"Saddle up the mare of dreams": Papillon Perfumery Epona review

Last week marked the 10th anniversary of Papillon Perfumery, the artisanal brand founded by elegant epicurean earth mother Liz Moores - whose birthday is today in fact! In that time she has released eight perfumes, and the rectangular 3 x 3 display on her website is clearly crying out to fill the bottom right hand corner with No 9. So when she announced the latest addition to the Papillon stable, Epona, set to be launched on 1st August, I was delighted by the news, not least for reasons of geometrical equilibrium. Equine equilibrium indeed, as Liz explains:

"Epona embodies the cherished memories of my bond with my beloved horse amidst the beautiful English countryside. Inspired by our intimate connection, it captures the essence of long summer days, a warm leather saddle, and the sweet meadow breath of my horse."

When I heard the name of the new perfume, I must admit that I didn't immediately twig to the connection with Liz's horse: it was rather the Spanish town of Estepona that popped into my head, which has the name "Epona" nested within it. For any grammar or maths nerds, I believe this is an example of the somewhat abstruse phenomenon known as "recursion".

Screenshot of the Papillon website!

Further searches of the word quickly revealed that Epona is a Celtic goddess, patron of mares and foals, as well as a character in the Legend of Zelda Nintendo game, and a highly engineered type of horseshoe. ;) So all in all, a very apt choice of name for the new fragrance.

Notes

Leather, Violet, "Saddle Soap Accord", Labdanum, Vetiver, Oakmoss, Petitgrain, "Horse Skin Accord"

Right off the bat you can tell that this is a perfume best appreciated by horse lovers, who will be familiar with "the rich scent of a well-worn saddle", and the saddle soap that is part of the tack cleaning ritual.

I should come right out and say that I am not a horsey person, and if anything am a little afraid of them, along with cows, sheep, and dogs - or for that matter creatures of any size that are capable of launching a surprise attack. Why, even Truffle has become alarmingly bitey of late and I have had to dial back my petting intensity after she narrowly missed a big vein. My diffidence around dobbins, as you might say, goes back to the summer of 1974, when I went pony trekking in Wales on a Scripture Union holiday (of all unlikely auspices!). Within minutes of setting off, my feisty mount cantered down a steep field and promply threw me off. Luckily I was unharmed, but I have never had the urge since to "get back in the saddle".

Source ~ WorthPoint: a plate featuring a JohnTickner drawing (1968)

Now I may not be the ideal person to relate to Epona, but I do have surprising horsey connections. My first cousin-once removed-in-law(!), John Tickner, was the cartoonist for Horse & Hound for some 20 years, and also wrote many books on the themes of country life. In a surprising twist, it turns out that Liz remembers his cartoons from when she was growing up and already a hippophile.

Then there was the old flame who held senior marketing roles in food companies, before turning his back on the gravy train and taking up painting - of race horses. He eventually became a noted equine artist. I'd never have placed a bet on that career change! And there is also the ex-girlfriend of my actual first cousin, who is a sports coach and psychologist teaching NLP techniques to riders.

But despite my own lack of affinity with horses, I was most curious to try Epona, and jumped on the sample Liz sent me as soon as it arrived.

A black pen leaked in my handbag, sorry!

On first application I get a blast of freshly mown grass mixed with a strong leather scent - of the kind you find on the more rugged end of the Spanish handbag spectrum. A friend who sniffed it on me described the smell as "rubbery", which may have been his way of describing the leather note. The arresting opening soon becomes more attenuated: the bracing dart of green disappears, giving way to a softer leather scent mixed with soap. We are definitely in Camay territory now. I found a note to myself that reads: "creamy glowing soft leather and soap". Very beautiful it is too. In the same register as Cuir de Russie, though with more soap.

I must explain that the two other people I have tried Epona on so far - an actively horsey female friend and a chap who has sat on donkeys and elephants in India, which I figured might do as well - were quite different canvases for the scent: on both of them the bright green facet was more noticeable, with longer staying power. They both liked Epona a lot, and in the case of my female friend, it was an absolute epiphany for her. She had previously avoided ALL perfume, dismissing it as "chemically" and allergy-provoking, but the second Epona landed on her skin she knew she was in the presence of luxurious and benign greatness, and was won over. Her partner is now under instructions to buy her a bottle for her birthday - a volte-face the like of which I never thought I'd see. ;)

I did!

As for me, I have continued to bury my nose in my wrist in the hope of detecting the "summer meadows" salvo again, but it seems that my version of the horse has gone back into its stable, where the fresh sappy greenery has been supplanted by straw, and a sort of animalic woodiness that might be the oakmoss or the muddy tones of vetiver. Maybe that is the "horse skin accord" kicking in, which I am obviously not in a position to confirm, but I could well believe it is exactly that. Which reminds me that another waggish friend said he was surprised there was no dung in Epona, prompting me to point him in the direction of L'Artisan's Dzing!. That said, in the drydown there is an alluring stables-cum-barnyard vibe going on - no really, I mean that - which could encompass straw at least. In the far drydown the perfume recedes to a gently soapy whisper, though I thought I could smell a faint trace of vetiver on one wrist. Basically, I think Epona may prove to be another shapeshifter, and you may get a different combination of the leather / soap / fresh greenery / muddy greenery & animalic hints compared to me - or the same combination in a different order. However it reads on your skin, I am confident you will also enjoy the ride! 

In summary - and notwithstanding the fleeting nature of the juicy greenness on me - Epona has leapt to the top of my favourites list, nudging Bengale Rouge and Hera into second and third place on the winners' podium, though I still like them both as much as ever. Hera didn't go quietly as you might imagine, poking Epona's flank with her pomegranate-topped sceptre as she stepped down. As for Bengale Rouge, I guess if this were an actual race, a horse could outrun a cat after all. (Yep, 40mph to her 30mph, I have established, though Truffle may just beat her "species best" when she sees me coming at her with a worming tablet.)

Editor's note: "Saddle up the mare of dreams" is the opening line of a song by Scarlet's Well called "Mid-morning Lily Songs" (video here). I don't expect a single reader to have placed it. ;)

Papillon Perfumery Hera review: a nasal nutraceutical in a Grecian gown

Source: protestantedigital.com

When a little package landed on the floor the other day with a sample vial of Hera, the latest creation by Liz Moores of Papillon Perfumery (due for release on 16th May), it could not have come at a better time. For I have been in a bit of a "mood tunnel" lately, a reference to a recent episode of the Daily Trip, one of the guided meditation series in the vast compendium of "mental health interventions" that is the Calm app. ;) For anyone not familiar with it, it also includes sleep stories, a library of soothing music and ambient sounds, self-help podcasts, masterclasses in useful topics on everything from stoicism to screen addiction (you may need the former if you are trying to give up the latter), and is peppered with pithy aphorisms for just about every occasion. In this particular episode, the author/presenter of the Daily Trip series, Jeff Warren, talked about how some days "everything seems awesome!", while other days "everything sucks" (insert "seems great" and "is s**t" for English sensibilities). The thing I wanted to mention from this talk on moods is the takeaway that once you realise you are in a mood tunnel, that very acknowledgement of the fact means it loosens its hold over you...

A key reason for the tunnel may warrant a post of its own, for I have been doing a ton of research recently into so-called "nutraceutical" remedies to try to fix a new - and irritatingly recurrent - skin condition on my face (seborrheic dermatitis: the third in an unholy trinity of facial eczema varieties I have acquired), and I may just have chanced upon one or two things that are making a difference.

But anyway, I mention all of that by way of scene setting: the perfume's arrival was perfectly timed, and its ability to switch up my mood instant. 

Turning first to the inspiration behind Hera, this latest addition to the Papillon stable was originally conceived as a wedding scent (and "auspicious amulet") for Liz's eldest daughter Jasmine, who graciously allowed her mother - after a decent interval! - to release the scent publicly as part of the Papillon line. Indeed it will be the last release for the foreseeable future, while Liz takes a well earned break. 

Without delay, here are the notes of Hera, including jasmine as a fragrant nod to its eponymous wearer:

Jasmine, orange blossom, ylang, rose de mai, orris, narcissus, heliotrope, ambrette, musk

The significance of Liz's choice of the name Hera for the perfume may be inferred by readers brought up on Greek mythology, namely that she was the "protector of women, presiding over marriages and births". I also discovered that Hera is "commonly seen with animals she considers sacred, including the cow, the lion and the peacock". Well, Jasmine being her mother's daughter is almost certainly going to be able to rustle up a companion menagerie comprising pretty much any combo of animals - now also including some quite big and scary spiders! - though these have probably been annexed by the goddess Arachne already...(Oh, I just noticed that one of Liz's spider family is in fact called Arachne - "no flies on her", hehe...not least because they've all been eaten.)

Other surprising things I learnt about Hera are the fact that she was both the wife and sister of Zeus, a rather cosy arrangement not typically replicated in modern marriages, and that she reportedly had frequent fights with Zeus over his affairs and illegitimate children. I love the euphemistic use of the word "recourse" in the following quote from Liquisearch:

"The legitimate offspring of her union with Zeus are Ares (the god of war), Hebe (the goddess of youth), Eris (the goddess of discord) and Eileithyia (goddess of childbirth)...Hera was jealous of Zeus' giving birth to Athena without recourse to her (actually with Metis), so she gave birth to Hephaestus without him. Hera was then disgusted with Hephaestus' ugliness and threw him from Mount Olympus. In an alternate version, Hera alone produced Hebe after being impregnated by a head of lettuce or by beating her hand on the Earth, a solemnizing action for the Greeks."

Source: dasil.ca

I am still reeling from the lettuce reference, the practicality of whose use as an artificial inseminator strikes me as most implausible. Anyway, the moral of all this is that with Greek myths it pays not to delve too deeply; the Olympian crew were a pretty rum bunch, as further detailed in this bizarre and startling post by a travel insurance company, presumably in a bid to drum up package holiday sales to Greece. It turns out that Hera's father / father-in-law Cronus swallowed his own children whole, such that it is frankly a miracle Zeus and she ever made it to adulthood.

But enough of these delinquent deities, how does Hera the fragrance smell, you may well ask?

Well, I have tried it three times now: on the first go the perfume opened with a sunny bouquet of sultry flowers with a juicy undertow, thanks to a piquant spike of ylang. Then quite quickly a muted powdery cloud passed over the sun and stayed there for the rest of the perfume's development, with the sensuous floral notes peeking through here and there like a box of wriggling kittens. On the second two samplings, the perfume went more or less straight to the cloud cover stage with no discrete bright opening. I should point out that my skin greatly amplifies musk and heliotrope in every scent I have ever tried with those notes in, and it seems that with Hera too, it has a tendency to grab the basenotes from the off. And ambrette is in itself a type of musk, as I understand it, so the entire base of the scent happens to be what I tend to magnify at the expense of the rest of the composition. I would LOVE to do a wrist-to-wrist comparison with someone whose skin showcases the brighter florals for longer, as they are a gorgeous assortment. 

Which is not to say that the iris-ambrette-musk accord is not very beautiful in itself, as it really is, and there is zero hint of the dreaded "laundry musk" that spoils so many modern perfumes for me, even before the magnification issue. Nor can I take a lot of heliotrope in more vintage compositions - as in L'Heure Bleue, for example, or Les Parfums de Nicolai Sacrebleu, both of which made me slightly queasy. In Hera the accord comes off as a really delicate, perfectly blended, wistful trail, with no note more prominent than the rest - which is no mean feat when heliotrope is in the mix. And for anyone who is not a massive fan of iris, which I guess I am not really, this isn't an overtly iris scent that tips into Chanel No 19 territory. Rather it is the cloud behind which I mostly only glimpse the brighter notes, so they are damped down by the iris and it by them, as it were. Yes, this impeccably tasteful composition hovers quiveringly between a sensuous summer floral and a powdery high end boudoir scent: it happens to skew more towards the latter on me, but your olfactory mileage may well vary, so please do give it a whirl.

Source: mosaico.com

The original image that popped into my head when I first smelt Hera and caught more of the floral notes was that of "a vintage sundress with staves", to convey the summery vibe of the opening counterbalanced by the formality of the drydown; in the end though I decided that a sundress was too casual a garment, even one reinforced by bits of metal. I would also describe Hera as a "cheerier Apres L'Ondee", of which there are echoes in the base. I could definitely have featured Hera in my "Careless Whispers" series of scent reviews if I was still keeping it up, as it would fit right into that category. But in the end I have gone with my "nasal nutraceutical" image, to mark the fact that I was in my mood tunnel and Hera gave me a jolly good shunt along it. Then I teamed it with that of a Grecian gown, though from memory Jasmine's actual wedding dress was a fabulous black sequined fishtail number.

In short, Hera is fantastically understated and sophisticated, and "Juno what, it may be my favourite Papillon scent yet!", which as a big fan of Bengale Rouge I don't say lightly.

Pines, spines, and clementines: A Bonkers Christmas and New Year Round Up

Well, here is another post that has been a long time in coming, but in my defence it hurts to sit, and the latest office trend of 'standing desks' has yet to reach Bonkers Towers. But mindful that it will soon be Shrove Tuesday at this rate, I thought it was high time I wrote a bit about the holiday period, and about taking stock generally.

The three scents of Christmas

A Facebook friend asked me in the run up to Christmas what my three favourite smells were around this time, and I came up with these in about half a second:

• Pine needles (notwithstanding my little artificial tree)
• Myrrh* (a favourite note in perfumes, and also in Bengale Rouge - see below!)
• A successfully roasted turkey (by no means a given in my world)

* As immortalised in the Billy Idol song: "In the midnight hour she cried 'Myrrh, myrrh, myrrh'!"

NB For more on my agonies down the years as to the correct method of cooking a turkey, please see this post. I could add the smell of clementines, given the option of a fourth, but they have their moment later in this post.

Perfumes worn over the holidays

A three way tie between Bengale Rouge, Puredistance GOLD, and Hiuse of Cherry Bomb Immortal Beloved, all of which feel suitably Christmassy to my nose. I also gave PoaL an airing, inspired by the talk in Liverpool featured in my last post.

Holiday oddities

December was a very sociable month generally, with a total of 25 'socialising units', where a unit is either a party or other event, seeing a friend, or having a long phone conversation with someone. I would have been happy to spread these units out over several months, but that is not the way Christmas tends to go. In amongst all the gatherings, a few amusing things occurred...

Trans terriers, non-binary St Bernards, and universal Christmas cards

Here is the oddest 'envelope' in which I received a Christmas card. It was some kind of brainstorm or checklist used in a gender awareness workshop by a friend who does arts in the community (or something). To me it looks like a tentative way to address a trans terrier or non-binary St Bernard, but I could be wrong. Note the amusing juxtaposition towards the bottom of 'lesbian singer beast lover of artist'.

The card inside was handmade, but quite normal, signed, but not addressed to anyone. That's the second card I had this year where the donor told me to "pick a card, any card!", from a carrier bag full or whatever. "What if it doesn't say my name on it?" I piped up. "None of them do!" The one my friend Mary gave me (she of the trade fair in Brussels where I helped out on the stand) - or which I chose from the fan she held out to be exact - had gone a step further by being completely blank inside; it featured one of her past designs, now gracing soft furnishings by Matalan and IKEA etc. It is so nice in an Indian Paisley type of way - and big! - that I might even frame it. This strikes me as a much more flexible (if less personal ;) ) system than committing to a particular person in writing, and then failing to bump into them that Christmas - or any Christmas. Assuming you are determined not to post the card.

It IS rocket science!

My Christmas Day was uncharacteristically memorable, as I was invited to a lunchtime drinks party - I don't normally go out once I am somewhere for Christmas, as it were, which is usually at home. Anyway, it just so happened that I met an actual rocket scientist(!) from Hyde, whose aunt was killed by Britain's most prolific serial killer, Dr Shipman - either one of those facts would have lent exoticism to the event, never mind both. He featured in some Wallace & Grommit production apparently *as* a rocket scientist. He was wearing a black shirt with planets and slightly sparkly stars on. A waggish friend suggested:

"It'd be good if more people, e.g, [insert name of mutual friend who is a gastric nurse], wore clothes with their day job designed on them."

NB The same waggish friend pointed out that the date I mentioned in my last post as being symmetrical - 19.12.19 - was merely 'repetitive'. He is quite right in fact, plus the 12 rather obstructs proceedings. 

An existential llama crisis 

This Christmas, I gave a friend a tea towel with a knitting theme on it, plus a felt llama tree decoration. A few days ago I received the following message:

"Today the serious debate at home is not are we on the brink of World War III or if ethical veganism is a philosophical belief, but whether we can squeeze the llama gift into the class of an objet d'art or if it has to be classed as a Christmas decoration (the difference of course being consigned to a box or not). Input please!"

To which I replied:

"LOL at your llama dilemma. Or should that be LLOL? I think the string condemns him to Xmas dec status - I've had a similar existential crisis with a gingerbread man in a jaunty tartan scarf."

Oh, and then there was Santa, living it large on the lodger's bed while he was away, and having found the biscuits!

Best new release of 2019

With every passing year, I realise how much I am out of touch with the perfume scene. Other bloggers compile their 'Best of 2019' posts - as I used to do myself indeed - and I only recognise at most one name on the list, haha. This year that name has been Papillon Perfumery's Bengale Rouge. I don't even stop to look out for new things at airport duty frees now - a new release has more or less got to be put into my hand for me to try it, such is the pancake flat state of my perfume passion plateau. So there you go - the best new release of 2019 for me is (by default) Bengale Rouge! To be fair, I suspect it might hold that spot even if I had tried some of the other new things. I haven't even smelt Rose et Cuir by Frederic Malle, though I really don't think it would be for me.

2019 perfumes I might have liked if I had smelt them(!)

To answer this question I took a look at Victoria's round up on Bois de Jasmin, my taste being closely aligned to hers, by and large. The scent that caught my eye in her list was Miller Harris's Sublime Blossom:

"Sublime Blossom is a creamy flower wrapped in musk and sandalwood. The main floral accent here is osmanthus and ylang-ylang, both of which have a luscious fruity nuance."

I am a sucker for ylang-ylang, and recently bought a little bottle of the essential oil for use in the bath. There is more to that story in fact, which I may save for another post about my last trip to the French house...

Then Van Cleef & Arpels Santal Blanc is another of Victoria's picks, and the note list is a little unusual:

Notes: fig, orange, violet, sandalwood, tonka bean and musk

Somewhere I still have the several tonka beans Victoria gave me when I visited her in her flat in Brussels. Given the extraodinary reach of her recent international wanderings, you'd be hard pushed to visit her anywhere these days!

Trying new things 

This year I am not going to bring out the tired old resolutions of yore, like those overly familiar Christmas decorations you can't bring yourself to chuck out. Somewhere at the back of my mind I do of course still want to take 150 minutes of exercise a week - which is only 20 minutes a day after all. I think I am probably doing that already simply by going about my daily business. And then of course I also hope to do press ups against the pantry door while reheating my tea in the microwave, and engage in casual bursts of weight lifting involving tins of beans. Going to bed earlier and cutting down on alcohol are also loose aspirations somewhere in the furthest recesses of my psyche. But no, my actual 'resolution' is to try new things. (Though not necessarily perfumes, as mentioned. ;) )

This started before New Year indeed, when I popped to the corner shop for a half bottle of vodka. That's two firsts in one in fact: buying alcohol in a corner shop, and buying a half bottle of vodka. I have hardly ever bought vodka in my life. But what had happened was that I had succumbed to an impulse buy of a bottle of Diet Coke billed as having a hint of 'festive clementine'. Which had got me thinking about what mixers go with Coke, and vodka popped into my head. Not being a rum person. Or being a rum person, but not in the alcoholic way at least. So I had a vodka and coke with festive clementine, accessorised with a slice of clementine, one of many going slightly hard in the fruit bowl at the time, and looking for any role at this point.

Vodka, hot chilli jam, and a good book

So there was the vodka, plus I am also dabbling in herbal tea (which I hate!) to curtail my caffeine consumption after 4pm. It has only just come to my attention that caffeine has a tremendous half life of something like six hours, which may conceivably be one of the many factors for my poor sleep these days. So great is its half life in fact, that on closer inspection it must qualify as a double life nearly. I have settled on a blend of tea by Pukka called Womankind, which is not too sweet and not too swampy, but still not my thing. The packet is quite pleasing to the eye, but that is not enough even so to endear me to the category.

I have also had a bit of a late onset chutney epiphany - my friend's homemade chilli jam and one with rhubarb and I forget what else. I am experimenting with meditating too, but due to the aforementioned problematic sitting (see below), I may have to come back to that.

Back to my back

The main news to mention from the holiday period is the worsening of a long term niggling back problem: from Boxing Day the pain became more acute in that area, making sitting, standing or lying uncomfortable, which is clearly rather impractical! I have been to see an osteopath whose working diagnosis is a sprained ligament in my pelvis, though tests for other causes are ongoing via my GP. I did fall down stairs in a car park in November, and have done a lot of travelling in 2019 (driving to France and back, touring with the band, carrying luggage and gear and sitting in vans); then I've moved a lot of furniture (including a cast iron grate!), done a lot of housework and bed changing as a result of my venture into Airbnb, and additionally have a decidedly unsupportive office chair, a sporty car seat, a slightly saggy mattress, and a pair of favourite, but unevenly worn shoes that may have thrown my balance off a bit. The cause is probably the cumulative impact of all these so-called 'microtraumas'...

Foxy, but unforgiving...

To put matters right, I have ordered a proper office chair and am investigating a new mattress. My quest began with a little lie down on the Sleepmatch bed in Dreams - best three minutes of the entire holiday(!). It has rollers that come at you from below in unexpected ways, like a funfair machine or mechanical water bed - or like being nuzzled and munched by a recumbent alien wearing a fleecy stocking mask - incredibly sensuous and relaxing, let's just say. I'd have bought that bed if it was for sale. ;). Damn near fell asleep in the shop. You lie there staring at a screen on which pops up your name, a list of recommended mattresses, and how far you are along the firmness spectrum. Answer - hardly at all, which I knew anyway, given the state of my back, and my light weight. 

I didn't end up buying any of the recommended beds though, as the only one that was in my budget had just 800 pocket springs, and I was looking for a minimum of 1000. Still, it confirmed me in my belief that bad backs and firm ('orthopaedic') mattresses are not a match made in heaven, as people used to think.

The osteopath also told me to sleep with a cushion between my knees, a tip which has passed me by all these years, along with the half life of caffeine. Imagine my surprise to learn that the entire Sperrer family - young and older members alike! - have been sleeping like this for years. Here is Val's husband Chris striking the pose. No wonder they are in such tip top spinal health. While on the subject of spines, in German they are known as a 'Wirbelsaeule' ie a 'whirly column'. How much do I love that apt term for the pillar of our anatomy.

Val's husband in supported napping mode.

Book reading goal

I am in awe of Tara of A Bottled Rose's phenomenal reading rate - 50 books last year compared to my measly 12. Arguably, if I had spent more time reading and less time doing all those physical things I mentioned earlier, I might have spared my lumbar area as well as achieved a greater total, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. This year I am aiming for pelvic restoration and a reading tally of 18 books, kicking off the year with the hilarious and oddball "Reasons to be Cheerful" by Nina Stibbe. The first book I have ever come across that is written from the perspective of a dental assistant. Nina Stibbe has been compared to Sue Townsend - quintessentially British, with a fine line in observational humour. I can also thoroughly recommend "A Near Perfect Christmas" by her, with which I kicked off 2019.

As it happens, I recently had an excellent book buying spree in a couple of charity shops, and also received two books for Christmas. I decided to put them on my coffee table to encourage me to make my target this year. I expect there are a few more than 18 in that pile, but I might not take to all of them. And Middlemarch is probably too long to bother with when I am against the clock in this way(!). Plus I have read it already. Ditto To Kill a Mocking Bird, which is in there somewhere, but which I fancy rereading after 40 years or so.

Social media diet

Another way in which I might tip the odds towards reaching my reading goal is to spend less time in 2020 on social media. This encompasses the great vortex that is Facebook, plus Instagram and Twitter (though I hardly use the latter), also Whatsapp, text messages and emails. My virtual life has spiralled out of control lately and it is starting to get me down because of everything else I am not acccomplishing, including reading as I say, but also blogging itself(!). I have three email accounts and counted 37 named folders up to the end of 'D' on one of them. One or two are project or work folders, but the majority are people with whom I have had sufficient exchanges for them to warrant their own folder. I couldn't bring myself to tot up the rest of the alphabet or the folders in the other accounts, though there are fewer associated with those. Then I had 32 active conversations on Messenger going the last time I looked, and about 15 by text. Trying to keep up with it all is much like a fast paced game of Whac-a-Mole, and I don't mean that unkindly. There is never a sense of progress - you respond to one message or email and then another pops up, and then the first again. That constant sense of failure and of letting the people at the other end of these exchanges down by not replying in a timely manner is weighing on my conscience, and I will just have to take things more slowly and accept that I can't keep all the social media plates spinning...I shall probably also miss some people's birthdays and operations, new jobs and lost pets, but for the sake of my own mental health something really has to give.

On nurse duty again, picking up the slack from Ludlow the bear

A word on Truffle

In her comment on my last post, Undina expressed a wish for more news / pictures of Truffle. She is not bringing in mice at the moment, which is great, though doubtless a temporary truce for the holidays. She also pretty much left the decorations alone, though the tree is derisorily small in feline terms. However, she is proving a nuisance by refusing to eat her already rather expensive cat crunchies, favouring instead an even more high end brand called True Instinct, whose strapline ominously reads:

Suffice to say there's been a lot of instinctive desiring going on in this house, which I am trying not to overly indulge.

In her defence, Truffle has been quite loving and lain on me when I have been feeling poorly due to the bad back business, and also reminded me to go and feed my friend M's cat, which was thoughtful of her.

She has also enjoyed a lot of turkey and chicken - I roasted both over Christmas week, and made four lots of soup in all, one of which unsurprisingly involved fowl!

So how has your Christmas been, if it doesn't seem like aeons ago?

Not dogged by illness and with the optimum number of socialising units, I hope!

Mini-leopard in the boudoir: Papillon Perfumery Bengale Rouge 'review'

Source: eBay

Topic advisory: this post may end up being more about cats than the upcoming release from Papillon Perfumery, the 6th perfume in Liz Moore's carefully curated scent stable. That is no reflection on the merits of the fragrance itself, which has all the hall- - and paw- - marks of a (highly-hyphenated) feline-themed lemming-in-waiting, but rather on my own increasing shortcomings as a reviewer. The inability to parse notes is one aspect, for which some combination of nose and brain are to blame, but I also struggle these days to even convey the overall 'vibe' or atmosphere of a perfume. I shall of course give it my best shot, confident that there will be other reviews along shortly which will more than pick up the slack, if they haven't already indeed.

But first, to cats. I received this sample in the post at the weekend, along with an amusingly surreal card painted by Liz's artist friend Tracy Dovey. "Those fish aren't long for this world", was my first thought. "That poor woman is going to stink of them", was my second - assuming she escapes the cat's embrace, which is moot. The sample was accompanied by a note list written on the back of a photo of Liz's beloved cat Mimi, one of her Bengal harem.

In an exchange following my receipt of the package, Liz explained the inspiration behind Bengale Rouge:

"...little Mimi was my muse for the new perfume. It is my attempt at recreating the scent of her fur, which is generally a mix of cat or any fragrance that I seem to be wearing."

Mimi muffler

While here Liz seems to be wearing her cat...;)

A bit of background may be in order on these 'mini-leopards', as they have been dubbed by the magazine, 'Your Cat'. Today's Bengals are descended from the Asian leopard cat, which was bred with regular moggies. Prized for their beautiful markings, 'Your Cat' goes on to describe them as 'a domestic cat in wild wrapping'. The Chairman of the Bengal Cat Club has likened them to the Duracell bunny on account of their boisterousness and boundless energy, which - as Liz would be the first to admit - often spills over into 'a funny five minutes'. She rather aptly calls her home in the New Forest 'the funny farm', which is at least in part a reference to the madcap behaviours of the cat contingent rather than just the foibles of her human family. Here is Noo, eschewing her designated sleeping spot in order to luxuriate in a sea of discarded polythene, in time-honoured cat fashion.

Noo, coming over all unnecessary on some packaging

So we know that Mimi - and more specifically the smell of her fur - was the starting point for Bengale Rouge. But we don't know exactly how she smells. I am kicking myself now, as I have been to Liz's house a few times, and reckon Mimi would have been threading herself between people's legs on each occasion. I had the perfect opportunity to bury my nose in her fur and sniff her thoroughly, and would then be able to compare that scent memory with Bengale Rouge the perfume. Oh well, 'hindsmell' is a wonderful thing.

Mimi the muse

Hunting digression - contains upsetting scenes that some readers may find distressing

There is nothing for it but to compare the perfume with my own cat, Truffle. An important point to mention, with olfactory implications, is the fact that she and Mimi both go outside. In Mimi's case this is only during the day - to stop her wandering off under cover of darkness and into other people's homes, for which she has form apparently - whereas  Truffle pulls many an all-nighter on the tiles. This is of course prime hunting time, and Truffle's killing sprees have been escalating lately, Jack the Ripper-style. Only this time last week she brought in both a disembowelled starling AND a mouse in a similar state of intestinal disarray. In a curious presage of my writing this post, I had a nightmare the other day in which I conflated Liz's diverse menagerie with Truffle's prey, and dreamt that she had brought in a whole owl and a cock's head and neck. An owl would have been jolly tricky to pick up using only a bit of kitchen towel, my go-to disposal method on such occasions. In desperation, the next day I made Truffle wear a collar again for the first time in three years. And added a bell to warn wildlife of her approach! Tolling of bell = reduced death toll, was my thinking. It has worked a treat all week, until Sunday morning, when the pitter patter of rain helped disguise the telltale tinkle of the bell, and Truffle left me this on the landing...Hmm, she looks like she is sniffing the mouse there!

Not saved by the bell!

Despite their big cat vibe, Bengals are apparently not that bothered about hunting. Here is the Chairman of the Bengal Cat Club again:

"Bengals don't prey on wildlife. Even with their history and where they've come from, they're not mass killers. Bengals are generally not good hunters; they're more likely to just watch."

Goodness me, that gives a whole new meaning to the term 'peeping Tom'(!). So it seems like Mimi wouldn't need a bell then, even if she hadn't been grounded for sauntering nonchalantly into neighbours' houses. She is more likely to curl up on top of someone else's Aga than bring a brace of pheasant home at dawn, with or without their full quota of innards.

So given that she does go out (hunting!), Truffle's fur has its own innate animal smell, plus a few extra accords from the great outdoors. Chief amongst these is an earthy, patchouli-like scent from her routine latrine-digging in flowerbeds. I have often caught a hint of gravel or concrete too - some kind of stone, anyway - and when it has been raining, this of course morphs into the full petrichor, haha. Oh, as is the case for Liz with Mimi, there's also a smidge of whatever scent I am wearing thanks to my frequent nuzzling in her fur.

The particular sniffing action pictured below was staged specifically for this post, mind, and took about ten takes before I got both of us in the shot, and the shot vaguely in focus.

Notes: Turkish rose, orris, sandalwood, tonka, oakmoss, honey, vanilla, labdanum, benzoin, sweet myrrh

On first sampling Bengale Rouge, I was struck by how quiet it was compared to the big production bodice ripper that is Salome, and Liz agreed with me that it was more understated, adding that it was 'fluffier', and the 'softest' of her creations. I cannot convey how soft it is - I could have included Bengale Rouge in my 'Careful Whispers' series if I could have been bothered to work out from my archives which number it would be. Editor's note: No 4 at a guess, but I am not going to change the title now...!

From the off I have to say that Bengale Rouge smells a lot more like an indoor cat, notwithstanding Mimi's daytime excursions. Lose the earthy smell and the petrichor; there is none of that here. It is a 'Bengal with a bell' scent, ie de-wilded (no really, that is a word, like de-planed), even though we have established that it doesn't need to wear one. It is a mini- or should that be a Mimi-? - leopard in the boudoir, an image that came to me after I chanced across this item on eBay (see above):

HUGE BESPOKE BOUDOIR DOWNTON ABBEY STANDARD LAMPSHADE LEOPARD ANIMAL PRINT

This is not a Lipstick Rose kind of boudoir scent, mind - it is nowhere near as overtly feminine and stylised as that - but there's not a whiff of rock hyrax either. Bengale Rouge's fur is faintly sweet smelling and clean. It is a cat that has been freshly bathed and dusted down with talc. Yes, Bengals like water apparently, though I don't know quite to what extent. Truffle won't let me near her paws when she comes in muddy and sopping wet, though she is not averse to a quick back rub with a tea towel. Hmm, I should perhaps have said 'en suite' rather than 'boudoir', being less loaded with sexual imagery, but Bengale Rouge is still sensual all right, in a muted kind of way.

Then by analogy with the 'YLBB' style of lipsticks, I could say that this is '(The Scent of )Your Cat, But Better'. And if you aspired to be 'Catwoman', you might very well wish to smell like this. Bengal Rouge is unmistakably animal-like, thanks to the cunning interplay of the oakmoss, sandalwood, labdanum and myrrh - more so than a woman, yet more fragrant than a cat. Though not more fragrant than a cat that lives with a perfumer...!

Liz and Mimi, briefly tolerating the pose

On first spraying Bengale Rouge, I get a faint hint of rose trussed in a corset of oakmoss and labdanum, The overriding impression is smoky and resinous rather than floral, but I love labdanum, so that's okay.. Even the opening is quiet, then very soon the composition becomes wistful and attenuated, and very slightly sweeter as the honey and vanilla notes kick in, buttressed by puffs of orris and little wisps of incense. The myrrh does not have that vaguely static buzz you sometimes get with the note - for example in AG Myrrhe Ardente, where it fizzes like Pepsi or root beer. The overriding feel of Bengale Rouge is definitely more powdery. That and meditative, and Lord knows my cat sleeps a lot when she is not out killing things, so 'meditative' is the very word for it.

I should also mention my observation that over the course of writing this post, Truffle's scent has changed slightly. You wouldn't believe how many times I have toggled between sniffing my wrist and her fur! I am now getting a distinct aroma of carpet, which I swear wasn't there earlier, but which may simply be scent transference from her fabric collar to her head and neck area as she has been scratching herself. And there have been times in the past - most notably when she got stuck in a garage for 36 hours - that she ended up smelling primarily of cobwebs and piss. So while your cat's smell is very much a moving feast, as it were, Bengale Rouge has deftly rendered a generic 'base smell' that would be typical of most cats, then cleaned and prettied it up just enough to elevate it from smell to fragrance.

In short, Bengale Rouge is a ballgown scent without the va-va-voom. It's the ne plus ultra of discreetly mysterious sillage as you swish past in your bustle of silk. (Sorry, I have uncharacteristically been watching the period drama Gentleman Jack, but only because it's got swashbuckling, coal mine sinking Suranne Jones in it.) Bengale Rouge is where - perhaps counter-intuitively - orientals meet 'office appropriate'.  Through her ingenious blend of 'actual cat smell' and notes more closely associated with 'perfume properly speaking' Liz has delivered on the brief she set herself of recreating her 'collaterally scented cat'. And because of its quiet elegance - think Volutes edt, but even quieter and more refined, and I love Volutes! - Bengale Rouge is 'paws down' my favourite of the line to date.

Finally, here is Truffle, weary from her earlier mousing exploits, followed by a long stint of being the 'control' sample.

Truffle's bottom partially obscures the notes

PS Any fans of Volutes edt would love Bengale Rouge, I reckon. The scents have a similar languid vibe, and though the compositions are obviously different, there is some crossover of notes, namely iris, honey, benzoin and myrrh.

PPS Hmm...now Truffle has come in smelling of coal. I think I might start smelling people to work out where they have been.

Let bygones be Byzance: a tale of two house clearances, featuring a guest post - and a surprise spot of rapping! - by my (late) mother

Travel poster by Harry Riley

A few months ago, Liz Moores of Papillon Perfumery kindly sent me a partial bottle of Rochas Byzance, remembering my nostalgic association of the scent with my mother, albeit for reasons upon which all bona fide perfumistas would frown. The full story may be found here, on the remote offchance that there are still any readers who have managed to escape my repeated references to it(!). Now hopefully Liz won't mind my mentioning that she recently celebrated her 47th birthday, while my mother would have turned 97 in May. The 50 year difference in their ages I find oddly portentous, I don't know why, and despite the immense cultural changes that have occurred between 1920 and 1970 I feel sure they would have got on famously, not least through a shared love of food - and drink (which in my book is A Good Thing ;) ).  And like Liz, my mother was a free spirit, and managed to turn the heads of locals in Halkidiki on a solo cycling holiday at the age of 76.

The trigger for this post was the recent sudden death of an old work associate and neighbour, who lived round the corner from the house I used to share with Mr Bonkers. This lady's only blood relative, a cousin in the South of England, rang me up the other day to ask if I was coming to the funeral, and mentioned in passing that at some point he would need to come up again to sort his cousin's house out. I told him I knew just what that was like, having done two 'long distance' house clearances myself for each of my parents (who didn't live together in later life). As I am local, I offered to help this chap out on the ground, should he need it when the time comes.

And that got me thinking about a remarkable house clearance that my mother carried out, which led to her writing a feature about the experience that was aired on Woman's Hour in 1968. Her voice on the tape is so cut glass as to be hilarious - almost as royal-sounding as the Queen! I am sorry you can't press a button on here to fully appreciate her plummy tones. I have no recall of my mother ever talking like that, I might add - and I was nine at the time, so was old enough to notice such things - maybe she was putting on her poshest voice specially for the BBC. ;)

So here is the transcript of her broadcast instead - Mother's 'guest post' if you will.

"Do it! You should just see the muddle. But two days were all that I could spare away from the family. So in spite of the warnings, off I went on the plane to Exeter, to sort out the effects left by Aunt Ina. The last time I had seen my aunt was over thirty years earlier. On that occasion I was fifteen years old, suddenly orphaned by my mother's death. At a grisly meeting I sat mute while Aunt Ina and three of my uncles discussed the question: 'What shall we do with Peggy?'. I think what increased the grisliness of the meeting was that it took place in the refreshment room of Victoria Station. Almost as bad as being found in a handbag on a platform for the Brighton line. But the line was immaterial, and so was the refreshment room, except that it was there that my aunt said that she could neither have me to live with her nor contribute to my upkeep - and that was the last I saw of her.

As it happened we got on well together at the meeting, and though we corresponded at intervals, I have never seen her again. Now she had made me her residual legatee and I had to sort out the residue. And although I had been warned, when I was actually in my aunt's house I was taken aback by the task that confronted me, for it seemed that my aunt was eccentric in that she could never throw anything away. Drawers and cupboards were full to overflowing. I could hardly walk around the sitting room. The solicitor said: 'When I went to see your aunt, she'd be sitting at the table, and she'd simply push with both hands until all the things on it would mount into a hill at the back, and then she'd have a space on which to write.'

It was strange getting to know my aunt after she was dead, but one can't go through a person's possessions without having a pretty complete portrait of the person who possessed them. No one could live in such confusion without having a total disregard for housewifely pursuits. The drawers revealed such things as empty cigarette cartons, half empty boxes of forgotten sweets, Christmas cards from way back. There were also papers on how to win on football pools and how to develop a system of betting on horses. Which is odd, for the second thing I discovered about my aunt was that she was quite detached about money. In every drawer I emptied there was money: half crowns, sixpences, even farthings. All with that odd feeling to the touch that long unused coins have. There were pound notes in old purses - or just left in the pages of an old notebook. There were coins in the kitchen drawers and pound notes in the pockets of her coats. But the crowning discovery was a roll of eight five pound notes lying behind her bed. It's odd how money found in these circumstances doesn't feel quite real, just paper. I suppose because it's in a sort of limbo, neither earned nor given.

I had a bonfire going for two days steadily, burning letters, old clothes, magazines, newspapers and photographs. Ah, those photographs...my aunt had obviously been a keen photographer and there were thousands of photographs: groups of happily smiling people who meant nothing to me. There were some of my mother and father that I'd not seen before and I was glad to have these. But I felt sad as I saw those records of her happy days going up in flames. There's no point in keeping meaningless snaps. And yet I felt ruthless in destroying a tangible past. And ruthless I had to be to clear out this mess in two days. But there were moments when I had to pause, when I dug up real bits of treasure - to me at any rate. I began to see the reason for the lack of domesticity as I found evidence of the adventurous life my aunt had led in her youth.

A small black book, closely written, I discovered to be the log book of a small boat in which she and two men - one her first husband - tried to circumnavigate Africa in the days before journeys in small boats were commonplace. And then a yellowing sheet from a Sunday Herald published in 1925, in which she describes life among the Rif in Spanish Morocco, where apparently she was the only white woman. Exciting enough, I thought, until I came across another from The Times of that year which told how a beautiful English woman known as 'Lovely Nellie' had been held hostage, as her husband and another man had been caught gun running.

How I wish then she was there to tell me of the adventures only partially revealed by these tantalising snippets! She obviously made friends easily judging by her foreign correspondence, and she was popular with the local people, although she was reserved and did not speak of herself much. She had an inventive mind, and I came across draft inventions she planned to have patented. What else did I discover about my aunt? She loved earrings and brooches and makeup. She collected  stamps and cigarette cards, pens and boxes of matches. It wasn't until four o'clock on the second day that I finally cleared the space in her bedroom and gathered together the things I wanted sent to me in Northern Ireland. Things I knew she wanted me to have: a Japanese rosewood chair that belonged to my grandmother, some Japanese vases, and some slices of family history which I shall enjoy piecing together. I felt then that I'd come through a long, dark tunnel. It had been a chastening experience in several ways. Chiefly I'm thinking of all the lumber one accumulates over the years - that someone might have to do this for me. In a modified way, it's true, but do I really need all the stuff that's in my attic? And are all the letters in my desk really worth keeping?

But chastening and exhausting though this experience was, it had its rewarding side, and I felt I could close my two days in Devon by making an announcement: 'Gained posthumously, an aunt'."

I can picture some of the treasures from Great Aunt Ina's house - little lacquered tables and sets of drawers, all manner of jewellery, a ceremonial sword and a scimitar, one or both of which are now in my brother's loft. And I 'inherited' a lifesize toy cat with white fur. At least I hope it was a toy - it was worryingly realistic, I do remember that...If I still had it, I could make it stand sentry at the back door, to scare Tootsie away. ;)

Now I have just looked up Ina in our family tree and found out some other interesting titbits about her. She got married to her first husband, a shipper and ship builder, in 1922, when she was 22 and he was 54! One of the witnesses was named as F C Voysey, eerily close to C F Voysey, but surely that would be too much of a coincidence, even though he was living nearby at the time...

Source: Wikimedia Commons (SpudGun67)

 Also, Ina and her first husband lived at 118, Long Acre, in Covent Garden, a hop and a skip away from Bloom! Where it seems Dame Margot Fonteyn also lived, but not at the same time, and doubtless not in the same flat. ;) Then Husband No 1 died in February 1930, and Ina was married again by June of that year! Husband No 2 was only 48, and she was 31. Ina clearly liked older men, though at least they are getting progressively younger with each union.

What else has come to light? Ina was one of only three female members of the Royal Southampton Yacht Club in 1927. (Mother donated Ina's copy of the Rule Book from that year to the club in 1985, prompting the reply below from the club's secretary, which probably isn't legible, I know.) To be a member as a woman in those days you had to own your own yacht, and Ina's was a 50-foot long wooden sailing yacht called Silver Crescent, built in 1886. The secretary adds that out of 800 club members, there are 80 women now, so it sounds like even back in the '80s, the glass hull was well on its way to being broken.

And I have to smile reading the broadcast back, because it was me of course that got the gig of sorting out Mother's effects after her death. I immediately rehomed Ferraby, the plush duck, and Pinky, the towelling pig. The latter had been sitting in her wing back chair ever since she was hurriedly taken into hospital, waiting patiently for her return.

Pinky's new chair in Stafford

Then Mother's paperwork was contained in a single concertina file, and fortuitously her bank account had just enough left in it to cover her funeral. The only part of the house where she had exhibited 'Aunt Ina-like behaviours' was in the kitchen...the drawers were crammed full of old corks and buttons and safety pins and pennies and broken pottery and oozing tubes of Savlon - and much more in that vein - while the pantry was a treasure trove of pre-1982 spices. This being...ahem...1999. But it was a privilege to tie up the loose ends of my mother's life, and I didn't begrudge the triage of a single odd or end. Disposing of someone else's belongings is a weighty responsibility, characterised by a myriad of quick fire decisions that require a judicious blend of empathy and - as Mother herself says - ruthlessness.

And what about the bottle of Byzance I had given mother so thoughtlessly three years previously? Not a trace. I did, however, find this bottle of Opium in her sponge bag, that has morphed 18 years later into a rich and treacly concoction, while smelling by no means 'off' to my nose. I have dated it to the early 90s, which sounds plausible. I don't know how Mother came by it - a gift from a friend, her bridge partner, an impulse purchase in Boots, like me with the Rochas - who knows? It's well over half empty though, suggesting she did rather like it.

And this story would not be complete without a mention of Liz's rescue hen, Peggy, whom she kindly named after my mother. I knitted Peggy a jumper when she first arrived at Papillon Animal Sanctuary, to keep her warm until her threadbare plumage grew back. And I am pleased to note that Peggy the chicken also likes a tipple. ;)

In a bizarre turn of events, ex-Mr Bonkers turned my mother posthumously into a co-rapper in this song, along with Birmingham-based rapper, Tijhs Jordan. She really gets a groove on, and if you listen very closely, you may just be able to hear her repeat the phrase 'a small black book', interspersed with Tijhs's own take on Ina's travelling exploits. I'd say he is 'riffing' off them, but that might be a pun - and an 'f' - too far. Oh, and actually, you can get an idea of her plummy voice in the song!

Link to the track ('Hope/The River') here (and further background on it here - it is a partly original (very original!!), partly cover / tribute piece).

The last artefact I came across relating to my great aunt was this copy of a letter sent to my mother in April, 1959, in which Ina hopes that her 'forthcoming event' goes smoothly. Why, that would be my own arrival, a month later!

And although there is mention of Ina liking makeup and jewellery, of perfume there is nary a word. With her smoking habit (maybe she even had an actual habit - and cap - like Rachael Potts' husband Tony?!), and love of betting - not to mention her swashbuckling seafaring persona - I could see Ina in Tabac Blond, Habanita or Cuir de Russie, perfumes all squarely dating from the time she was...er...busily dating - and getting hitched!

Finally, here is a photo of Mother's old house in Swindon, which is currently on the market, I see. It was my house first in fact, before I sold it to her when I moved to Stafford. Those are the very shelves I put up in 1986! (I may have had some help.)