Guardian angel: how Truffle - and my stress levels - went through the (curate's garage) roof (twice!)

Source: Ebay

Back in January, at the height of the bathroom leaks and 'Crack-ageddon', I distinctly remember avoiding any further testing of the samples Mandy Aftel had sent me, including Vanilla Smoke and Amber Tapestry, for fear of imprinting them with bad memories. In an exchange after the event, Mandy agreed that "aromas get tinged with memory in both good and bad ways and are almost impossible to disentangle", adding that she appreciated my careful approach.

Now that is all very well if you happen to know in advance that you are going to have a bad day, but sometimes the crises - like my cracks when they first kicked off - come at you out of nowhere. By this time you may already be wearing your chosen SOTD, which, perforce, becomes caught up in the 'horror and terror of the first water' (to borrow my father's phrase) that subsequently unfolds.

Which is something that so easily could have happened with a bunch of Puredistance scents the other day. I was testing four of them at once to determine my favourite, progressively narrowing the field over the course of the weekend to WHITE and SHEIDUNA. (I am still struggling with the whole capitalisation issue, though writing the word 'capitalisation' in lower case is helping a bit.) And in a final wrist-to-wrist play off, my overall favourite emerged, as...but I will save that titbit for later. ;)

So yes, last Thursday I was engrossed in the fairly thankless business of cleaning windows. Oh my word, what a rich seam for a blog post window cleaning techniques that actually work would be. In my desperation, I tried Mr Muscle, vinegar, and an E-cloth and water - sometimes all on the same window, endlessly rotated until the smears looked marginally less noticeable through half closed eyes and with the roller blind pulled down a few inches - and am now that sad soldier who is actually lusting after a Karcher Vac. But the point about the window cleaning is that I was somewhat distracted, though on and off during the day I had wondered why Truffle had not come back in since breakfast...It was mild weather, so I tried to convince myself she had just wandered a bit further and was enjoying herself in the uncharacteristic sunshine, even though I knew deep down that that wasn't her usual MO.

Truffle on the roof of the shed next to the garage....

First thing the next morning, 24 hours after Truffle had been gone, and following a completely sleepless night, I could no longer think of her as merely being 'out', and reported her as missing to the vet, an animal search charity that also had some useful online tips, and the insurance company - just in case you have to notify a missing pet the way I had to get a crime reference number off the police that time my luggage was stolen(!).

I also downloaded a 'lost cat' poster template, and was faffing about trying to resize photos when a friend messaged me from a train - having seen my Facebook status about Truffle's disappearance - and kindly offered to do the artwork for a poster. I explained that I was in fact nearly there with that, but he was able to combine two photos and make them fit the template, so his intervention was most timely. Not that I needed the posters in the end, as you will see!

Next up, I did some reading on the Interwebs, and learnt that for an 'outdoor access' cat like Truffle, the most likely outcome was that she had become trapped, probably within a short distance from home. The site recommended conducting an 'aggressive physical search' of her primary territory, comprising a five-house radius. It so happens that I am adjacent not only to five houses, but also to 33 lock up garages(!). I had already been round these a couple of times, calling Truffle's name and trying to listen out for any sound, which was tricky, given the ambient traffic noise.

View from the neighbour's garden

Then on a third circuit later that morning, I was passing the garage nearest to my house, which belongs to people in the next street, when I heard a cat crying. I also felt a paw underneath the garage door, though a short while after, the crying stopped and the paw was withdrawn. I still had proof that a cat was in there, even if it didn't turn out to be mine....

BUT I didn't know who the owners of the house were, so I loitered in that street for a few minutes and chanced upon a man unloading his shopping. I asked him if he knew the names / jobs / routines of the home owners. He told me that the wife was a part-time curate at the local church, so I jogged over there at the double, disturbed the vicar's wife, who was in bed, ill!, but gamely staggered downstairs because I had kept knocking. She texted the curate, asking her to ring me, and staggered back to bed, though not before letting slip that the curate's husband was a GP in the next county. And that the couple mostly lived there, only occasionally coming to Stafford.

Well ventilated garage of doom

There was no response from the curate, and of course I was frantic by now, as Truffle had been shut in the garage for nearly 30 hours already with no food and water. I know animals can survive for much longer, but obviously you don't want your pet to suffer for a moment, never mind a day and a half. So I promptly googled all the GP surgeries in and around the town the vicar's wife had mentioned, and found a doctor with a surname matching the curate's. Bingo! I rang the surgery, only to be told it was his day off. I asked the receptionist to try to reach him on his mobile and explain the urgency of the situation.

And thus it was that two hours later, the husband duly arrived and opened up the garage. Even on those odd times the couple come to Stafford, they hardly ever use it apparently! Moments before, my friend, Jim - he of the fine quips in my shortlisted entry for the 2015 Jasmine Awards - had turned up unprompted with a length of rope and a general air of reassurance. I stood outside to catch the cat if she ran out, and it was Jim who found Truffle cowering in a corner - collarless, filthy, frightened, and smelling of 'old stuff in garages' and p*ss. And no, that isn't 'puss', though she was back to her normal smell after a few (self-administered) washes. ;)

This is so going on her next collar...

That evening, I went round to thank the vicar's wife and the man who had been unloading his shopping, both of whom had given me such crucial pieces of information that led to Truffle's successful release. Well, I put a card through the door of The Rectory, knowing the wife was poorly, and the following morning, had a hand delivered letter back from her!

"I'm so pleased that you got your cat back. You wouldn't know how much your thank you card meant. I was feeling low after being in bed for the majority of the day. My husband came and gave me your card. It made me smile."

Oh, I don't feel so bad for getting her out of bed now. ;) Plus it sounds as though she is on her feet again. Unless the vicar played postman?

Then on the vet's advice I kept Truffle more or less indoors over the weekend, just letting her out briefly and under my watchful eye, but by Sunday she was feeling a lot more adventurous and events took another disastrous turn.

Source: Pixabay

Yes...it appears that while dogs have a short term memory span of five minutes, cats have a whopping 16 hours! But I am afraid that is nowhere near enough. For notwithstanding her earlier ordeal, Truffle managed to fall in the hole all over again! Even though I had already spent an hour supervising her outdoor access without incident, suddenly she leapt up onto the garden wall, and from there it was a mere hop, skip and a jump to the garage with the holey roof. Down which she promptly fell. The roof is made of full asbestos(!) and is really friable and crumbly as you will see, but I am running ahead of myself.

As the hideous and distinctly Groundhog Day-ish news sank in, one of the lodgers who lives next door (I'll call him 'L' - not his real initial  ;) ), and who happened to be loitering in the service road, offered to take a look at the hole. 'I'm only small', he said, 'I could probably get down there' - which despite his slight physique I privately thought unlikely. In a flash, L had shinned up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe, and before he could get anywhere near the hole, he suddenly created a much bigger one of his own...'Er...now I've done that, I might as well go and get the cat?' he volunteered, with an uneasy smile. A second later there was a sickening thud as L jumped to the concrete floor some six foot or so below. He promptly opened the garage door before I could tell him not to and Truffle shot under it like the proverbial bat out of hell! Luckily, she darted back home while the pair of us set about clearing up the bits of asbestos on the floor.

Sun glinting on the polythene sheet

In vain did I try to persuade L to use gloves like me. 'I'm 45, I've had a good innings', he said phlegmatically. Well, I for one would like to live long enough to see Truffle wear out / lose the three replacement collars I had just bought her. ;) Oh, make that four, as I later found the one she lost under a tree. Anyway, after sweeping up the debris, L and I managed to do our own rather nifty roofing job, though I say it myself, involving 'found' things from my own garage - two bits of board from picture frames, a huge piece of plastic groundsheet folded in half, and my old airing cupboard door to weight the whole lot down! I had kept it because it was too big to fit in my car to take to the tip - never thinking it might actually come in handy one day.

Our improvised roof covering in place, I rang the owners to confess what we had done, lump in throat. Luckily they weren't at all mad at us for technically trespassing and damaging their property, and have said that this second incident - which is fast turning into that lost parent business in The Importance of Being Earnest(!) - will galvanise them to get the roof fixed properly as a priority.

So there you have it. In the space of four days, Truffle and I lost at least two lives apiece, and I also learnt that herding cats is an utterly doomed venture. And was also touched by the tremendous support I received on- and offline from concerned friends, as well as the community spirit on the ground that led to both the happy outcomes.

Home Sweet Home

Now I had carried on testing the Puredistance samples meanwhile - well, applying them at least, and occasionally remembering to sniff them. I figured that if they had been tainted by Truffle's first fall through the roof, that feeling wasn't going to get any worse from this point on, besides which, she had been repeatedly rescued!, neatly cancelling out the bad associations from before.

And unexpectedly, Truffle and I seem to have a much closer bond now, I would say - or I do to her at least. Presumably she has no memory of either incident by now, hehe. She has slept on my bed for a total of five nights so far, without spending half of it jumping on my head, as happened the last few times we attempted - and quickly aborted - a 'co-sleeping' arrangement. If she continues to be so well behaved, we might even be able to entertain this cosy regime on a more regular footing.

Then Monday was happily uneventful...Truffle went in and out of the garden unsupervised numerous times, and I have almost stopped worrying that she won't come back...

Oh, and the favourite Puredistance? - the one that really 'went the distance' during this strange r*****coaster of a long weekend, and which not only came out the other side unscathed, but had the power to subliminally comfort and shore up my fragile mood? It was that creamy, fruity, at times discordant, yet mesmerisingly fizzy amber and myrrh-fest that is - SHEIDUNA.

PS Proper perfume posting resumes shortly...

Votive duet: Aftelier Perfumes Vanilla Smoke & Amber Tapestry mini-reviews - plus an Ajne retrospective

Made by me - a rare gift TO my elderly friend!

Strange to report, I didn't develop a liking for wine till I was at least 22, and olives still remain a challenge too far today. In the nine years of my perfume hobby, I have also come late to appreciating natural perfumes - that's with the exception of Carmel-based Ajne, a house to which I was introduced by Michelyn Camen early on in my perfume j*****y, before she founded Cafleurebon. I still possess a small bottle of Calypso - a woozy blend of frangipani, jasmine, cardamom and vanilla - which doesn't seem to have turned yet, despite being at least eight years old. Ajne* had quite a low profile in the blogosphere back then, and I never hear tell of them now. For a while though the range exerted a hypnotising pull over me, due to the hyper-realism of the luxurious ingredients, coupled with the delicate filigree of the Bohemian bottles, and the ritualistic way I would dab on my precious collection of samples. There was even one called Om, described as 'a consciousness-altering blend of smoke-laden sandalwood, Himalayan heart incense cedar, deep forest lichen and smooth musk'. I remember liking Om quite a lot, but I was busy chasing samples and splits of the other heady florals in the range apart from Calypso, notably Printemps (gardenia, linden), and Fleur Blanche (gardenia, stone fruit). It all feels like a lost chapter in my life, with only the increasingly amber-toned remnants of Calypso as testament to my ever having had this intense but fleeting dalliance with natural perfumery...

Ajne Calypso

Then something happened recently to ignite a spark of interest in naturals again, namely an email from Mandy Aftel, explaining that she had spotted my comment on a blog post by Tara of A Bottled Rose, expressing an interest in trying Amber Tapestry and Vanilla Smoke, both of which Tara had reviewed. Mandy invited me to pick a couple more samples to go into the package, and after an enjoyable evening spent reading the reviews of fellow bloggers with tastes congruent to mine, I settled on Wild Roses and Honey Blossom (which I may feature one day).

But before getting to my impressions of the scents themselves, I must devote a paragraph or two to the packaging, which greatly contributes to the 'devotional' aspect of my response to them - though not before mentioning the lightning speed with which the package arrived. It took an astonishing three days to come by FedEx Express all the way from Berkeley, California (including a brief pitstop in a depot in Cannock!). Why, I have known Christmas cards take longer to get from Littleworth to the other side of Stafford.

After the speed, I was completely smitten by the packaging...the golden Jiffy bag, the dear little cardboard box with its charming country scene and the tiny scent pots nestling in paper 'straw' at each corner.

Oh, and the distinctive use of priestly purple as Aftelier's 'house colour'. (Which reminds me of the time my father - not known for his largesse - bought me a colour TV on a whim, purely so he could watch a televised procession of bishops in New Zealand in all their ecclesiastical finery.)

Then there are other dainty touches to savour: the mysterious motif of a long stemmed retort, like a spindly garlic bulb, and Mandy's characterfully spiky calligraphy on her little note, enclosed in a glassine bag to protect the ink from the elements.

How much did I love all these thoughtful trappings? It activated whatever part of my brain - somewhere deep in the amygdala, perhaps? - is excited by miniaturisation, and brought back happy memories of dolls' houses and advent calendars of yore.

And there is something very significant too about the little pots; the Ajne samples were similarly presented, though it was all so long ago. I do believe these tiny receptacles predispose one to a mood of solemn reverence when applying - nay, anointing oneself with - the perfumes. And Vanilla Smoke in particular had the meditative quality of Ajne Om, or the Om at least of my distant recall.

So without further ado, here are my impressions of these two - I must stress that they were both written without reference to the note list!:

Source: kevineats.com

Vanilla Smoke 

I was not too sure about the first few seconds of Vanilla Smoke, as it was all about the smoke initially. A resinous puff of something like birch tar - or gunpowder? - in a quiet register, but still a bit too 'medicinal smoky' for me, if that makes sense. Very slightly like burning Band-Aids. But I was not at all daunted, having read enough reviews to be confident of a more seductive sequel, and so it proved. Soon a veiled sweet note emerged, like jaggery sugar or a dark, veering to treacly, vanilla, and smoothed out the smokiness. The texture of the scent was now silken and soft and comforting, the stern opening quite forgotten.  Who knew a bonfire (for there is smouldering wood still going on in the base) could be so cosseting? If anyone knows Om, cross it with Mona di Orio's Vanille and you would be in the right general ballpark. Vanilla Smoke is a judicious blend of austere smoky backbone and yielding vanilla vulnerability, if I may lapse into purple prose for a moment. Given the purple livery of Aftelier, I am hoping this may be excused! Vanilla Smoke is at once haunting and calming, and unlike any take on vanilla I have ever smelt - and vanilla being my favourite note, I have made it my mission to sample as many of its incarnations as I can find. I am not religious, but as I intimated earlier, dabbing a drop of this on my wrist borders on the spiritual. Hmm, I sense the dabbing part is key. Maybe Aftelier perfumes should only be available in tiny, dabbable quantities to foster this association. Now there's a radical idea... Or if my reference to transcendental experiences sounds a bit un-bonkerslike of me, at the very least Vanilla Smoke would be the perfect accompaniment to one of those Headspace apps where you sit still in a chair, scan your body parts one by one, and generally try to feel floppy. I  loved it, and wouldn't mind if I never smelt any of those 'straight up gourmand' vanilla scents (of which I have so many iterations in my collection) again.

Notes: yellow mandarin, Siam wood, saffron absolute, vanilla absolute, lapsang souchong tea essence (for which the tea leaves were smoked over pinewood), coumarin and ambergris

Source; pixabay

Amber Tapestry

Now although I didn't peek at the note list before marshalling my thoughts on this one, I remember reading somewhere that Amber Tapestry had jasmine in it - very likely in Tara's review - and was also waiting for a cosy, more amber-forward drydown. Instead I got a whoosh of fresh, green, vaguely mentholated, mahoosive and slightly bubble gummy phantom tuberose! And I promise I mean this in a good way! It was really, really interesting, and transported me back to the Palm House of Belfast's botanical gardens, inhaling the dewy, fleshy, otherworldly scent of some unspecified and faintly triffid-like plant. Think the blowsy Vero Kern Rubj crossed with Tubereuse Criminelle and you won't be far off, though I have only smelt the latter once. I see Tube Crim contains jasmine AND tuberose, as well as orange blossom and vanilla. And an eclectic collection of spices. And it is amber coloured to boot! So yes, those two...and maybe lob in a soupcon of Nuit de Tubereuse for good measure.

Source; Wikimedia Commons

Amber Tapestry is a highly unusual scent: odd and shapeshifting and not at all what I expected. Now that I have spied the note list, I reckon the faux-tuberose effect may in fact have been created by the combination of heliotrope (which can read big and 'plasticky') and the jasmine. And how intriguing that both Vanilla Smoke and Amber Tapestry should contain yellow mandarin and coumarin, not that I could have picked either of those out unaided. I suspect the coumarin could also be amping up the heliotrope and helping it stage this surprise tuberose stunt. I can't honestly say I get amber. Or even a drydown as such. The compelling tuberose chimera simply becomes more attenuated and finally fades away.

To compensate for my strange take on this scent, which I realise is way off the reviews I have now caught up with(!), I am inserting pictures of tapestries I have made - or co-made with my mother in the case of the footstool. Both feature an orange colour that could loosely be called amber.

Notes: heliotrope, yellow mandarin, jasmine, jasmine sambac, pear and cinnamon, amber, labdanum, benzoin, castoreum, ambergris and coumarin

The full footstool!

*Ajne did of course famously mark their card by unexpectedly closing early on the day I said I was coming to visit, hehe.