Chanel Les Exclusifs Bois des Iles & House of Cherry Bomb Immortal Beloved / Immortal Mine II: "thunkophobia" aka olfactory range anxiety

I have nearly finished reading a book by Hannah Jane Parkinson called "The Joy of Small Things", a collection of her columns of the same name for The Guardian, which were inspired in turn by J B Priestley's "Delight" - a book with which I am not familiar, despite having played the odious Ernest Beevers in Time and the Conways. I remember delivering the line: "You've done a lot of silly things in your time, Mrs Conway, but I think you'll find that's the damn silliest!", whereupon Mrs C would slap my face and a great cloud of talcum powder would whoosh up into the air.

But I digress...

"The Joy of Small Things" is similar in format to the late, great Michael Mosley's compendium of health tips, "Just One Thing", except that instead of being a collection of interventions you could do to improve your well-being, "The Joy of Small Things" features a bunch of things the author already finds conducive to her well-being, such as "The perfect dressing gown", "Cheating a hangover", "Closing browser tabs" and "Recovering from a cold". No selection does justice to the 100 or so titles of small sources of joy she covers. I would urge you all to get yourselves a copy, but maybe hold off for a few months in case I buy you it for Christmas. ;)

It occurred to me that "The joy of thunking a decant or sample" could very well have featured in the book, had Hannah Jane Parkinson been a perfumista. I have found one reference to fragrance in the book so far, but only about the relative cost of cedar and sandalwood oil in the context of an episode of The Apprentice. ;) Re thunking, it's not even about the decisive noise of the glass hitting the table as you set it down, empty at last. It is more the satisfaction of frankly finishing ANY receptacle of perfume you own, however small. There's a glaring paradox in my being a person who hates waste, yet who has managed to acquire a sprawling collection of perfume that will greatly outlast my remaining time on earth.

Source: House of Cherry Bomb

So given my scent surfeit, you might think it strange that I could ever get anxious about running out of a particular perfume. And by "olfactory range anxiety" I don't mean a situation where you apply a fragrance at King's Cross and it wears off before you get to Peterborough, but simply the sense of using something up. I wore Bois des Iles and House of Cherry Bomb Immortal Beloved this week, and found myself getting really quite twitchy about the dwindling level of my decant of each. So much so that I ordered 2ml of Bois des Iles from a guy on the Fragrance Sale / Swap / Split site on Facebook, which arrived today. I realised my original sprayer (pictured at the top of the post) actually has more left in it than I remembered - 3ml maybe? - but still the fear took hold...

Minor reinforcements 

It will be much harder to source some more Immortal Beloved, because this indie perfume house doesn't seem to have a normal website anymore where you can buy stuff, plus it is based in Brooklyn, and I  know to my cost that sending a perfume shipment across the pond is a perilous enterprise, though I might be able to find a US-based "scent mule". The name of the fragrance also seems to have changed since I last looked, to Immortal Mine II. I have messaged HOCB via their Instagram page, but have not heard back. If anyone reading this happens to live in New York, and has news of the brand, do let me know. So for the moment I have just topped up the Chanel by £4.50's worth. Maybe I will have to accept that when Immortal Beloved is gone, it's gone, like Texan and Marabou Delite bars, and Walkers Gently Infused Lime with Thai Spices crisps. And no, their Lime & Coriander Chutney-flavoured poppadoms are not acceptable substitutes. 

I spotted an actual Texan bar on eBay for £99! It is listed as "new", but I'm not sure how it would taste after 40 years...?!

The Scent Crimes Series: No 14 - Screw it or lose it...!

Yesterday, to my great chagrin and despite a torrent of indignant mutterings, they turned on the Christmas lights in Stafford. I had already spied the unsettling presence of chocolate snowmen in W H Smiths the other day, and a potted Christmas tree in a local nursery. It may still be a long way off the festive season in my own mind, but I will concede that it is finally getting a bit colder. And so it is that I have found myself increasingly drawn lately to those fuzzy aldehydic scents that envelop you in a warm, pétillant haze. I will not liken them to a cashmere shawl**, and if any reader attempts to do so, I will 'wrap' them over the knuckles for peddling the simile equivalent of giving red roses on Valentine's Day or supporting Manchester United. ;) And I have been wearing a fuzzy jumper this weekend, as it happens, a cast off from not one but two friends in succession, who were concerned that it might contain that ethically dodgy and ultra fuzzy fibre, angora. Some deep googling revealed that the sweater was in fact a perfectly ordinary mix of wool and acrylic, but the previous owners had gone right off it anyway - tainted as it now was by their lurid visions of spiky combs and rough-handled rabbits. So I guess I lucked out...evidently one woman's supposed unethically sourced garment is another woman's woolly windfall.

And the scent that I felt would go perfectly with this cream jumper was Chanel Les Exclusifs Bois des Iles, precisely because of its cosseting cloud of sandalwood and aldehydes. I noted that I had hardly any left in my small plastic atomiser, but was unconcerned, as I knew I had a larger back up in long term storage. This morning, having finally drained the little decant, I went in search of the bigger one, only to discover that the juice had vanished, though I had no recollection of using it lately.

My thoughts instantly flew back to the days when I lived with Mr Bonkers, and how he used to drink the first glass of wine I served him remarkably quickly. We had an amusing little ritual whereby he would extend the empty glass to me in his outstretched hand as a signal that he wanted a top up. This gesture would be accompanied by a comically sad face, and a faux air of bafflement. 'Oh look', he'd remark, 'my wine must have evaporated!'

Eek!! A driftwood Christmas tree from Notonthehighstreet.com

And so it was that the sad realisation dawned on me that my beloved decant of Bois des Iles had pulled a similar evaporation stunt while my back was turned. The wood of the islands had drifted off, if you will...;( I examined the bottle closely and quickly established that the plastic collar was not very securely screwed onto the glass bottle itself, doubtless greatly facilitating the evaporation process. I don't know how it would have worked itself loose exactly - maybe by jostling against other decants in a box - but there wasn't a single drop left. I felt bereft. I could quite happily have gone on wearing Bois des Iles for another few days, especially if this cold snap kept up.

And then I spent the next hour or more systematically going through my decant collection, pulling out any other atomisers that looked as though they had also leaked their contents. (I am quite good at remembering roughly how much juice should be in there and whether I have worn a given scent recently.) I found a few more offendors, but still a happily small proportion of my decant collection. If I was Undina I would be able to tell you exactly how small, but I failed miserably on the census-taking front. Surprisingly, there were not one but two bullet-style atomisers of Séville a l'Aube that were completely empty. I suspect the first had leaked and I had filled another one thinking the first must just be faulty, only to have the same thing  happen all over again. Some bullet atomisers must not be air- / watertight, or 'dicht' to use the very versatile German word.

The other casualties were a pretty pink atomiser of Natori by Natori (there's a blast from the past!), Costume National 21, Tom Ford White Patchouli, and a glass barley twist decant of Armani Privé Rose Alexandrie. None of these had obviously loose collars as such, but evidently evaporation can occur given the smallest of 'gaps'. But a  half-screwed atomiser - as this Bois des Iles was - is clearly asking for trouble. I have now checked all the other decants for tightness, and they are as 'sealed' as that particular packaging format affords. To my mind the finger of suspicion points to the burnished metal atomisers in particular. Pretty as they look, I think the quality is quite mixed. Better off with the trusty Travalo.

Has anyone else experienced this phenomenon of unexplained evaporation - like ex-Mr Bonkers' wine glass ;) - or made the same mistake as me and left a precious decant in a semi-screwed state, with disastrous consequences?

** Note that I have historically been as guilty of the next person of using this descriptor, but I am now on a 12-step programme.