Unexpectedly reprising my 'Mata Hari' moniker on a visit to House of Minster gift shop & perfumery, Lichfield

Source: Wikimedia Commons

As I mentioned in my last post in reference to the reviewing of samples, the wheels on Bonkers grind very slowly. So much so that I am only now getting round to writing up a day trip to the jewel in Staffordshire's crown that is the cathedral city of Lichfield. Um...the day out in question was last May in fact, when a colleague D, who was similarly at a loose end workwise, invited me to join her for lunch and a mooch round the shops. Our tour was to include Lichfield's upmarket gift shop-cum-perfumery, House of Minster, of which I had read good reports in those local coffee table magazines you find lying about in dentists, but which in the past nearly seven years of my hobby, I had conspicuously failed to visit.

In anticipation of the very real prospect of a glass of wine or two with lunch - my colleague is a bit of an oenophile - I decided to use public transport. The route takes about an hour compared with 35-40 minutes in the car. Unfortunately, I added an additional hour to the travel time by waiting patiently for the bus on the wrong side of the street. As someone who has found a specific Nissen hut at the top of a mountain in the Mojave desert without the help of GPS or a map, and located a factory in Croatia purely on the basis of the wordless semaphore directions of an elderly lady selling tomatoes by the roadside, I felt extremely foolish to have failed to clock the correct bus stop not 200 yards from my house.

Source: visitlichfield.co.uk

Eventually, I made it to the terminus at Lichfield where D was there to greet me, seemingly unfazed by my spectacular navigational gaffe. We decided to repair without ado to House of Minster, where, after a quick shufty at the gift section - full of noble looking teddies, trays, trinkets, kitchen accessories and what it used to please Mr Bonkers generically to call 'stuff' - I 'hit' the perfume counter. The array of brands was impressive for a perfumery in the provinces, including Creed, Balmain, Atkinsons, Lubin, Trussardi, Miller Harris, Boucheron, Bvlgari, Cartier and many others. A really surprise inclusion was the range from Absolument Parfumeur, which I featured in my most recent post about Woodforde Perfumery in Sidmouth.

Sadly there were no samples available of the first scent to catch my eye, Miller Harris Le Petit Grain, though the sales assistant kindly scurried upstairs at one point to see if she might have one knocking around in a drawer. Obviously, any recollections of how a particular scent smelt are going to be woefully historic now, but Le Petit Grain was a bracing citrus I would have liked to have enjoyed at more leisure. Even now, there is a trace of something zesty on the blotter I kept... Other perfumes I tested on card at least were Trussardi Delicate Rose, Boucheron Place Vendôme, Bvlgari Omnia Indian Garnet, D & G Dolce, Balmain Extatic and Mercedes-Benz Perfume (the men's one)! I do remember that the Daimler number was a little bit like Puredistance M, so not my cup of tea really. In truth I was not wowed by anything I tried - and the spelling of the Balmain scent additionally troubled me - until I broached the Atkinsons range.

It was hard to miss really, as there was a stonking great factice on the counter as well as a prominent display with all the scents perched on it. I didn't dislike any of them, but the standouts on the day were 24 Old Bond Street (a crisp, G & T-style cologne featuring declared notes of juniper, rose, whisky and tea), and The Oddfellow's Bouquet, a spicy oriental. Pleasantly haunted by these two, I managed to buy a sample of the former on a visit to Roullier White with Sabine of Iridescents in July. And I have just caught up with The Oddfellow's Bouquet again when Sabine kindly sent me a little package of samples the other day.

I am sorry to report that subsequent trials with The Oddfellow's Bouquet have not lived up to my memory of the scent on that first testing - possibly because of the card / skin distinction. There was something 'oddly' mismatched about the combination of notes and something specific I didn't care for, though I couldn't put my finger on it. Having since clocked the notes, I am pretty sure now that it will have been the heliotrope.

Notes: heliotrope, tobacco, ginger, pepper, labdanum, benzoin

In fact I would align myself with this review by Kevin on Now Smell This. Like him, I feel that Volutes is a more successful fragrance by the perfumer, Fabrice Pellegrin. Persolaise also finds The Odd Fellow's Bouquet odd - but strangely compelling - and invites readers to picture 'a bow-tie-wearing gent wielding a cigar in one hand whilst sprinkling pine needles onto a child's chemistry set with the other'. The rest of his review is pretty off the wall and amusing, and I am further reassured that it isn't just me who finds the composition a bit peculiar. Sabine herself had more luck with it, and found it well blended - her only issue was with the undue manliness of the name.

Okay, so what's with this Mata Hari moniker malarkey, I hear you interject? Well, to continue my ongoing theme of the work-related 'spying missions' I used to carry out, I once acquitted myself very well on an acquisition project in the stair parts sector, prompting the Chairman of the client company to dub me 'The Mata Hari of the spindle world'. As for the relevance of this moniker to the post in hand, well it concerns the practice of taking photographs of respondents and their buildings, which was another aspect of the job - sometimes also on a covert basis, as explained here. 

Source: Wikipedia

And it was for this same reason that the visit to House of Minster started to unravel. As ever, when I think I might wish to blog about somewhere I have visited, I like to take a few photographs, so I asked the sales assistant's permission and she said to go right ahead. Because of the position of the Atkinsons display I needed to crouch down to take some of the shots, and this squatting pose immediately attracted the suspicious attention of not one but two of her colleagues in quick succession. They didn't stop to ascertain if I was legitimately snapping away, but just weighed in with their rather pointed questions. The first lady said snippily: 'May I ask what you are doing?', while the second actually squatted down beside me and inquired, with heavy sarcasm: 'May I help you?' I quickly explained that I had asked their colleague if it was okay to take pictures, and told them about the blog post I was thinking of writing, and how the photos would bring it to life. D chipped in by kindly bigging up Bonkers, and reiterating that my intentions were honourable, and that a blog post can surely only be good for retailers and potential customers alike. Well, except for the fact that the staff of House of Minster seemed to think that my perfume bottle 'papping' was at best unorthodox, and at worst the unmistakable MO of a spy - which on this occasion was categorically not the case.

So at that point we made a sharp exit and adjourned for lunch. Alcohol was indeed involved as predicted, together with a fine view of Lichfield cathedral (though you can't quite see it in this shot!). Somewhat more lubricated than is customary at that time of day, we ambled round the shops, where I made a purchase of a pair of very tight cropped trousers - know rather fittingly as 'bistro' trousers - or not fittingly known, more like.

Have you ever come a cropper in a perfumery trying to take photographs - with or without permission? Do spill the beans about the perils of the perfume paparazzi!