A spritz up the backside (not literally!): perfume as personal trainer, and my hairy brush with the Ironman 70.3 Triathlon

Same hall, different class! ~ Source: SLogan Fitness

I have read a few blog posts on the theme of 'perfume for the gym/workout', which usually take a matter-of-fact line, as though we were merely talking about choosing a scent for an evening out or for the office, ie a perfectly normal activity. So although this post treats the same topic, I am coming at it from a different standpoint. Because the fact is, I hate exercise. There, I said it. Shoot and defriend me now if you must!

Hmm, not so fast...I should perhaps qualify that statement slightly. I dread the thought of doing exercise, I don't enjoy doing it at the time - unless we are talking a country walk, say, but I invariably can't be a**ed to drive to the country - but I just LOVE the feeling afterwards, whether it is the floaty one you get from yoga or a generalised rush of euphoria from jogging. For the most part though, the enjoyment of the aftermath doesn't weigh heavily enough in the equation to overrule the kiboshing effects of the before and during feelings on my healthy intentions. Which is not to say that exercise doesn't get done by me in fits and starts here and there - I am a great believer in 'incidental exercise' as well as what the lovely Doctor in the House calls 'movement snacking'. How great is that expression!?! Now I am well aware that this is not enough on its own and that we all need (increasingly so as you age) a judicious combination of exercise of each of the four types: Cardio, Strength, Flexibility and Balance. These are all so important I have gone and given them capitals.

Source: Aroma M Perfumes

I do attend a yoga class on a Saturday morning, though I must confess I missed the last five weeks(!), due to a compellingly plausible excuse combination of weekends away and bad ears. Astonishingly I made it back this Saturday and it wasn't nearly as impossible as I feared. And on a whim, I sprayed Aroma M's Geisha Vanilla Hinoki before heading out, though I don't normally wear perfume when exercising. It turns out that I reviewed this scent almost two years ago to the day, and when I put it on before yoga its calming, faintly fougere vibe of vanilla and lavender, coupled with the sprightly opening burst of bergamot and the grounding incense and patchouli accord had rather surprising effects. For I felt much more motivated about being in the class while I was there, and a little less reluctant to go in the first place! There is a term 'resistance training' which is the same as our 'Strength' category and includes weight lifting and the like. Me, I need training to stop me resisting resistance training!...or frankly any kind of training indeed. ;)

But yes, in my discreet cloud of Vanilla Hinoki, the difference in my mood was really quite marked. I have no idea whether it would work equally well with any perfume I liked, but I sense Vanilla Hinoki teams up particularly well with the zen-like state yoga induces. Of course all exercise is ultimately relaxing for the body - and mind - but this one really hit the spot, no question, and was elevated to the level of aromatherapy in a sporting context.

In a strange postscript to the above, this unexpected bout of exercise was followed the very next day by more physical jerks(!), most unusually for a Sunday. A knitting chum called Felicity had kindly invited me and another friend as her guests on a spa day at Hoar Cross Hall, of which she was a full-time member. Obviously I jumped at the chance to spend some quality time with the pair of them, while swanning around grand surroundings in a fluffy robe. 'Swan' being the operative word on account of the garment's whiteness. 

Ghostly robed figure disappearing down The Long Gallery

Unfortunately, the day that suited us all for this three-way meet up happened to coincide with the Ironman 70.3 Triathlon - one of several such extreme endurance events being held across the world yesterday. Many of the main - and even minor - roads in the county were to be closed till early afternoon, and planning an alternative route was strongly advised.

Source: Express & Star

The other friend who was joining us never made it sadly, having spent many hours going precisely nowhere, before finally being turned back by a policeman somewhere near Rugeley. She had only gone twelve miles from home in all that time. Her hugely frustrating experience showed that you really needed to use an OS and Ironman road closure map in tandem to have any hope of figuring out a route - there were so many conflicting diversion signs on the ground that you would be sure to be trapped in endless Kafkaesque loops, as she was. The council really hadn't thought through the impact of their diversion signs, which were so numerous, and which referred to so many different (unspecified) routes, as to be of absolutely no use whatsoever. 

I had called the race hotline and enlisted their help to plot a route, yet I still managed to have a highly hairy drive even so. The road the organisers recommended was also closed(!), though it was in fact passable at a crossing point - which I knew in principle, but suddenly doubted. After a fruitless twenty minutes being catapulted between diversion signs in Uttoxeter like a ball in a bagatelle, I decided to override the closed sign and see what gave(!). Sure enough, after a couple of miles the crossing place and two marshals with bollards hove into view - they doubtless wanted to discourage casual passing traffic. I suppose that otherwise they could have spent the entire race shifting bollards like demented lollipop men. At the same time it was a bit naughty, as I genuinely thought for a moment that I couldn't go the way they said after all, and might so easily have given up myself at that point.

Source: Ironman.com

Getting across the cyclists' path was just the start of it though! I also nearly killed a dog that chased, and then ran out in front of the car; several 4 x 4s ran me into a ditch, and I narrowly escaped being rammed by a tractor as tall as a house as it careered round a bend, driven by a child. These were hands down the narrowest roads I have ever driven up/down, and I was in constant fear of meeting someone. With good reason as it turned out.

And so between the white knuckle drive, the yoga class I attended at the spa when I finally got there (two classes in as many days, hehe), and the 60 lengths of the admittedly half length pool...why, I virtually did a triathlon myself! Okay, that may be a slight exaggeration...

This wasn't the pool I swam in.

And I am very much hoping that Vanilla Hinoki has given me the metaphorical 'spritz up the backside' I need to get me exercising more regularly. Time will tell, but it has certainly given me a leg up for now.

Ooh, speaking of legs up, I am sure that girl was in my yoga class. I don't think I am good enough at holding the poses, mind, to ever end up covered in lichen.

New Year, old perfume, musings on (all kinds of!) ageing, and other random retrospective stuff

Source: bookmanlibrary.com

New Year's Day - a time for Solpadeine and regret, and if and when the hangover eases, quiet introspection. Maybe a spot of knitting. Maybe more Solpadeine. I blame my friend Gillie, who egged me on to have a second glass of Malbec, on top of the first one - and the glass of Sauvignon Blanc I had earlier. She got as far as a fourth glass, though in fairness some of glass No 2 went over my dress during an exuberant pointing episode - but I think I managed to pass it off as another red accessory (see below).

New Year is also when you finally start to have tantalising glimpses of the back of the fridge. And when you fashion oddball fusion dishes from faintly fermenting leftovers, because you would rather play Russian roulette with salmonella and listeria than accept that you went a bit mad with the big Christmas shop.

That said, I did get into the habit lately of sniffing my food before consumption, as well as scrutinising it for obvious signs of mould - and thus it was that some fizzy and oddly sweet-smelling parsnips with mushy middles got the chop smartish. As in didn't get the chop and go in the soup I was making!

"Sprouts are not just for Christmas."

Then New Year makes you realise your friends' eyesight is ageing at the same rapid pace as yours, as their festive messages - while warm and uplifting - are full of typos and predictive text gibberish.

It is also a time for writing appointments in new diaries in exceptionally neat handwriting, while knowing full well that your painstaking script will turn to complete rats**t as the year progresses.

New Year's Resolutions

And let's not forget those New Year's resolutions. This was a popular topic of conversation at the party I attended last night, and it amused me that in answer to the question: "What do you wish for in 2017?" one friend said "World peace" while I said "Teeming neurons", an oblique reference to the beneficial effect of aerobic exercise on hippocampus tissue. I did at least go for a long hike the other day with two friends, each of whom had two dogs. On the way round we met so many other people out with their dogs that it got mighty confusing, and in the ensuing furry melees I felt sure that people must just have been glad to go home with the same number of dogs that they set out with.

The lady in red is wearing a cashmere scarf I knitted!

I do have other resolutions, mind - all equally selfish it must be said: to read more books, and knit more, and sell a load of old clothes on eBay. And ideally eat less sugar, having recently scared myself witless about the deleterious effects of refined carbohydrates with this Long Read. It really is long, I must warn you. As I said on Facebook, where I posted the link, I think I could romp through 'Girl on a Train' quicker. It even made me eye up my four pack of Double Deckers with a newfound suspicion. That particular New Year's resolution isn't going at all well, however, as the very first thing I ate today as I walked home from the party was half a cranberry muffin, distributed free to departing revellers by our host. It was quite delicious, and on balance I think I will carry on eating my favourite confectionery and biscuits, and the devil and the dentist and the doctor take the hindmost.

Patchouli paws

Because it was the holidays, I relaxed my usual rules and allowed Truffle to sleep on the bed with me - but only in the mornings, if I was having a lie in. I associate this time with the rich scent of patchouli, for often her paws would have traces of earth on them from night manoeuvres on the allotments.

Diptyque Eau Duelle: the boomerang bottle with a duo of botched sales

So yes, now  that I am in my late 50s and things are starting to fail on multiple fronts, health issues are very much on my mind. Not helped by the slew of celebrity deaths this year, some of them younger than me. Though one or two had rather caned it in their time, one way and another. But maybe that is ultimately okay, for it is not about how long you live, but how fully, and how alive you felt while you were at it. (See muffin mention above.) I sense a discussion on the pros and cons of living in the fast lane / a rock 'n' roll lifestyle - or even one with occasional treats, haha - could warrant a whole other post sometime, albeit not about perfume, I know.

But on to the health of my fragrance collection, and specifically the unfortunate effects of ageing on my 70% full 100ml bottle of Diptyque Eau Duelle. I have owned it since 2009 or 2010 at a guess?, so quite a few years it must be said, and recently tried selling it on that UK Fragrance Sale/Swap/Split site. I put it up for a reduced price of £25, which was intended to reflect the bottle's age in a non-specific way. The first person to buy it messaged me shortly afterwards to say that she had compared my Eau Duelle with a recently acquired sample and found my bottle to be all about the vanilla, and missing "some of the more smoky woodsy notes".

I wrote back, most apologetic, and explaining that I had sort of "grown old" with my bottle, as it were, and had not noticed how it might have morphed over that time. However, I quite understood that she was in a position to check on the difference that ageing had brought about, and promptly refunded her money.

A little while later, another would-be purchaser came through, offering to buy my 'boomerang bottle' of Eau Duelle - so I had now received dual offers, you could say! I told him what had happened with the previous buyer, and this chap replied that he only wanted to use the scent as a room atomiser, and wasn't too worried about all the nuances of the notes being detectable. So the bottle was duly despatched before Christmas, with an even more reduced price of £19. Though this time I suggested to the buyer that he only pay me if he was happy with the perfume. And now it is sadly on its way back again... ;) In a message I learnt the reason for his not wishing to keep the bottle:

"Although I like the smell I think it has lost a lot of its strength. I tried it on the aroma diffuser but it was very weak and I could not really smell it."

I have to say that Eau Duelle is quite strong when applied as a perfume, even in its EDT concentration, but for his particular purpose it was clearly not fit, so no money changed hands and it seems this bottle is destined to stay put!

These incidents have brought it home to me that it is very difficult to sell a bottle of perfume you have had knocking around for a while, because the buyer expects it to be just as it was when it was new. And this got me thinking about the notion of ageing in broad terms, and how women too are expected to look as they did when they were young, or at least to give the arresting of the effects of ageing their very best shot! And that is a shame - the fact that something or someone is only acceptable if they are as they once were, even though the changes may not necessarily be all bad - just different. My Eau Duelle doesn't smell off; it still smells as pleasantly vanilla-y as many a vanilla-forward scent such as Annick Goutal's Vanille Exquise, or L'Artisan's Vanilia. But like me, I accept that it is missing some of its faculties - I mean facets!

Miscellaneous retrospective stuff

On the world stage, it goes without saying that 2016 was a pretty diabolical year, with spiralling levels of conflict and political turmoil. Frankly I am not too hopeful that 2017 is going to be much of an improvement. Or rather that things may get worse before they get better...

In a much more minor way, 2016 was a bit of a bummer for me personally in that I developed eyelid eczema in the spring, which still flares up from time to time, though I am more aware of the triggers now. I plan to do a separate post on how I have got on with various skincare products, now that I have been using them all for a while - some of them recommended by readers!

Highlights of the year on the social front included the great gathering of the clans in January for Portia's PLL talk, and subsequently knitting beanies for her ;) - I will get onto the next commission in good time for your winter! - along with Pia and Nick's highly enjoyable Smelly Cakey Perfume Meet Up in October. Then in May I spent a birthday to remember when I visited Liz Moores again, this time with Tara. My trip to France in August to visit my friend L was also one of my happiest times this year - a life changing one, no less, in that it planted the seed that I might one day retire over there, while the recent band tour in Germany was the usual rumbustious and 'sleep when I'm dead' fun.

Portia, me and Angela

Favourite perfumes of 2016

Of all the years I have been blogging, this is going to be my sketchiest selection, as I have tried so few of the new releases! With that caveat here is my little list - I have fellow bloggers to thanks for introducing me to quite a few of these - Val is responsible for three,and Undina two! As Undina found in her own recent round up of the best of 2016, my list quite fortuitously runs to ten...;)

Jo Malone Mimosa & Cardamom

Armani Privé Myrrhe Impériale

Aroma M Vanilla Hinoki

Aroma M Geisha Noire (my new favourite furry animalic amber)

By Kilian Amber Oud (as above, but sweeter, and less hoochy)

Ruth Mastenbroek Oxford

Puredistance SHEIDUNA

Chanel No 5 L'Eau (briefly tried on skin in store, but I liked what I remember)

Hermès Doblis (I have no words! The ne plus ultra ambrosia of leather scents. Okay, I had a few.)

Le Jardin Retrouvé Citrus Boboli (review to follow)

Source: aroma M perfumes

What I would really like to try!

Aftelier Perfumes Vanilla Smoke
Afterlier Perfumes Amber Tapestry
Hiram Green Arbolé Arbolé
Galop d'Hermès
Sarah Jessica Parker Stash

Fellow bloggers have massively piqued my curiosity about these.

Losing the plot?

On a housekeeping note, I noticed that in 2016 my page views went up quite markedly to nearly 40,000 a month, while the comments on my blog fell. I am not sure what is behind that dual(!) phenomenon, though if I had to guess I'd say that some of the new traffic is probably a fluke-y spike. As for the reduction in comments, it may be that I am now too much on the margins of the perfume scene to be regarded as a bona fide - or even a particularly enthusiastic! - voice on developments within it, compounded by my possibly annoying propensity to go off with alarming regularity on tangents (travel posts, skincare posts, and manifestations of off-topic silliness of every stripe). But I may never know the reason, as those readers may now have stopped reading as well as commenting! And it may not be that the lack of interaction by readers is a protest vote at all, but is due to something else entirely. I have no way of knowing though - that is the conundrum - so as a blogger it is natural to question the merits of what you are doing first. (Especially when you factor in middle-aged paranoia, haha.) But seriously, I would be glad to know what people think of the topic mix, and whether I should stick to perfume on here, and create a separate blog for the other topics. Or even drop the perfume side and just focus on travel periodically - I don't know. I do wonder whether Bonkers might have become a bit of an unholy mishmash now, and people are just too polite to say so. ;)

I can assure you though that I will be reviewing some more perfumes soon. Also, the bathroom renovation really does deserve a post of its own - for the comedy value of the whole sorry palaver alone! - though I realise that would be another digression. For yes, as you may have noticed, I am rather Bonkers about Bathrooms - and sanitary- and brassware in particular. Yet in this picture I took last night (several sheets to the wind it must be said) I completely failed to get the all-important taps in!

And finally, I would like to wish everyone out there - regular readers, occasional readers, or those who have landed here by mistake! - a very Happy New Year, or as happy a one as we can collectively contrive in this mad, mad world...

Ooh look, I have managed to get back to Sunday posting after a bit of a 'temporal drift' of late.