A nest lined with bubble wrap: hoarding tips from a 'perfume packaging magpie'.

It is over eight years now since I wrote about the endearing and slightly bemusing practice of popping a sweet in with a perfume package - standard practice on Makeupalley swaps back in the day. Since then the business of sending parcels of perfume and the actual packaging used to do so have continued to fascinate. I have blogged about insulation tape and bubble wrap and a little cardboard box that shuttled back and forth across the Atlantic on multiple scent carrying missions. And I am still fascinated, despite the fact that my perfume sending of late has been radically curtailed: as regular readers know, I don't attempt it at all overseas anymore, and even domestically I worry a lot, as you are only meant to post full unopened bottles in their original packaging, preferably cellophane-wrapped according to the rather draconian post office nearest to me. In vain did I try to explain that these days not all perfumes ARE cellophane-wrapped, even if I were ever minded to send a bottle that was BNIB, as they say. In fact I am not sure I have ever posted a single thing that HAS met the official Royal Mail guidelines...!

Yet notwithstanding my dwindling postal habit, I am still hoarding suitable bits of packaging like a good 'un - or like a magpie. THE Perfume Magpie is obviously someone else altogether, with her own blog - her magpie tendencies doubtless relate to being attracted to perfume and stashing that away. And a magpie might not in fact be the correct term for my own behaviour, because bubble wrap and envelopes are not exactly the bright, eye-catching trinkets traditionally associated with this opportunistic bird. Moreover, according to an article on the Discover Wildlife site, entitled 'Debunking myths about magpies' (would you believe there are quite a few myths, beyond their alleged bling-nicking proclivities?) that isn't even true either. It seems to be a much misunderstood bird. On balance, perhaps I am more like a squirrel, then!

The avatar of The Perfume Magpie!

So, you may be wondering, to what in the way of packaging am I drawn exactly? A considerable array of things is the answer, starting with bubble wrap, that classically protective wrapping that augments the intrinsic bubble wrap of a padded envelope. There is always a trade off between appropriate levels of swaddling and the ensuing fatness of package and associated postage costs, but I usually come down emphatically - and pneumatically - on the side of wrapping.

Pictured in the basket at the top of the post (sorry, nest!) are some random scraps of bubble wrap of varying widths and lengths, all potentially useful to our cause. But before I go on I must point out that not all bubble wrap is created equal. As I mentioned in my 2012 post on the subject, the ne plus ultra of all bubble wrap formats, the jewel in the crown - to briefly reprise our magpie musings - is the ready-made bubble wrap pouch or pocket, with handy foldy over flap, complete with traces of adhesive, if you are very lucky. Could a more perfect receptacle be devised for neatly enclosing and protecting a clutch of decants or samples?

Also featured in that post is another variant on the same theme - I still don't know the definitive word for this material six years on!, but back then I thought that it might be some kind of polystyrene. It is opaque and a bit stretchy, and does the job pretty well too. I may be wrong, but I associate this second pouch style with the USA. Can anyone confirm if it is a common bagging material over there?

Then I also squirrel away assorted plastic bags like this - they aren't particularly aesthetic, and offer zero padding, but come in handy as a leakproof layer at the very least, for which there is much to be said.

Still on the theme of bags, I also keep and recycle any decorative drawstring bags I am sent, as these make a nice form of gift packaging, again with minimal protective value. Though saying that, the velvet and suedette ones are a lot better in that regard than the organza, while the mighty white faux leather ones from Micallef are best of all in the padding department!

Moving on from bubble wrap, bubble wrap bags, and bags of other materials, I also collect small boxes. I have many more than this example, but I suspect I may have hidden a whole bunch of boxes inside a bigger box and then gone and hidden that somewhere(!) for so-called 'safekeeping'.

Speaking of bigger boxes, a special tribute should be paid to the trusty Jo Malone box, which is ideal for a large collection of slim decants or samples. There is more inherent sound proofing with a box than a bag, so it is easier to conceal the incriminating fluid nature of your shipment(!). This particular specimen is much travelled, and its sturdiness and rigidity means it still has many more miles in it.

Ditto this Hermes box, a much rarer animal, with its striking orange livery. The mini orange sleeves that house Hermessences samples - of which I am sure we have all had a few in our time, thanks to the generosity of Hermes stores the world over! - are also handy for stowing the Hermessence tubes they originally contained, or other long thin samples. ;)

And no review of packaging for posting perfume would be complete without a mention of the humble Jiffy bag, or Bubble Mailer, for readers across the pond. I have a drawer absolutely rammed full of the things: in every size imaginable, some more padded than others, some in white and some in fawn, some with ID8000 labels already affixed, some without. I am often tempted to pop a reused envelope with the hazard label on it into the post box, but I believe you are supposed to have the thing scanned in a post office, even though this does invariably invite a barrage of awkward questions!

So there you have it - a house groaning with packaging materials, and an ever growing reluctance to post perfume. I also have a bowlful of appropriate postal sweets as it happens...maybe on the increasingly rare occasions when I do send scented packages, I should pop one in for old times' sake...

Please do tell me if you are also a packaging magpie - or squirrel - and if so, what are your materials / formats of choice?!

Another Post Office, another perfume bottle, and a Truffle turf wars update

'You've got work again, you say?'

Goodness...it is nearly two weeks since I posted. This is due to a last minute trip to Ireland on family business, swiftly followed by a rush work project, of which I am still in the throes. A work project?!! I know, it's been a while. Luckily, as with riding a bike, I don't appear to have forgotten how to work. And it feels good to be earning again at last, even for a week or so. And meanwhile there is still the outstanding Part 3 of my Civette & Unicorn post to come, but I have only just caught up with all the samples I was interested to try again - for L was bringing a couple home from France with her in the car. So the upshot of my retesting may have to wait till after I go to Belgium next week(!). Also work of a kind, though nothing I have done before...

So by way of an amuse-gueule, so to speak, I have a couple of updates: one about my latest experience of posting a perfume bottle, and the other about the status in Truffle's turf wars with her nemesis, Tootsie.

Yes, I posted a single bottle of an Yves Rocher scent to a friend in Belfast. It was donated to me by a vegan friend who couldn't use it, and is now on its way to someone whose bottle of this very scent is about to run out! Inside the package it was in its original box (tick!), almost full, as I had only test sprayed it a couple of times (not quite tick!), but crucially not sealed in a cellophane outer wrapper. I did wonder about investing in one of those cellophane wrapping machines to give my used bottles a semblance of newness - I see Marden Edwards do one, for example - though there is a conspicuous lack of price information on the website, which doesn't bode well.

So with fingers firmly crossed, I took the bottle to the main post office in town, a branch I associate with officious and draconian lines of questioning about parcels. However, unlike the local post office I eventually sent my eBay sale bottle from, I knew they would have the all-important hazardous goods label I needed. So I went up to the counter with an assured gait and determined set of the chin (or such was my hope), and announced: 'I've got a parcel to go second class please. And it will need an ID8000 label as it is a bottle of perfume.'

Source: Amazon

What is significant about this statement, apart from the fact that I used the technical name for the label, demonstrating to the counter clerk a certain degree of 'insider' knowledge about postal regulations, was that my tone was very much like that of Richard E Grant in Withnail and I, when he demands:

"We want the finest wines available to humanity, we want them here and we want them now!"

And it certainly did the trick. The normally quizzing clerk merely asked the value of the bottle and whether I wanted to send it recorded. Result!

Source: Amazon

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Then Truffle...well, I may have mentioned that owing to Tootsie's ongoing aggressive incursions, and associated malodorous vandalism, I bit the bullet and bought one of those whizzy electronic cat flaps that only recognise the microchip of a designated ie resident cat.

It took a few weeks before the joiner who did my bathroom - and who is a bit of a general handyman on the side - was free to come and fit it, and it has taken me a few more to train Truffle in its use! She was very wary initially of the whole construction - it probably had a completely alien new plastic smell. She would sit looking through it with an appalled expression on her face as if to say: 'I didn't ask for a new door - what is this contraption that has suddenly appeared?'

It took several days before I could coax her to go through it, when holding the flap fully aloft (having first disabled the electronic function as being much too 'advanced' for now). Then I caved in further and held the flap permanently open with a piece of string tied to the door handle, and Truffle got used to using it as an open thoroughfare, and impregnating it with her scent till it became familiar. Unfortunately, it was even more of an invitation to Tootsie during this phase, and as a result we had quite a few spraying incidents in the corridor leading to the back door.

I decided it was time to take Truffle's training to the next level...I lowered the flap, so it looked shut, but was in fact open both ways like the old one - and still in manual, deactivated mode. Only this flap was more solidly shut, with a brush fringe at the bottom making a perfect seal. The old one was light and flimsy: it used to blow idly in the wind, and Truffle could easily flip it up with a practised flick of her claw. This flap is immune to flicking or prising, and can only be moved by a full head butting action. Truffle had never executed such a manoeuvre in her life, and in vain did I lie down on the floor and attempt to demonstrate - first with my head, though it was rather too big for the dimensions involved - and secondly with my fist. Sadly, I don't think cats get 'demonstrations'.

Eventually she got the idea, through sheer desperation I imagine, coupled with trial and error. What was amusing though was that she didn't want me to know she had figured it out and would still sit in front of the flap for minutes at a time, looking nonplussed, if she sensed I was nearby. Then as soon as I withdrew, I would hear the clunk of the flap as she nipped out unobserved.

But unfortunately, Tootsie could work the flap in manual mode too. Head butting is a particular speciality of his, like Venus Williams' twohanded backhand or Joe Frazier's left hook. So I quickly realised that Truffle had to step up and learn how to use the flap in electronic mode as a matter of urgency, though that involved an extra layer of complication.

The idea is that as she entered the tunnel to the flap, it would read her microchip and a little catch holding the flap shut would depress, setting it momentarily to manual / 'free opening' mode, before popping back up once she was safely the other side. I had read that cats sometimes find the sound of the catch release disturbing, assuming they can position themselves correctly to have their chip read in the first place. ;)

And before the flap is set for this 'normal' operation, first it has to register the chip of the cat in question, which it does in so-called 'learn' mode.

As the manual explains:

"When testing the SureFlap Microchip Cat Flap, your cat will need to push its head against the flap from the tunnel side of the unit, or pass all the way through the flap. There is a sensor that detects the cat's presence in the tunnel that needs to be triggered and no amount of waving your cat in front of the flap will have an effect."

Ha! I think we may have initially tried a bit of waving, and 'stuffing of cat shoulders in aperture', for which the attached cat did not care at all.

Truffle jumps for joy having figured out the flap!

But in the end, I am pleased to report that Truffle has managed to pass through in both directions and activate the catch to let her - and only her - pass. Although I don't wish to anthropomorphise her, for she is only a cat after all, a mother who had just completed toilet training with her toddler couldn't be more proud. Well, not so much proud even, as mightily relieved that the days of coming down to a urine-soaked doors and walls in and around the kitchen and utility are hopefully over...

Nearly Busted Again!

The Spanish Inquisition ~ Source: Wikimedia Commons (Bernard Picart)

Almost a year to the day since I had my knuckles rapped by the Royal Mail for attempting to send consignments of perfume abroad, last week I came close to being busted again - or so I feared. Not all of the wrongdoing was my own, however, as you will see.

By way of background, I should explain that in tandem with the (not overly successful!) bottle sale on Bonkers the other week - which may of course be partly down to this fact that I cannot post abroad - I have been lobbing a few bottles on eBay, and letting them take their chances. The other day I was lucky enough to sell one of these, for a quite decent sum too. It was a not quite full 100ml bottle, so - mindful of the risks of leakage in transit - I parcelled the bottle up with elaborate care: first I put tape round its collar, then popped it into a gauze bag, which I placed inside a plastic mailer, before swaddling the plastic mailer in bubble wrap and laying the whole thing gently in a nest of tissue paper inside a gift box. I closed this box tightly with elastic bands, before wedging it inside a sturdy cardboard outer box lined with polystyrene chips and scrunched up bubble wrap. That box was then firmly sealed on all edges with parcel tape.

So far so good. Then, at my local post office, from the moment I asked for an ID8000 label everything started to unravel. The postmaster is used to my frequent shipments of perfume, and these days the most he ever asks me is: 'One bottle or two'. On that afternoon, however, his elderly mother was serving at the counter, and proved to be an absolute stickler for the rules. Anxious to create a good impression, he acted as her Greek chorus, chiming in with her ever more impossible stipulations. "Is it in the original packaging?" "Yes." I replied. "In its original box?" "Er...no, it's not in a box." "It must be in the original box with the cellophane still on." All of a sudden, the postmaster whipped out a blue demonstration bottle of a men's fragrance to show me what his mother meant by a perfume bottle. "This comes in a box, wrapped in cellophane. Is this what you are sending?" "Er...no, but to be honest, I am not sure it ever had cellophane - I am not even sure it had a box. It might have been a bag." "That's the only way you can send perfume...in the original box, in cellophane."

So that was me told. Browbeaten and crestfallen in equal measure, I slunk off to the next nearest post office, a little sub-branch inside a grocer's about half a mile away. Once again I asked for an ID8000 label, and this time hoped against hope there would be no grilling about boxes, let alone cellophane, or the small matter of the missing 15ml... The lady behind the counter looked at me as though I were an alien. "We don't have those. I have no idea what they are", adding in a peeved tone, as though I was trying to make her life inordinately difficult - at 4.45pm to boot: "I only work in the shop a couple of days a week - I don't normally deal with this side." In vain did I ask her to have a rummage in the drawer in case one of her colleagues had put some of the all-important labels by. "No, we don't have them. So do you want to post this then?" Suddenly, a Royal Mail delivery man hove into view, a huge, strapping hulk of a man, who wordlessly began humping big plastic sacks of parcels to his van, before returning and loitering with intent as I decided if I was going to post this package 'commando' or not. "You are my witness that I did ask for a label?" I piped up in a tone I had intended to sound cheerily upbeat, but which came out as wavering and doomed. "Hey, I don't have anything to do with postage and all that." Of course he doesn't - he is Royal Mail and she is a small outpost of Post Office Counters within a convenience store.

In desperation, I decided to chance the package with tracking, but without a hazard label. At least I hadn't been asked any awkward questions, but now the box had to take its chances in the Royal Mail's system, subject to random - or possibly even systematic! - scans and spot checks of its contents. I could so easily come a cropper, and what if it were a case of 'three strikes and you're out'? And straight into Stafford Gaol, as quickly as Rolf Harris was smuggled out the back at dawn the other month.

HM Prison Stafford ~ Source: Wikipedia (Stephen Pearce)

Cue a nailbiting 48 hours, which was the shortest timeframe in which a second class parcel could arrive. Meanwhile, I tried googling the scenarios under which Royal Mail parcels travelling within the UK are likely to be scanned. Could it be first class only? Special delivery? Ones going on a plane, even within the country? Tracked mail of any class? Some combination of the above - or even a completely different and more random set of criteria...

I also sought solace in a fragrance selling and swap site on Facebook. Members piled in to regale me with tales of their own daring and derring-do in dodging the authorities - many involving creative renaming of their parcels' contents as a  'statue', 'collector's toy', 'cosmetics samples', 'CDs', and 'books'. One comment in particular really helped allay my nerves:

"Ohhh don't sweat it. You'd probably get sooner taken for a ride by a dodgy buyer than have Royal Mail give you a headache with your parcel."

Kittens assuaged, I did take the precaution of alerting the buyer to my postal problems, and reassured her that I would issue a full refund in the event of the parcel being intercepted and confiscated. She was most understanding, and said she'd keep her fingers crossed for - and with - me. We sat tight for two days. Then on Day 3 at 11am I received an email from her saying the parcel had landed safely, without any sign of misadventures en route. She thanked me for packing it so securely, and for the free sample, while I thanked her for her patience. Then I thanked the members of the fragrance site, as their stories from the coal face of perilous perfume posting had been a comfort at a worrying time.

Source: Nestle

It was some days before I ventured out to my local post office again - with two big parcels this time. The postmaster was there, with his wife serving, and the mother nowhere to be seen. The wife weighed each package and made no comment - not even to ask me which service I wanted it to go by(!), so I chipped in to specify second class. The fact that they asked no questions is less significant than you might think, a) because the parcels were both returns - one to an Amazon supplier, the other to Nestle (two defective boxes of Cheerios, since you asked ;) ) - and b) because they didn't feel or look remotely like the sort of package that could contain perfume. Though I could so easily have lost a decant or two in one of the Cheerios boxes. But nevertheless, the near silence was in complete and utter contrast to last week's Spanish Inquisition.

I don't know if this marks a turning point in my relations with my local post office...I cannot be sure the postmaster will revert to his laissez-faire self on a future occasion, even if the mother is not on his case. So I think I should find a post office that is in possession of ID8000 labels, but which displays at best a cursory interest in the contents of my package.

And someone needs to tell the Royal Mail that not all new perfumes come wrapped in cellophane...


Do you have any perfume posting war stories - from either side of the pond? Do tell! (I might feel a little less beleaguered. ;) )

Going the Puredistance (III!) to pin down M: a 'wild vial chase' from MI6 to E10

Source: Wikimedia Commons

About a month ago, I had an email from Puredistance, announcing a redesign of the packaging of their perfume collection.

"We also updated our box and ribbon colours to match the emotion of each fragrance in our line. We call this our 'Puredistance Family' because each fragrance truly has a different character, like a family....We encourage you to choose your favourite Puredistance, and evaluate it through the lens of the family and its DNA."

So below is the line up of the new boxes - and very pretty and nicely coordinated they are too. In the spirit of Sabine's recent PLL talk about associating colour with perfumes - which Tara documented over on Undina's blog - I must say the fawn and red combo for Opardu strikes me as an unusual choice. Opardu I see very much in the shades of Monet's lily paintings - to wit greens, blues and mauves. Then for WHITE they have gone with orange, which arguably looks classier than egg yolk yellow, while Puredistance 1 is all white. I must say that with the juice being amber coloured I would have swapped those over and given the orange ribbon to Puredistance 1, and maybe picked a more muted buttery yellow ribbon for WHITE. Then BLACK is all black, which is fair enough, while M has aptly distinguished accents of grey. The sage green for Antonia also chimes with my mental image of that scent, on account of its strong green opening.

Source: Puredistance

Now I don't suppose that any of the above commentary constitutes 'evaluating my favourite perfume through the lens of the Puredistance family', which is probably BLACK still, though I reserve the right to change my mind at any time. ;) When writing my post on the ROADS Fragrances from Ryanair (all these capitalised names, what's that ALL ABOUT?!) I was vividly reminded of the peppery opening of BLACK by something similar in Harmattan, albeit BLACK has a marked cinnamon note as I recall. But that is as far as that smattering of evaluating went.

A little while later, Puredistance sent me a sample set with all six fragrances in it, but I already have samples of each somewhere, so the gift, generous as it was, didn't make me feel any more inspired or predisposed to (re-)evaluate BLACK (review here), and I just put them in the wardrobe for reference. And then, the other day, something quite unrelated came up that prompted me to dig out my samples of M...and thereby hangs a tale, and the subject proper of this post.

Source: guideautoweb.com

I have a perfumista friend I shall call R, who is still very much at the feverish acquisition stage of the hobby - regularly cruising brand websites and T K Maxx for bargains, and messaging me periodically in a pumped up state with news of the latest deep discount she has spotted. I can totally relate to this 'trigger-happy squirrel' mindset, as I was like that for a good four(?) years maybe. Anyway, like all good perfumistas, R is keen to introduce others in her circle to the niche perfume scene, including a particular work colleague who seemed receptive to the notion of expanding his scented horizons. She was putting together a little collection for him to try and I said I would be happy to lob in a few of my own samples that were either squarely masculine or unisex at the very least. It occurred to me to send her Puredistance M, that rugged leather chypre with oriental overtones, which I must admit I never bonded with all those years ago when I first tried it. It was too birch tarry I think, and computed as a bit 'Burt Reynolds-chested' back then. Ah, but as you know, my tolerance for powerful scents of one kind and another has come on by lascivious leaps and butch bounds since then - witness my surprise rapprochement with Papillon Salome, for example. So I got out my samples, was pleasantly surprised at how relatively smooth the leather aspect of M was this time round, and randomly picked a vial to send.

MI6 HQ ~ Source: Wikipedia

Well, it turns out I picked the wrong one, for my friend reported that the vial refused to spray. Point blank refused. Didn't appear to even have a hole to speak off through which a spray could even have been coaxed. I suggested swivelling, wrenching and decanting, taking a knife to it - or a more surgically precise pin. I wondered about putting her husband T on the case, having recently clocked a Facebook post by him about his successful refurbishment of two anglepoise lamps. T seems the practical sort who could wield a pin with panache. And still, despite the best efforts of both, the M vial wouldn't yield up its secrets - though that is of course entirely in character for a perfume based on a member of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, in a James Bond film. As luck would have it, when presented with the samples R's colleague thought he could just catch a whiff of M even so, and liked what he smelt.

Source: Puredistance

So, concerned by the recalcitrance of this sophisticated yet secretive scent, I promptly offered to post on my other vial, thinking I could maybe manage without a reference sample. The compelling need here in my view was to capitalise on R's colleague's newly awakened interest in M. Too lazy to go to the post office, I popped the vial into an ordinary envelope - without one of the mandatory ID8000 hazardous goods stickers! A week passed, and my friend and I puzzled over the non-appearance of the second sample, ironically the one with a functioning spray mechanism. And then finally R received a card from the Royal Mail saying that they were holding the item for collection, subject to the payment of the required excess postage. Oh, the shame! Not only had I risked this precious atomiser without the correct label, but I had also - in a moment of 'Pureabsentmindness' - put a normal first class stamp on instead of a 'large letter' one. I was fulsome in my apologies, while R's husband - who is semi-retired - was despatched to the sorting office the following day to retrieve the offending envelope.

Later, I received a message from R:

"T picked up the perfume - he had a 3 hour round trip cos they sent him to the wrong place. They felt sorry for him so didn't charge!"

T has a free bus pass at least ~ Source: geograph.org.uk

My reaction was a mixture of guilt for inadvertently sending my friend's husband on a wild goose chase, and amazement that the Royal Mail didn't charge him the fee for excess stampage, his flagrantly circuitous route to the sorting office notwithstanding. R assured me that it was all fine:

"Nooooooo Vanessa it's okay!! It did him good to get out of the house!"

And then suddenly the other day, I remembered Jan Ewoud Vos's creative concept for M the perfume:

"Puredistance M is about James Bond-like excitement we every now and then need to escape from boring routines and a dull life."

Well, T may not feel his schlepp round the sorting offices of East London quite counts as 'James Bond-like excitement', but his day definitely took an unexpected turn and he certainly went the distance so his wife's colleague could sniff this scent in all its back of an Aston Martin leather splendour. Many thanks are due to T and the uncharacteristically humane Royal Mail clerk who served him!


PS I happen to share the same birthday as Ian Fleming. Maybe this explains why the chairman of a stairparts company once dubbed me 'the Mata Hari of the spindle world' for my spy-like exploits on strategic research studies.

Perfume-themed pratfalls - could fragrance be a hazchem after all?

Could the label be more admonitory?

I have been quite disparaging in the past about the new postal regulations. These prohibit the sending of flammable liquids - including perfume - overseas, while allowing shipments of fragrance within the UK, as long as they bear an ID8000 label, declaring them to be 'exempt from requirements for dangerous goods transport document'. If they are exempt, and not considered risky to transport in this country, you have to wonder why they even have to carry such a label. Why not put one on everything from CDs and books to clothes and Interflora? After all, these things aren't dangerous either, unless you stab yourself with the roses or swallow the buttons on your Boden Henley top...

When sending perfume, it gets more tricky when you have a package full of homemade samples or decants, as is frequently my - and other fumeheads' - wont. The Post Office doesn't have a category for these, so you have to pretend they are the manufacturer's carded samples or the clerk could refuse to accept the package altogether. And because of problems with these grey areas of classification, I tend to flit from PO to PO in the hope that I will find more accommodating staff the further I roam - or staff who have yet to brand me as an awkward and deviant customer at least. I am reminded of those people who are addicted to over-the-counter painkillers, and travel far and wide to supermarkets and chemists out of their normal area, scoring a couple of packets of their analgesic of choice in each outlet.

So up till now you will have heard me speak no ill of perfume, other than to note that a few all-natural scents occasionally brought me out in a rash, prompting me to desist from wearing the stuff for a while.

Could I construe this as the 'Serge Lutens shroud'?

And then the other week, I was making up a swap package comprising lots of little vials of precisely the unorthodox type the Royal Mail cannot contend with, when I accidentally spilt a couple of ml of Serge Lutens Un Lys directly on my dining room table. It is sod's law that if such a mishap were going to happen, it would be with a Paris Exclusive of which I had very little left in the first place. However, it was not so much the wasted perfume that troubled me as the fact that old Serge fetched the varnish / colour right off a small patch of a beloved piece of furniture. Seemingly it is a case of redoing the whole top for a proper even finish, though I did have a tentative go on just the affected area with a selection of materials from olive oil to Pledge. There are some really random restorative agents cited on the Internet, would you believe? - I am sure salt and ammonia, white spirits and vinegar were amongst them. Maybe I will eventually come to think of the pale patch as yet another characterful sign of the table's great age (it dates from 1790), along with a number of other dents and black rings it has sustained down the years - presumably from flagons of porter and the like.

Resin crystals - 'myrrh trouble than it was worth'...;)

So that was one incident of perfume behaving badly...The next also occurred in the dining room, though it wasn't directly caused by perfume. Still, perfumery materials were involved and were the immediate trigger for what was to follow...

A little while ago - ever on the lookout for new ways of experiencing scent - I had a go at burning some myrrh crystals that my friend Gillie had given me around the time of the We Three Kings joint blogging project in 2010. The procedure involves igniting a charcoal disc and dropping a few crystals on it once it starts to smoulder. The crystals are supposed to emit a fragrant smoke - we are back to the very origins of perfume and its name indeed ('per fumum') - from the days when ancient Egyptians would burn incense as a sacrifice to their gods.

Except that the overriding scent I got from my own experiment was of the burning charcoal - I was strongly reminded of barbecue fuel, while the myrrh scent was undetectable. I wondered if I had set the crystals on the disc too soon, before it had settled down to a quieter burn rate - a case of 'premature incineration', if you will. Anyway, Gillie offered to come over this weekend with her own resin-burning tackle, and show me how it should be done. Accordingly, Saturday lunchtime found us sitting at my dining room table, rubbing our respective crystals in our hands to see which ones were properly fragrant. It seems my myrrh crystals had pretty much lost their scent for whatever reason, so we decided to burn a blend of Gillie's, containing frankincense and myrrh.

Before getting stuck into our pyrotechnical antics, Gillie suggested we open a window. I should mention that my windows are the old-fashioned sash style - I have since learnt that their full name is 'vertical double-hung box-framed sliding sash windows', which I find oddly amusing. I don't open my windows very often, and sometimes they are quite sticky when I try to do so, on account of a fairly recent paint job. You have to push the bottom pane up from the top with all your might, basically. We did eventually get the bottom pane to shift up, but somehow - and it is all a queasy-making blur now - I managed to trap my finger between the two wooden frames. Gillie responded with lightning speed, yanking the pane down again and freeing my rather limp and lifeless digit. An afternoon in A & E later, we established that it wasn't broken, but crushed and cut, and I will lose the nail in due course. Which is a bit ironic, as after years of nail biting I had just kicked this childhood habit for long enough to paint my nails. A purple colour to boot (Chanel Paradoxal), which is also ironic, as the injured nail is doubtless that colour naturally now, though I couldn't bear to look - not even at the X-Ray! For the rest of yesterday and all last night I had to keep the finger elevated above my heart, but I think the bleeding has stopped now, so I can do a few more things with the hand. Though not peel carrots. Or change the bedding. Or type properly.

So this one-handed post has taken rather longer than usual!

And Gillie and I agreed to take a rain check on the incense burning, possibly opening the front door instead next time. I will report back if I crack it some day and would recommend this presumably more intense fragrance experience. Meanwhile, it's back to joss sticks and matches for me. And I shan't be sporting a full set of painted nails any time soon...