Cuvée Coincidence: A Vintage Bottle Of Corbières With An Unexpected Bouquet...

In the run up to the move, ongoing chaos continues to reign at the outgoing Bonkers Towers. Anyone who thinks I am exaggerating and that I most probably have everything under control should take a look at my desk. But I did say I would try to maintain a skeletal blogging schedule in the coming weeks, so here is my latest tenuously perfume-themed post...

People say that pet owners end up looking like their animals, or perhaps they already did to start with. This is particularly true of my friend Clare, who sports an identical corkscrew fringe to her cocker spaniel Meg. To be honest, I don't think I bear much of a physical resemblance to my cat, other than a few random brown splodges on my cheeks or a bit of a rheumy eye from time to time. Charlie Bonkers wears integral kohl eyeliner for instance, which is a look I can only work in a very dark place, ideally after a few drinks. Ditto, any of those False Lash-Volumising-Million Perkily Kinked Spider Leg-type mascaras.

Now Charlie Bonkers is additionally profoundly deaf, with a collapsed ear (unrelated to her deafness), five teeth, a sparse showing of whiskers - all but two of which are on one side of her face - and a bald and "floating" chin, so-called because there is a disconcerting amount of "travel" in the skin around her jaw. So yes, I would venture to say that I have a fair way to go yet before I resemble my own (admittedly rather elderly and decrepit) cat.

But if you also find you don't bear a marked similarity to your pet, don't be dismayed. For starters, in some category of household goods or clothing or other there is bound to be at least one, if not numerous products named after you. Yes, only the other day I encountered one such piece of furniture - why, the comprehensively labelled "Vanessa Traditional Solid Mahogany Large Extendable Oval Dining Table" in question even sported authentic stumpy legs! Then there is a Spanish make up range called Vanessa (or used to be in 1983 when I spotted it), and a pair of patchwork leather bendy mules bearing my name, made by an Austrian bendy mule and clog company I once interviewed.

And if I didn't feel sufficiently commemorated and immortalised by these Vanessa-themed consumer items (there were others, but I'll spare you), until the other week I was the proud owner of a vintage bottle of Corbières called Vanessa (a happy find by my brother and his wife on holiday in France). I say "until the other week" because Clare and I have since gone and drunk it, toasting the fact that I had sealed the deal on the new house.

Anyway, it was only on the day we downed the wine that I noticed on the label on the back of the bottle the following lyrical - and for a fumehead rather fitting! - description of the wine. Here it is in French along with my rendering in English:

"Un charactère certain
Non dénué de charme
Un goût de femme
Au délicieux parfum"

"A certain character
Not devoid of charm
The taste of a woman
Wearing a delicious perfume"

So yes, in more ways than I could have imagined, this celebratory bottle and its synaesthetic bouquet really did have my name on it... If turning into a bottle of wine makes me a LUSH, bring it on, I say! Plus there may be another Al Pacino film in there somewhere.

Oh, and I really did mean that about my desk...

Photo of Clare and Meg by Clare Chick via Flickr, other photos my own