Dreams are made of this: Annick Goutal Songes review

Songes having a nice little lie down

I spent large tracts of the Easter Weekend asleep. There were no family gatherings featuring rack of lamb, Simnel cake, or egg hunts in the garden; no invigorating walks in bluebell woods, pub meals, or even chocolate binges - though I had a full complement of Lindt bunnies in the house, so goodness knows the opportunity was there. I did demolish a tottering heap of ironing, finally read papers from as far back as last Tuesday week, and appeal a parking ticket on behalf of an elderly friend, so the holiday was not wholly without accomplishment. But mostly I slept - and dreamt - and felt a curious yet languorous sense of disconnection from the world, which I sense is an inevitable part of the 'single household condition' (to come over all Camusian for a moment).

Token Easter concession of hot cross bun, plus mini-tsunduko of Ian McEwans

In one of the dreams, The Monochrome Set (my recent travels with whom were evidently still fresh in my mind!) were supposed to be playing a late night gig outside a ruined castle on top of a mountain. The craggy topography was positively Transylvanian in appearance, belying the Tewkesbury postcode on the band's itinerary sheet. The 'get in' - or 'get up', rather, in view of the vertiginous terrain - was hard going, on slippery ground and along unlit paths. I am not sure the band ever made it to the summit - I was onto the next dream by then anyway, about a defective glide rail in the cupboard under my cooker.

Val in the garden of the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis

I have waited till this post to mention it, but along with Naja, there is one other scent that is inextricably bound up with meeting Val and Chris in Augsburg. For on the Sunday I wore a sample of Songes edt - the conscious creation of happy associations with perfumes being a thing I increasingly do, rather than noticing after the fact that random fragrance X (not to be confused with the online retailer of the same name ;) ) happens to remind you of good time Y. In my book, deliberately orchestrating scent memories is just a logical extension of outfit planning, and it worked like a charm with Songes. So much so that on my return to England I felt I had to own it, notwithstanding the substantial size of my existing perfume collection!

Notes: frangipani, tiare, jasmine, incense, vanilla, copahu balm, pepper, ylang-ylang, vetiver, sandalwood, amber, styrax

I have been wearing Songes a lot in the last two weeks. During a recent visit, my brother asked me what my favourite perfume was, which I obviously batted off as a preposterous question to put to a diehard fumehead. ;)  Yet the more thought I have given it since, the more I have come round to the possibility of only having TWO perfumes, and of Songes being one of them...! For while there is amber and styrax in the base, which one could consider 'winter perfume' notes, the composition overall sits squarely in the 'sultry tropical floral' category, which is not exactly the genre for which one reaches on a dreich and drizzling day in February. That said, I would not restrict Songes to high summer and exotic holiday locations, and I don't say that just because we don't really have a summer here and I don't go anywhere remotely exotic. Okay, not the beachy, Bounty bar kind of exotic, say. Some might say a residential container park in Stuttgart is a bit 'outside the box' as destinations go. Or 'inside the box', even. Sorry, I digress...but yes, I reckon Songes also works nicely in spring: like a cuckoo pint it is buttressed by a curling sheath of greenery - a compelling blend of vetiver and what I can best describe as 'a jasmine note in tuberose's clothing', most notably in the opening. For I detect a dewy, faintly medicinal** otherworldliness that reminds me of Carnal Flower, which I also see as having wider seasonal currency than its name might suggest.

**(or more exactly, a scent that is somewhere between grass, Germolene, menthol, and bubblegum, and I really do mean that in the best possible way)

Oops, we are tired again!

As Songes wears on, the narcotic and sensual bouquet of frangipani, tiare and ylang-ylang starts to bloom on a pneumatic bed of vanilla spiked with just enough pepper and incense to keep things from ever drifting into apocalyptic Loulou territory. Rather, this is a sort of 'sexed - and slightly weirded - up' La Chasse aux Papillons crossed with Ormonde Jayne Frangipani, featuring echoes of Amaranthine's creamily indolic milk pudding. There is an air of innocence about Songes, but if you were to tear away the soft focus veil like a tangle of so much diaphanous clothing, you would eventually uncover its carnal core. You might well have got fed up with the tangle wrangling long before, mind! If Songes were a film it would perhaps be a more grown up version of Bilitis, that stylish and moody 'coming of age' flick, of which my memory, like the cinematography, is hazy, but as a geeky and thoroughly unracy teenager I do remember it as an aspirationally risque cult classic. Even the theme tune is seductively soporific, in a slightly annoying synthesised Vangelis kind of a way! ;)

The most respectable still I could find! Source: Abe Books

Actually, park Bilitis with its youthful lesbian overtones - seductively soporific is really where it's at in a nutshell. Songes could be the signature scent of the Lotos-Eaters (aka the gloriously named 'lotophagi' or 'lotophages') as they munched on their lotus fruits and flowers, causing them to 'sleep in peaceful apathy'. Here is an extract from the eponymous poem by Tennyson:

"Eating the Lotos day by day,

To watch the crisping ripples on the beach,

And tender curving lines of creamy spray;

To lend our hearts and spirits wholly

To the influence of mild-minded melancholy;

To muse and brood and live again in memory"

Source: Wikipedia

And that brings me back to another aspect of my association with Songes: if Bilitis is its gawky and not quite suitable film equivalent, 'On My Balcony' from the band's Platinum Coils album, would be Songes in a song to a 't' - or an 's'! The track takes as its theme singer Bid's stay in hospital, recovering from surgery following a brain aneurysm:

"Through the perfume of sweet velvet sleep

I glide into the afternoon"

As I mention in this early tour post, when quizzed about the lyric, Bid explained that his choice of the word 'perfume' was quite arbitrary, and he probably just liked the way the word sounded. Even so, the woozy cadence of the lines nicely evokes a state of dreamy torpor, scented or otherwise. There is about a 30 second clip here, which gives you an idea of the track's languid charm - not unlike early Genesis indeed.

And here are a couple of reviews, which serve to confirm me in my linkage of Songes to song!

"The tempo slows in 'On My Balcony', a ballad that feels like drifting down a tributary of oblivion." - From a High Horse

"One is lifted up to the gentle heights of On My Balcony, where, weightless, surrounded by a golden luminous haze, the concerns of the world float far below." - God is in the TV

And as it happens, at that eclectic asylum seekers' hostel-cum-hotel that was our base in Augsburg, my room had its own balcony! As did most of them to be fair, haha. Okay, and not strictly my own balcony - more like my own section of a communal balcony that ran the whole width of the building. But the decor of all the rooms - which were individually designed by an assortment of avant-garde artists - was very Lotos-Eaterish, come to think of it, in the sense of minimalist and surreal, and conducive to a state of peaceful apathy! Good job I managed to stir myself in time to meet Val on the Saturday night - you could easily sleep your stay away, which would be rather a waste of a visit to such a picturesque spot, though you would feel jolly rested at the end of it.

I will close this free association 'spacy review oddity' with some photos of the other rooms I find most Songes-like at the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis, starting with the one I was meant to have, Grande Dame. (All photos sourced from the hotel website.)

Things start to get more diaphanous with Innen / Aussen:

My own room, 4 null 5, also gives good gauze:

Before taking a fluffy turn with Zauberwald (note also fluffy bedknob):

And here is Maskerade des Lebens - complete with balcony and trippy mural:

So there you have it - Songes edt, the scent of an asylum seekers hostel / hotel, a fabulous fumehead meet up, a hospital in Tooting, a dodgy 70s film, and those legendary lolling sybarites, the Lotos-Eaters:

"To muse and brood and live again in memory"

Are you asleep yet...? ;)

"Keep Me"...safe - my Penhaligon's perfume pendant-protected puss!

I will be back presently with more substantial perfume posts - okay, somewhat less tangential perfume-related posts might be nearer the mark - but I have been away this weekend, and just have time to mention another rather fortuitous perfume/cat crossover, also involving Truffle's collar, as it happens!

For the kitten has been coming and going outside unsupervised for the past week now - I am gradually getting used to the feeling of not even knowing for sure whether she is in or out. She has been wearing a fabric collar (not the Gucci watch strap, sorry!) for a while now, onto the inside of which I wrote my mobile phone number with indelible marker pen.

I was conscious, however, of the fact that anyone who found her might not think to take the collar off and look on the inside, just as it might not occur to them to have her scanned for a chip, even though she has one. So I decided that the best way to make the kitten readily identifiable to the casual passer by was via a visible tag hanging off her collar.

After extensive Internet searches, I ordered three hand-stamped small tags on the Internet - well, it is always good to have a spare, and they were all so cute, and in such attractive metals and designs! Two are coming from an Etsy company in Florida that rejoices in the name of Critterbling. They are being sent first to Undina, as the company doesn't ship overseas, and she is kindly forwarding them on to me using our tried and tested mule service (aka a travelling colleague).

The other one was made in Quebec by another Etsy seller called M J Lessard, and it has just landed!

But because of the leadtimes involved with these transatlantic tags, I lit upon a cunning temporary solution, also one which would gradually accustom Truffle to wearing something around her neck. For my 50th birthday, my friend Clare gave me a perfume bottle pendant from Penhaligon's. You are supposed to commit a fragrance to the egg-shaped receptacle, from which you can refresh your chosen scent periodically using the dipper built into the screw top. (Well, me being me, obviously I never did any such thing, and the bottle remains empty to this day.)

The pendant has been worn though, most notably to my 'transcentendal meeting with Bertrand Duchaufour' on the occasion of the launch of Penhaligon's Amaranthine. Ooh, that is a genuine typo, but I rather like my new coinage...!

Now in addition to the chain the bottle hangs on, there was a tiny little rectangular tag on a separate loop. You could engrave the name of the perfume on it, I suppose, or your own name maybe. It bugged me ever so slightly, mind, because it made you tinkle when you walked. (In the auditory sense of the term, I hasten to add.)

But suddenly I spied a use for it as an improvised Truffle tag, and had the chap at Timpson's in town fetch it off the main chain and engrave my landline number on it instead! There was no room for the dialling code, but I am hoping that the chances of Truffle wandering out of the whole of Stafford are remote, though her territory is growing by the day.;)

When I got home, I slipped the tag on the kitten's collar in a trice and it hasn't bothered her in the slightest - no dangling in the food or anything else untoward. The plan is to upgrade to the slightly larger round tags when she is a little bigger and well used to the principle, though I don't foresee any problems based on how well she has adapted so far.

And here finally is a shot of her enjoying the sunshine the other day. Tagged, chipped, marked, and ready for action!

Secret Message From Bertrand Duchaufour!

Okay, so that is a shameless example of tabloid journalism if every there was one, right up there with sensationalist headlines like: "My daughter grew another head", "I gave birth to a mummy", "The woman with a 14 stone tumour", and my all-time personal favourite: "Freddie Starr ate my hamster". For I guess this isn't so much a "message", as an inscription. And not so much a "secret" inscription either - as in surreptitious or clandestine - as merely overlooked.

Regular readers may remember that I was fortunate enough to meet Bertrand Duchaufour at the launch party for Penhaligon's Amaranthine. I described it as one of my Transcendental Experiences of 2009, partly because he sniffed me wearing his creation, but also because he dedicated my bottle to me in silver ink, with his best wishes - or "estime" in the original French.

At the weekend, whilst making up a decant for Ines, I happened to flip the base of the box up and noticed - for the first time in the six months since the event - that BD had written a second inscription on the bottom. This read:

"A une szande fou de parfum"

Only of course it said no such thing. "Szande fou" sounds like one of those new industrial eco-zones in China, just along from Guangzhou. After some considerable head-scratching, and flicking through my Harrap French Shorter dictionary, it dawned on me that the message must read:

"A une friande fan de parfum"

Which translates as something like: "To a keen fan of perfume". "Friande" is a versatile word in French, with connotations of both enthusiasm/fondness AND gourmet taste - "friandise" meaning a delicacy or titbit - sometimes even a specific type of pastry or cake. And we are not talking a greasy slab of apple turnover from Greggs the Baker or a sticky Bath bun the size of the new head the daughter has grown, but rather something infinitely more dainty, and by inference, elaborate and intricate.

So what may I take from this newly discovered dedication? That the great man thinks I am Bonkers about Perfume. That much is clear. And given the provenance of the perfume on which this is written, and the nuances of the word "friande", I am also going to infer that he thinks I have discerning taste.... : - ) Or a "fine gueule", as the French might say: an appreciation of the finer things in life, whether olfactory or gustatory. Did I just write "gustatory"?? Ah well, the word doesn't get out much, so please let it go.

Interestingly, on the Penhaligon's website there is a fragment of an old perfume formula written by William Penhaligon himself. It looks no less tricky to decipher than BD's handwriting (not helped by the silver pen, in his defence), but clearly demonstrates the usefulness of a magnifying glass on these occasions.