of them were too sheen-y or too sheer or too matte or too expensive or too perfume-y (if the reviews were to believed), and thus I continued to shuttle from blog to blog and video to video like a ball bearing in a desperate game of bagatelle trying to align all the requisite attributes in a coherent pattern, including verifying the most important variable of all - colour.

In the end, I impulsively bought L'Oreal Beige a Nu for about six quid including postage - it had the twin advantage of being one of the few nudes I was considering that you could still actually buy anywhere(!), and it was cheap. And looked broadly in the right colourway. Okay, triple, not twin advantage. But it wasn't mentioned as a dupe for Nude Rose! Hmm, though I see it is cited as a dupe for Charlotte Tilbury's Pillow Talk, which looks very nice, haha. Beige a Nu isn't as creamy and moisturising in feel as the Burberry, not by a long chalk, but it is in the general ballpark, all things considered, and not too much money to waste on a punt - I will certainly wear it. 

L'Oreal Beige a Nu ~ Source: Luxplus

And then, on a whim, I re-googled Nude Rose on my phone (which uses a different browser and search engine from my net book, with a less American slant), and suddenly I saw a couple of stockists pop up, both purporting to sell the very article I had been hunting for all along! One was another discounted fashion outlet, the other a pharmacy. I bought one immediately (for just £15), then regretted I hadn't gone for two, in the spirit of always having a back up for discontinued items of great importance. So I placed an order with the other store and am still waiting for it to arrive. The pharmacy lipstick has come and is the real deal - you cannot believe how happy I was to be reunited with it. Having used Nude Rose consistently for so many years, and had so many happy times while wearing it - Undina knows how much I am wedded to the brand, as a fellow Burberry owner - it feels like a part of me more than a mere accessory, if that doesn't sound too grandiose. Oh look, I even wrote a post about Burberry's lipsticks back in 2012 before I bought my first one!

Note that I learnt in the course of my research that the term "nude" is a very broad church indeed, and includes my one quid bargain from Poundland (Choca Mocha No 4) for which I also have a back up. ;) So here is my current line up of "core" nude lipsticks, with the Burberry on the left, then the L'Oreal, and the Poundland on the right.

So, having wasted umpteen hours hunting down a substitute - only to end up buying the very thing I really wanted in the first place, in addition to the L'Oreal that I found, which wasn't even listed as a dupe for Nude Rose anywhere, but which just looked "about right" to my exhausted eye, haha - my advice would be to get the one you want when you see it, and don't mess about. For the principle of the "Lipstick Effect" allows for a pricey lipstick purchase in lieu of a much more extravagant outlay. With Louis Vuitton tote bags hovering around the £1000 mark - and arguably being a bit obvious and/or vulgar - a £15 luxury lipstick (or even two of them, hehe) seems like the epitome of self-restraint.

Oh I say, I just spotted another dupe of the Charlotte Tilbury I mentioned in that same link: Rimmel Rose Nude 45. It is "Nude Rose" reversed and only costs about a fiver. Or is it too pink for my warmer toned skin? Hmm, shall I "buy the bullet"....? Or will the next lipstick look exactly like the ones I already own, which as all wearers of lippie know, is the way it goes...

Have you driven yourself round the twist hunting for a much loved beauty item that is discontinued? Whether perfume, makeup or skincare? Did you win?!

A random round up of perfume oddities

I am sorry that I have been gone awhile...in my flimsy defence, I have been preoccupied with recurring bouts of eye eczema - unusually for this time of year, as the main triggers are pollens of every stripe. At first I blamed a conditioner high in natural ingredients, which can be as irritating if not more so than synthetic ones, only to experience another episode a couple of weeks later despite avoiding the offending hair product, leaving me none the wiser. These flare ups are now commoner than periods of "good skin", and I am even starting to wonder if I should believe in chemtrails after all, and that planes are spraying some irritating chemicals in the atmosphere that are landing on my face, haha. At this point in my bafflement and frustration I am open to any explanation, however off the wall.

Staying with the notion of "off the wall", this post will take the form of a compilation of odd things linked to perfume that have struck me lately.

The perfume bottle that isn't

Reprising the theme of a post in 2013 on "perfume related imagery", I have another example to add to the pot, namely a dish I bought in a charity shop for £3 (see above). Does that not look like a bottle of Estee Lauder Private Collection Amber Ylang Ylang to you? Okay, a bit squarer perhaps, and without the beaten gold top. And the top it does have admittedly resembles a wan and bloodied finger, and is on the skinny side. But a definite resemblance nonetheless, I would say. Through half-closed eyes the white streaks could even be seen as representations of sillage, hehe...

Source: Boots

The perfume reviews that weren't

I did originally think I would review the latest release from Papillon Perfumery, Spell 125, as I have a fondness for the house and have covered most of the perfumes in the Papillon stable. Not quite all of the line, mind - not Anubis - but most of them. And Spell 125 is a very fine composition like its fragrant forebears, even if it is not really "me". For I have a problematic relationship with pine, and found it difficult to connect with Spell 125 on a personal level. It struck me as more of a "foresty atmosphere" rather than something you would wear to accessorise an outfit - the olfactory equivalent of the musical sleep aids found in the deepest recesses of the Calm app, some of which go by the startling name of "dronescapes". Claire of Take One Thing Off makes this very point in her own stellar post on the scent, using the term "environmental", and later alluding to Spell 125's "ascetic, modern spaciness", though I promise I had the same reaction independently. ;) She does concede that Spell 125 would nicely accessorise a yoga outfit - and act as a kind of scented "om" mantra perhaps? So that would have been the angle I would have taken, but there was absolutely no need as Claire had eloquently mined the same metaphorical seam before me. Spell 125 also reminded me of a poem I wrote when I was 11, which was published in the school magazine, although I have no copy of that or the poem itself anymore. I know it was about a crypt, and evoked the dank musty, chilly feel of the sarcophagi in that underground space where no light could get in. I remember the first two lines and that is it:

"Alabaster icy cell / This is where the spirits dwell"

Sarcophagus in St Mary's, Ingestre

I do know the poem had a meditative, dronescapey quality to it, with bonus murmuring insects outside in the churchyard and a fair few mossy flagstones, but my memory is as fuzzy as I believe the atmosphere of the poem was. So that scuppered the review as well. And the third thing to do so was the fact that while I am aware of the significance of the name "Spell 125", every time I hear it I instantly think of "Bet 365", possibly because they are a local company - and major employer in the area! - in Stoke. And that was the final nail in the coffin of the review that wasn't, and is what qualifies it as an "oddity" for inclusion in this post.

Then there is another new perfume I am not going to review, because it would dispel the mystery readers may prefer to solve for themselves. As soon as I sniffed it, I immediately thought:

"Woody soapy iris".

My next impression (before consulting the note list) was of a muted and hazy, more high end take on Bourjois Soir de Paris, which was of course a huge hit in its day. 

Top notes: Violet, Peach, Apricot and Bergamot

Middle notes: Iris, Heliotrope, Rose, Ylang-Ylang, Jasmine and Lily-of-the-Valley

Base notes: Amber, Sandalwood, Vanilla and Musk.

Soir de Paris is noticeably fruity and sweet (due to the first three notes above), and "puts out more", whereas this new fragrance is a sophisticated, understated veil. Interestingly, 11 of the 14 notes in Soir de Paris are in the new scent, though it has many more besides. But that could well explain why I went straight to the Bourjois in my mind. Below is a photo of my vintage mini (featured here), which is sadly too irrevocably gunky to be used now.

My world is not JPG

Recently I have been progressively friended on Facebook by a bunch of perfumistas, who all seem to know one another and be from The Netherlands or Belgium. I accepted the friend requests and was soon hit up with the following invitation to join a group about Jean-Paul Gautier called "mijn wereld is JPG" - at 4.04am in the morning! So many assumptions involved here: that I speak Dutch/Flemish, that I like JPG enough to wish to join a group devoted to the brand, and (most improbably of all) that I am awake and raring to respond in the middle of the night! You may well ask why I don't turn my phone off to avoid such disturbances, and that is because I drift off to sleep listening to podcasts or meditations or one of the aforementioned dronescapes and my phone is therefore still on for the rest of the night.

"Hallo, ik heb deze groep op Facebook gemaakt waarin je mogelijk bent geïnteresserd - mijn wereld is JPG"

The perfumista alarm clock

I bought a travelling alarm clock on eBay the other day, as my trusty old folding leather one was in for repair and not expected to come out alive. Even if it did - as it has to my surprise - it must be "on its last hands", and it is always handy to have a back up against the time that nobody makes them anymore, on the assumption that we all now use our phones instead. If I have a very important early start - say if I am catching a train - I will often set two devices, not being a morning person. Anyway, the clock arrived yesterday - a dinky little thing with a cheery orange leather interior - and I was almost as excited by the design of the clock itself as I was by the tissue paper in which it was wrapped, which had Penhaligon's perfume bottles all over it. How very unexpected! And what an inadvertently apt choice on the part of the sender. ;)

The Alien perfume sample

I know Omicron is about to descend on us all shortly, and possibly precipitate another lockdown, but I have managed to get out and about a bit lately, and recently met up with a Japanese friend, who kindly donated a clutch of skincare and perfume samples she had acquired as GWPs when buying larger skincare products. The one that intrigued me most was the sample of Mugler's Alien, with which I am familiar already. It was the delivery mechanism of the sample that tickled me - you pulled a cardboard tab upwards to reveal a white plastic nozzle, and then pressed the image of the bottle to deliver a spray from it - which is the closest I have seen to a sample replicating the experience of using a tester. ;) Genius really, and guaranteed to appeal to my inner little kid. 

Do you have any perfume oddities to report? Let me know in the comments.

Gillie Nicholls Open House Pottery Sale: 26/11 to 28/11/21 (also featuring my Runraglan Knits!)

This is an even more off-topic post than usual, which is saying something, but on the off-chance that this might reach anyone who might be interested and live within striking distance of Stafford, I wanted to mention an upcoming "Black Friday (Weekend)" event. For my good friend Gillie Nicholls (singer, songwriter, potter and sculptor) is holding an Open House from Friday to Sunday of this week. She will be selling a wide selection of her hand thrown pottery, and I will be peddling my knitted wares. The weather is getting colder, so their time has come!, plus they also would make ideal Christmas presents. The details are in the poster, but in case they are a bit small to read, here they are again:

Friday Nov 26th: 4-8pm

Saturday Nov 27th: 10-4pm

Sunday Nov 28th 10-4pm

30, Victoria Terrace, Stafford ST16 3HA

Tel: 07817 550360

By way of further enticement, there will be tea and coffee and homemade treats. ;) After the long gloom of the pandemic, the weekend will also be a welcome opportunity to catch up with friends and neighbours - or any perfumistas out there who'd like to come along and say hello!

There are more examples of Gillie's work on her website, (including her sculpture of my head), while further photos of my knitted items may be found on my Runraglan Knits Facebook page.

Gillie's idea of a "selfie" ;)

MAC Pro Palette Eyeshadow: It's Satin Taupe, but is it really green?

Source: eBay (I forgot to photograph mine!)

People who know me well will tell you that I have a hard time making decisions. A classic example of this is in a restaurant, where I will be overwhelmed by option anxiety and feel compelled to ask at least one question of the wait staff. This is to ensure I know exactly what I am ordering, and to pre-empt the feeling of "diner's remorse" that inevitably comes from eyeing "the dish not taken" that your friend ordered instead (to come over all Robert Frost for a moment). Last Saturday, at a meal in a primarily pizza restaurant, my question concerned the presence of raw onion, which I feared might be found nestling surreptitiously in a mound of Puy lentils in the salad I was considering - but was assured to the contrary. As I may have said before, I have even been known to inquire what exactly "Mushrooms on Toast" consists of, to be greeted by a blank look from the waitress and the laconic response: "Mushrooms and two bits of toast".

But in complete contrast to my usual MO of dithering and doubt, if someone were to ask me what colour eyeshadow I was going to buy next, I would have no problems at all defaulting to my favourite shade of all time, MAC Frost Satin Taupe. (See how I managed to sneak in another frost reference? We had some on the ground today, as it happens.) Satin Taupe was also a staple of the late, great blogger The Non-Blonde, and would be my desert island eyeshadow in the unlikely event of ever being forced to restrict myself to one. Even given unlimited choice, I probably wouldn't wish to own more than four shades: a taupe, grey, green and mauve would cover it. That is such a rare phenomenon for me with a beauty category, when you think how promiscuous I have been with perfume and lipsticks, and even skincare.

I was prompted to rebuy my beloved MAC eyeshadow owing to a recent bout of eye eczema, that I thought might have been triggered by either the eyeshadow or several possible mascaras being a bit long in the tooth, to be polite about it. Though it is so hard to know, as there are frankly irritants at every turn. Plus I am known for really pushing the envelope when it comes to using make up and toiletries generally well beyond their use by dates, which may not be doing me any favours.

So I went searching for a replacement online - not living anywhere near a MAC store - and landed on the website of Selfridge's, which offered to deliver for the princely sum of a fiver. And the exact product I lit upon was called "Pro Palette", which didn't compute with me, but the photograph showed a traditional eyeshadow pot just like the one I had, so I wasn't unduly concerned. But alongside the pot it also showed a picture of a flat square card form of packaging with a hole in it, which was puzzling, much like the name. The cost was £10, a bit less than I expected to pay, but of course the delivery bumped it up to £15.

Lean and mean packaging - my card minus the pan!

Interestingly, I have just performed the identical search in Bing and cannot fetch up the particular combination of images I just described, but I swear that is what I saw right before I clicked on "Buy". So you can imagine my surprise when what arrived was a very shallow disk inside this little square card - not unlike the presentation of Serge Lutens wax perfumes if anyone remembers those? It quickly dawned on me that I had in fact bought some kind of refill, not a new pot after all - but a refill for what?? I thoroughly examined my existing pot and couldn't see an easy way to relase the old pan and insert the new. There was no button to press or catch to release, for example(!), so it was not at all obvious how I would get the old suspect one out to replace with my hygienic new purchase. But there was also no practical way I could use this little sliver of an eyeshadow in its loose state - it was about the size and thickness of an old florin.

There was nothing for it but to get out my trusty little penknife - won in a particularly high end kind of cracker, and now about to have its moment - and prise the darn thing out. It did eventually shift, so I gave the plastic housing a good wash and slipped the refill in with no further problems. Having carried out a new Internet search out of interest, I see you can mix and match these little pan refills and place them in a new black plastic palette you buy separately for this very purpose. Who knew? It certainly wasn't clear based on the search that I made that the refill was NOT intended to go in the old style single shade round pot. And hey, I actually thought I was buying the pot in the first place!

Ta-dah! New refill finally wrangled into old pot

The penny also dropped that this move towards supplying refills will have been prompted by a desire to save on packaging on environmental grounds. All very commendable. Which explains why I was most surprised to learn that this slip of a product had been delivered in my absence to a neighbour. Why ever would it not have fitted through my letter box? This is why...and there was even more paper wadding than pictured - of the stretchy white concertina variety. Oh Selfridge's, how absurd is that?! They may think they have to justify their £5 delivery charge by putting the little card in the biggest box they need to to trigger a higher postal charge. When it would of course fit into a slim Jiffy bag / large letter at the very worst. So a big black mark to the store for their choice of box, notwithstanding its fetching yellow insides, for this all but undoes the good work of MAC with its refills.

Long term readers may recall that I have included this very issue of "bombastically big boxes" in my Scent Crimes series in relation to perfume packages, but it does of course apply to any kind of product.

But anyway, despite the confusion and extensive washing and knife work involved, topped off by disappointment at the disproportionate amount of packaging, I am still very glad to be reunited with good old Satin Taupe in a new condition that shouldn't trigger my eczema. And I was wearing it in fact at the weekend, at the restaurant where I inquired about the onion...

Source: MAC (an actual Pro Palette!)

If you could only have one eyeshadow, what would it be?

Bonkers is 12 today!

Source: Flickr

As regular readers know, I very rarely mark the occasion of my blog anniversary on the actual date. Days often go by before I remember, sometimes running into weeks, assuming I even do. On a whim I took a look just now at my very first post and read something else I had forgotten, namely that my intense and obsessive interest in perfume when I first fell down the rabbit hole was sparked by a phase of my thyroid being overactive, even though my diagnosis is of "underactive" thyroid. The thing is that if you accidentally overmedicate the condition, which is all too easy to do, it is like taking speed, hehe, and you can be prone to frenetic bursts of activity and bouts of insomnia. Coincidentally, I am coming out of such a phase again now - which has unfortunately contributed to my newly discovered osteoporosis, but there's no point crying over a surfeit of trabecular bone perforations. I did this by gradually lowering the dose of my medication (you do need to keep an eye on that, especially as you get older or add other drugs into the mix). However, even when I was at the peak of being in "manic mode" lately, I can report that this did not translate into a renewed compulsion to test every new perfume that moved. ;)

But I do still love the stuff, and am currently helping a friend to find a new signature scent, or better still, a perfume to start off her fragrance wardrobe, a concept I was keen to impress upon her as "the only true way". Moreover, yesterday I nearly met a perfumer in The Cotswolds, who is a friend of an old friend with whom I was spending the weekend, though it didn't work out in the end. This Person of Interest is involved in all sorts of fragrance-related projects, and is bound to know a lot of the usual suspects on the scene, so I would love to chew the cud with her one day.

In another surprise turn of events, I have been wearing Puredistance Rubikona for at least a week (review here). I initially re-tested it as a possible contender for my friend's new perfume (though the cost is admittedly a bit of a barrier!), but it ended up hitting the spot every single day when I was mulling over what to wear.

 

Source: Puredistance

So yes, I am not "over" perfume yet by any means, and greatly value all the friends I have made through the hobby, both real life and virtual, but I don't have that irrepressible urge to try, try, try, and often in the old days buy, buy, buy. Which is probably just as well. 

It also occurred to me that I probably don't deserve to celebrate a blog anniversary anymore, when I post about once a fortnight usually, and also had that long hiatus during my various health investigations. These haven't run out of steam either in fact, but the longer they drag on, the lower the chance of the doctors having overlooked something imminently fatal, one can but hope!

On that subject - not death, the other subject ;) - I would be curious to know if readers have a preference in terms of how often a blog owner posts? There are of course daily blogs, and several times a week blogs, and then the more "leisurely" (read "lazy"!) ones like mine. But I can only write when the spirit moves me, and will never ever have a schedule, even if that erratic rhythm sheds readers and SEO brownie points - as it very likely does.

I do have quite a few things in mind for the future, including - strange to report! - a couple of perfume reviews. I may not keep Bonkers up for ever though, as I would quite like to turn my hand in earnest to travel writing - maybe even a book featuring my many (mis!)adventures down the years on work trips, band tours and holidays. But we'll see...

So here it is, my 724th post, having batted off all the companies who would like to write guest articles here about everything from the Aquibear Countertop RO Water Purifier, to the Goodpapa K1 Multi-Function Spin Scrubber, the Elevoc Clear ANC + ENC Earphones, or the happily more snappily named MP Magic Boxer Brief, which prides itself on being:

"the first underwear with the unique seamless pouch on the current market. Totally seamless briefs for total comfort and once go seamless, never go back!"

Hmm, I bet you are wishing I had reviewed that last one...! And I wonder what perfume he wears? Looks like a Sauvage or a Bleu man to me, what do you reckon?

 

Eczema-friendly anti-ageing night creams: ouch-proof contenders to suit every budget

Pinky's improvised throne from a box insert

About ten years ago, on the same day in Brussels I had the strange experience of a teenager giving up his seat for me on the Metro, and being kerb crawled in the red light district into which I had inadvertently strayed. I remember joking to friends at the time that I was "on the cusp between cougar and care home". The same was true in dermatological terms, for back then I had acne and wrinkles. To the list I have added a Vitamin E allergy and eyelid eczema / contact dermatitis, about which I wrote a longer post here. (Scary photo alert!)

I haven't been troubled too much by incidents of eczema this summer  - or not since June, say - when there is a confluence of pollens, but one of my eyes has recently gone that way again (wrinkly top and bottom, and sore to the touch). I think this is due to a new serum that has a number of allergens in it, most notably lavender. I should know better really than to put it round my eyes. Hey, I don't even like lavender, but it was heavily discounted!

Now recycled into coasters for pots of cream

There is nothing for it but to desist from using the serum and wait for the reaction to subside, as it usually does. I don't need to alter my night time routine though, as I already have an armoury of benign unguents at my disposal. To be fair the bar is set pretty low in terms of what I look for in a cream, and goes something like this:

1) non-irritating, especially around the eyes

2) a pleasingly hydrating feeling on application, whether the cream is thick or thin

3) anti-ageing ingredients of some kind (ceramides and peptides being the most eczema-friendly)

So for anyone curious, here is a trio of night creams to suit different budgets. I use them on (a very haphazard) rotation. Well, I don't use the Drunk Elephant one anymore as it is used up, and I only kept the pot for photographic purposes, in anticipation of this post. 

Drunk Elephant Lala Retro Whipped Cream (£50 - Cult Beauty)

6 Whipped African Oils & Ceramides

I hadn't heard of any of these African oils, the names of which I will spare you - they seem pretty recherché, and how pray does one whip an oil? I found this product on Beautypedia, where it had garnered a coveted 5 star rating from Paula Begoun. It comes in a beautiful mauve, white and grey box, with a striking monochrome design for the packaging insert. It is an airless jar with a "press-pump action", which I had to watch a YouTube video to figure out, haha. This design is said to be more hygienic and to inhibit the growth of bacteria that you get with pots you can dip your fingers in. Or is it something to do with the degradation of the product's active ingredients through the process of oxidation - or quite possibly both? I know Paula is very hot on pumps, but frankly I don't care too much about this aspect, for as my mother used to say: "You eat a peck of dirt before you die." And by inference apply it to your face too. She herself stuck her fingers in a pot of Pond's Cold Cream all her adult life and it didn't do her any harm. But maybe by the same token the product didn't do her any good, as it had gone rancid on the quiet - oh, I don't know. But speaking for myself, I am not as pump-orientated as is the modern way, even if I should be. Now initially when I tried this cream I had a bad reaction - my whole face felt very hot and burning for several nights in fact, but suddenly all that subsided and my face had obviously adjusted to the novelty of the whipped African oils. Perhaps they whip your skin in fact?? That would explain it. The  product is strikingly unscented - almost bizarrely so, when you think of the price tag - it smells more like something you might be prescribed rather than a high end niche product you have bought with your own money. It has a medium rich texture, and lasts quite a while, though the lid gets hard to press when there is very little left in the pot, which reminded me of trying to keep your balance on one of those wobble board things. 

Would I rebuy? No, not at £50 - I was feeling a bit maudlin during lockdown and wanted to treat myself, and I did enjoy it to the last blob. I have cut up the packaging insert and put a piece on my pinboard, leaving the rest to serve as (very small) coasters.

It is not as mauve as it looks in this photo!

Cerave PM Facial Moisturising Lotion (£18.98 - Amazon UK)

With 3 essential ceramides, niacinamide and hyaluronic acid

I have been using this product for years!, and already sang its praises in another dermatitis-themed post. It is another five star product on Beautypedia and I wouldn't need to feature it again only the formulation has changed, as Paula notes in her review:

"One point we do want to address: several people have contacted us saying that the updated formula stings their skin. This might be due to a potentially higher concentration of niacinamide in the formula, but niacinamide typically doesn't cause this reaction and most people tolerate even high amounts of it without incident. Another culprit could be the higher amount of pH-adjusting ingredient sodium hydroxide, which wasn't present in the original formula."

I did indeed find this cream quite stinging to start with, but after avoiding the eye area for a bit (which is where La Roche-Posay Toleriane Ultra Yeux comes in (with thanks to Undina for the introduction!), my skin gradually got accustomed to it, and now I can slather the stuff on with abandon anywhere on my face. Though "slather" isn't quite the right word, as the lotion is correctly described as "Ultra Lightweight" - in texture if not in its ingredients, as you can see.

Would I rebuy? Absolutely. I am on my first bottle of the new version, but must have got through a good half dozen bottles of the old. While holidaying in New York, ex-Mr Bonkers and his girlfriend at the time kindly made a detour to a drugstore to pick up three bottles for me on a "three for two" offer. He Whatsapped me a photo of his girlfriend holding the product aloft in her pink nail polished hand(!) to check they had found the correct one. It is a US brand you see, and is hard to find in UK stores. The price quoted above is from Amazon - you can get other items from the Cerave range in both Boots and Superdrug, but I have only ever found this PM moisturiser online.

Nivea Hyaluron Cellular Filler (£15.75 - Boots)

Pure hyaluronic acid and collagen booster 

Right, so after my Drunk Elephant had finally keeled over, I found myself searching for a slightly richer cream that would make a comforting change from the lightweight Cerave above, especially after acid toning when I don't really want anything too heavy on the anti-ageing ingredients front in case the combined effects might cause a bad reaction. I turned to this budget night cream (which has some pretention of anti-ageing benefits) from Nivea. It is admittedly a finger dipper, but as I mentioned above I am not fazed by this, and even prefer the sensual act of dipping compared to wiping off the paltry dollop dispensed to me by the Drunk Elephant. I realise I am going completely against the tide of current thinking on the matter, so please feel free to shoot me down in flames. This cream is scented, but only gently, in the way that all products from the Nivea stable tend to be - it is a familiar, soothing fragrance that I couldn't really describe. I see Limonene, Linalool, Citronellol and Geraniol - and unspecified Parfum! - are listed, suggesting a citrus, rosy kind of leaning, but it is more elusive than that. Overall, I found this cream to be punching above its price tag in terms of a "luxury" feel.

Would I rebuy? You bet - I just sprung for my second jar, which is accolade indeed, as only a few products make it onto the repeat list. I can't find any reviews of substance on the Net, nor is it on Paula's radar that I can see. I don't know what the collagen booster consists of either, though  Macadamia oil and Magnolia bark are amongst the ingredients, so it might be them.

NB Honourable mention goes to Eucerin Eczema Relief Flare-Up Treatment (Colloidal Oatmeal Skin Protectant Cream / Ceramide 3 Enriched).

Eucerin is a Beiersdorf brand, ie the same stable as Nivea, and is well regarded on the dermatologist circuit. I'd say this product is more for calming angry skin during a flare up than something to be used every day. It has a bit of an anti-ageing angle, but is more about its emollient effects. I include this for any American readers in particular, as it is the very devil to get hold of in Britain - I bought it via Amazon in the end, but it took forever to come from the States. It is currently on a deep discount compared to what I paid though - just £7.30, plus £4 postage - so if your complexion is currently in distress, this will sort it out. I have been prescribed a colloidal oatmeal lotion through the doctor as well, which was similar in texture and general feel, though it lacked any ceramides - AproDerm, in a ginormous tub with a pump mechanism. Now that's more like it...;)

The Smell of Despair: random off-topic post on how not to sell a sofa

 

Apologies for the lack of squarely perfume-centric content of late: I do have a couple of perfumes I quite fancy writing about, but before I get to those something else always seems to catch my fancy! I am gearing up at some point to write a piece on skincare, and one on sleep, and one on "life hacks" I was surprised to discover recently. But I'll admit to having been majorly sidetracked by a full-on house project lately that has taken the best part of a month, involved preternaturally early starts, and consumed my attention - and an entire jar of sugar in the workmen's tea. ;) I could write a post about that experience perhaps, as lessons have been learnt. Much as they were when I had the main bathroom refurbished back in 2016, and reported on that process, which was harrowing and instructive in equal measure.

 

And because of my distracted state, instead of something more germane (feeble pun in the title notwithstanding), I have decided to split an infinitive and finally do the silly post I threatened to write some years ago (bet nobody remembers!) - on how not to sell a sofa. I don't believe I have ever sold a sofa myself, but I have bought a few...er...a lot, even. Looking back, I bought five for the house I shared with ex-Mr Bonkers (they are all still there too); then I have shoehorned five into this house, which I am astonished to realise on totting them up, and have two in France - one a cast off from my friend L, which was gathering dust in her barn, and goes back to her student days. Of the sofas in this house, two were bought on eBay, two on Facebook Marketplace, and only one was new - bought at a very good price from a manufacturer near Nottingham which deals directly with the public in a limited way, but doesn't advertise the fact. The company allegedly made the chairs for the film Dark Shadows, starring Johnny Depp, but I certainly didn't run into him browsing through fabric books on my visit to their showroom. Finally, the one in France that wasn't a gift was another eBay bargain. So I may be a bit of a sofa tycoon, but I am a canny shopper with it.

Now the fact that I have searched for so many sofas online - sofa surfed, you could say! - means that I have seen a lot of listings, and formed a view as to what is and isn't conducive to making that sale. There will undoubtedly be other factors, but for my money these are some of the problem areas that occur in adverts:

Sofa looks like a Michelin Man wannabe

Now I accept that in order for a sofa to be comfortable, a degree of padding is required. But these examples of "extreme upholstery" take the concept of pneumatic seating to a whole new level.

 

This one arguably has a 'Birth of Venus' scallop shell vibe going on?

 

This imposing black and beige model is free to a good home!

 

Sofa has hidden flaws?

I nearly named this "implausible antimacassars", for that is what the fabric draped over the back of the sofa below reminds me of.

 

 

And here is a covert operation involving cushions AND strategically placed fabric.

 

And another one... "Throwing" everything at the cover up operation. ;)

Sofa is not "staged" to its best advantage

I have a friend who - as a kind of running joke - posts photos on Instagram of furniture he has spotted abandoned on street corners. The photographs below are not quite that, but not far off it!

 

 

 Not a very scenic backdrop, but a bonus pouffe.

 

Misjudging the optimal cushion count

This point is related to the staging one above, but concerns the accessories placed on the sofa itself rather than the background of the photo.

Strangely, it IS possible to have too many cushions, and I speak as someone who errs on the side of profusion.

 

Meanwhile, this sofa strikes me as crying out for a "balancing cushion".

 

Sofa (and/or its owner) have given up the will to live

Actually, this category has some overlap with the others - or probably would have if you could see all the items in question. Full marks for transparency, mind.

 

At least this throw and baby drink paraphernalia? are not disguising any imperfections as such, but it doesn't make for a smart presentation of the goods.

 

 

The seller of this one is both transparent - and persuasive...

"hole in the back but cushions cover it perfect for someone just starting out and in need"

 

 

 By way of contrast, here is how the sofa that ended up in France was displayed by its owner:

 

 

I kept it for a while in the garage until I found someone to transport it over there (see photo at the top of the post). If I ever decide to sell it I have the listing photo ready to go! ;)

Have you ever bought or sold a sofa on the Internet? Do share your good or bad experiences!

Grand Theft Olfacto! The content scrapers are at it again...

It has been a while (nine years!) since I noticed someone posting chunks of my blog posts on their own website. The last time it was an Israeli site, and I wrote about the incident here. Which is not to say that people haven't been quietly scraping my content since 2012, because I haven't actively been on the lookout for it. The other day though, I was idly googling Bonkers about Perfume in the same way as you sometimes get the urge to google your own name and see what comes up - what? you don't do that? - and it wasn't long till I lit upon a site called "Bonkers about the Perfume". Which is not even correct English, so I immediately smelt a rat. 

I clicked on the site, which contained eight posts (in chronological order) from the autumn of 2015. Why those eight I will never know, but one of them was an account of how Val the Cookie Queen stepped up as emergency roadie and ferried the band around very close to her home in Austria, so I was a bit peeved about that one in particular being nicked. Also this account of visiting Liz Moores en route to another gig. The rest of the blog - labels, titles, headers etc - was in a foreign language.

Next up, I clicked on the name of the blog "owner" - a Roni Kusoy - who I think is probably Indonesian, based on the number of Indonesian people of that name on Facebook, though admittedly no Ronis. And on his Blogger profile I spied a further four perfume blogs I recognised: "old-timers" like me, and even bigger sites, namely:

Persolaise Perfumes (Persolaise)

Smellin Things of Perfume (Perfume Smellin Things)

Shrines Perfume (Perfume Shrine)

The Maisque Perfume (+ Q Perfume Blog)

And blow me down if this Roni Kusoy bloke hadn't also taken precisely eight posts from the same period of 2015 from each of these blogs and posted them on his phoney sites. He has scraped another nine blogs beyond that, including several about cats. ;) At least he hasn't been able to copy the illustrations across, so there are daft-looking blank spaces everywhere. You can see the full list if you are curious, and click through to the perfume ones from there. I don't want to give the man too many clicks from my own site, as that feels like playing into his hands.

Now it is only eight posts per blog, whereas the Israeli thief had taken a lot more, but I felt sufficiently annoyed to leave a comment on Bonkers about the Perfume, asking him to take the site down, and adding that I was going to inform the other blog owners (well, the owners of the perfume blogs, certainly, with whom I have a connection).

I AM THE REAL OWNER OF BONKERS ABOUT PERFUME AND THIS IS A FAKE SITE, STEALING MY CONTENT. PLEASE DELETE THE EIGHT POSTS YOU HAVE COPIED! I SEE YOU HAVE DONE THE SAME THING WITH THREE OTHER PERFUME BLOGS AND WILL BE LETTING THEM KNOW!

[At the time of writing I hadn't yet clocked the fake version of + Q Perfume Blog...]

Well, some time has elapsed but the offending sites are still there, and Kusoy hasn't responded to, or even deleted, my comment! (Which I made a point of leaving on all eight posts.) This chap also has a YouTube channel - it is the only other search result in Google apart from his Blogger profile - with two videos uploaded onto it, and all of 11 subscribers. Assuming it is the same Roni Kusoy, and I can find no one else of that name.

It just remains to puzzle over why he would even want to pose as the owner of all these blogs? Is it a mischievous game to climb higher up the rankings than the legitimate sites in question? Is he simply trying to harness lots of clicks and awareness of his name by instantly creating new sites with content, albeit not his own? And am I right that he is Indonesian?

If you are a blogger, have you had your own content scraped, and were you able to resolve the issue? I would be grateful for any tips as to how to get the sites taken down, because asking politely - or even rudely! - doesn't seem to make much difference. And I know this act of brazen scrapery doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, and barely counts as a "Grand Theft", except on aggregate perhaps, but still...

Mind how you go: France - the sequel, now the cuckoo has landed

 

The cuckoo has landed. Yes, I am back in Blighty, after a 600 mile drive, two PCR tests, and 29 loads of washing. Or so it felt. And this after not having driven further than Stoke in 18 months until a test run to Buxton the weekend before I went to France, though that was only 50 miles.

I didn't initially think the holiday would spawn two blog posts, but there were a few noteworthy events since I wrote the one in August, so I decided to commit them to screen after all, prefaced by sub-headings for ease. 

The model guest

This is my 11th stay in the village, and my 7th as a home owner. And my first as a host! For I finally took the plunge and had a guest to stay, an old tutor from my university days in Belfast, whose hospitality I have enjoyed on work trips on and off for 40 years, but to whom I have never returned the favour - until now.

He was a delight to have around, spontaneously doing food shopping and the washing up. We remarked on what a treat it is when you live alone (as we both do) to have someone to share the chores with. He had helpful suggestions on task lighting for the area which would be a kitchen if I had the full complement of relevant appliances, and also made the happy discovery that my fridge does in fact have a freezer compartment! On the practical front, he pointed out some crumbling areas of masonry that had escaped my eye, an earth cable outside that might benefit from a protective cover against the elements, and a patch of possibly recent woodworm. For the time being I have set a "tissue trap" over the affected area (the beetles will eat their way through it if they are still extant), and will address the "tissue issue" on my next visit. 

My friend was also a mine of surprising food facts: for example, that if you eat even the tiniest bit of eggshell you might get appendicitis; that mashed bananas are okay to eat even after they go brown, and that eating carbs for breakfast is in fact the worst time of day. Wot, no croissants or pains aux raisins...? Why, in English they are even collectively called "morning goods". Clearly that one is never going to (Garibaldi) fly.

Most impressive of all, on the first day that I suggested we make an excursion to some local beauty spots in the Dordogne, he said he'd much rather go in search of a clothes airer for me, as there is nowhere to dry my laundry in the French house, assuming I had first figured out the coin-operated washing machine in the wall outside Carrefour. He would only agree to doing touristy things once we had scoured the aisles of a Leclerc hypermarket (in vain) in search of one. 

Another endearing aspect of my friend was the fact that he understood the insecurities associated with aging, announcing brightly one morning that he was going to the bathroom "to try to make myself look a bit less like Cro-Magnon". So yes, he is welcome back anytime.

And he hadn't been gone five minutes when the orange and white cat (by now a daily visitor) annexed his bed.

Pass the pool tickets

Towards the end of the holiday - and the end of the swimming pool season - a French friend in the village handed me a clutch of swim tickets, which had in turn been given to her by a Dutch lady who had some spare. I kept a couple for myself, as there were only two days left before the annual closure, and I couldn't see myself going for a swim more than once a day, and passed three on to my English neighbours next door. When I went to settle a bill with the guy who troubleshot my gas hob in 2019 (things move very slowly in rural France, not least invoicing), I offloaded the remaining tickets onto him, as time was running out. He couldn't use them himself, as he was working, but was confident he could give them to a French friend with small children. Sure enough, when I went that afternoon, there was a lady of a similar age to him in the pool, children in tow, so I inferred (with some satisfaction, I can tell you ;) ) that the last tickets had found a home...

Of note too is that when you go for a swim, you have to present your vaccine passport, which in my case consisted of a letter in an NHS envelope. The lady on the door didn't even glance at it, saying: "I trust you." I was touched by this, though it did make me realise that I could have had the letter in there inviting me for my bone density scan - or arguably just a bank statement.

Covid regulation hoop-jumping

I am now well and truly blooded in all the requisite forms and procedures involved (currently!) in going to and coming back from France. One of these requirements is the pre-departure Covid test at a local laboratory, the precise timing of which you have to calculate with care, as it needs to be so many hours before you leave the country, plus you also need to be sure of receiving the results before you set off on your homeward journey. I guess you could assume a negative result and set off regardless, but in the event of a positive result you would need to be prepared to turn back and self-isolate where you had come from. The lab promised results within 24 hours, and I had factored in 26 before I really did need to leave. As it happens, they were through in less than 10, which was a jolly quick turnaround.

I nearly came a cropper though when I tried to pay for the lab test upfront with a 50 euro note. The girl on reception looked horrified, and gestured for me to remove the offending cash from the counter. "We can't accept that - it's microbial!" 

Another aspect of the protocol to re-enter the country is a lengthy online form you must complete in the 48 hour window before arriving in the UK. (You need good maths for this caper, let me tell you.) I overheard two women talking about this outside the lab. I assumed they were frequent foreign travellers as they were already referring to said form by an acronym - "PLF".  Move over, Palestine Liberation Front - the new acronym on the block is for the Passenger Locator Form!

Another yogurt implement incident

In 1978, aged 19, my friend Averil and I went backpacking round France and Italy. Rouen was an early stop in the trip and where we realised we had failed to pack any cutlery. After trying and failing with a comb, we managed to eat a yogurt with the end of a toothbrush. I am 62 now, and stopped in Rouen overnight on the journey back, where history repeated itself.

The ne plus ultra of customer service

Whilst on the ferry I wandered into the duty free - looking for a small edt bottle of Shalimar in fact, but no joy - and instead came out with a box of six assorted wines from a small producer in Aix-en-Provence which the manager said were better quality and value than the ones I had randomly picked out myself. This lady also arranged for her colleague - who looked like a female prison warder in navy trousers and sturdy steel-capped shoes, with a big bunch of keys in her hand - to open up the car deck specially for me, despite it being normally out of bounds to passengers during the crossing. To be fair I couldn't have handled the box of wine and my belongings when the ship docked, but it still felt like a big favour. The colleague proceeded to undo bolts and pull back levers on the heavy metal door with a dramatic flourish, as though she were opening up a bank vault to reveal a gleaming pile of ingots, not my 9 year old Ford Focus, fortuitously parked just behind it.

And my luck kept coming...the same manager of the duty free magically popped up on the till of the cafeteria moments after I returned from the wine stowing mission. She insisted I be given a second cup of machine-dispensed hot chocolate free, in a bigger paper cup, because I had accidentally used a small espresso one and some of my drink had run over the side!

Here is the wine (not all purchased on this trip, hehe). Even so, I think I may need to up my drinking...;)

The not so speedy supercar

On the long drive back from Newhaven, I got stuck in stop-start traffic on the M25 (as you do, even in a pandemic with sizeable numbers of people still supposedly working from home). Interestingly, the French for "stop-start" traffic is "circulation en accordéon" (accordion traffic - or perhaps, concertina, even), which is nicely graphic. At one point I got stuck behind the low slung head turning high performance beast that is a McClaren car, and thought how frustrated the driver must have been not to get above second gear till nearly the exit for the M40.

Now I am back I am already looking forward to my next visit to the house, even if it will be dominated by chasing up a joiner to do some much needed window repairs, pouring gravel down a hole under the stairs, and treating the woodworm as appropriate. And more hoovering and weeding and de-cobwebbing, obviously. Apparently the cat is still hanging around my house, doubtless puzzled that I still haven't opened the door to let him in...