'Eau de Wiggo': 4160 Tuesdays Time To Draw The Raffle Numbers, And Bandage Girl Clare's Gallant Ride

Perfume and its copiously stamped and cheerfully spotted box

My friend Clare - owner of the perfumista pooch Meg, who narrowly missed becoming a calendar bitch - is mad on cycling.  No, really, she is completely obsessed with it, going out at every available opportunity to cover 20 miles here and 35 miles there.  She has taken to loitering in Lidl to take advantage of their occasional random deliveries of budget cycling kit, of which she assures me one can never have enough. Given that Clare is a loyal Waitrose shopper - and wouldn't normally be seen dead in a retail outlet that sets the merchandising bar so low as to sell stuff out of its cardboard outers turned sideways, if at all - that gives you as good an indication as any that the woman is bonkers about biking.  In addition to this, Clare is a massive fan of Sir Bradley Wiggins, to the point where she started to refer to herself - with a worrying absence of irony - as 'The Other Bradley'.  In a further worrying development, she then progressed to referring to Bradley Wiggins himself as 'The Other Bradley'.  And I guess that given his recent health issues, prompting him to withdraw from this year's Tour de France, somebody had to step up and be him on a bike for a bit...  I did manage to dissuade her from wearing stick-on sideburns, though these were mooted at one point.

Then at the start of the year, Clare announced her intention to compete in the London to Brighton cycling race, a 50 mile circuit from Clapham Common to the Sussex coast.  A little while later, I met Sarah McCartney on a 'perfumery crawl' in London, and discovered her quirky and eclectic range of scents: 4160 Tuesdays.  My attention was caught by one fragrance, Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers, which was directly inspired by Clare's hero - specifically the moment when Bradley Wiggins was on the podium after winning the Tour de France in 2012.  Sarah McCartney explains the background to the creation of this scent in a blog post, including the peculiarly British resonance of the phrase 'time to draw the raffle' after which she named the perfume:

Bradley's podium moment - source: cyclingweekly.co.uk

'When Sir Bradley Wiggins got up on the podium at the end of the Champs Elysées, with Chris Froome and that bloke who came third, a load of dignitaries, the sprinter Maurice Green and two skinny birds in yellow frocks carrying daffodils and stuffed toys, he addressed the gathered millions, and suggested that it looked like time the draw the raffle numbers.

He did it for the British cycling fans who’d travelled to Paris specially to see him there, the winner of the Tour de France, in his yellow jersey. He wanted to say something that would be meaningless to the rest of the world, because only the British know that when it’s all over, just before we all go home, that’s when we do the raffle. It was outrageous, original and funny. And I wanted to put it in a perfume.

This is a perfume of parts. I wanted the scent of a crowd on a hot day; coffee, tobacco, hot tarmac and linden trees of the Champs Elysées; oiled bicycles; marmalade on toast. I’m not sure if Sir Wiggo had marmalade on toast for breakfast but I’d like to think it was his petit dejeuner of choice the day after.'

I didn't sample Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers the day I met Sarah on our sniffing expedition, but I thought that as a card carrying Bradley fan, Clare simply had to try it.  Try it and very likely wear it on her ride to Brighton.  So I dropped Sarah a line, explaining about my friend's Wiggo fixation and upcoming cycling challenge, and she was kind enough to send a little roll-on of the scent for her and one for me.  Clare was very excited at the prospect of wearing a Bradley-inspired perfume on the big day, and carried on training in earnest.

Nice toenails!

Then, with just three days to go before the event, Clare fell while cycling at 17mph and badly hurt her leg, as well as all but writing off her bike.  Having seen photos of how much her leg swelled, I thought her hopes of riding so soon after her accident must have been scuppered, not least because of the mangled bike.  But a local cycle shop spent seven hours the following day wrenching it back into shape, and by the following Sunday, Clare was - if not good to go exactly, for her leg was still heavily swaddled - thoroughly determined to do the ride.

The day was not without incident, however, for Clare fell from her bike again before even leaving London, but was happily unhurt - or no more hurt that she was already, say. As she reports in a Facebook update after the event:

'It confused the hell out of a first aider when I fell off at a set of lights in London. He couldn't work out how someone had already patched me up, in between my collapsing in a heap and his battling through the crowds of cyclists to pick me up.'

But that fall did not deter her, and I am happy and amazed in equal measure to report that Clare did indeed complete the course, helped by the whiffs of Eau de Wiggo which she caught periodically rising up from whatever you call the equivalent of décolletage on a woman attired in top to toe Lycra.

'I could detect the special Wiggins perfume at every pedal.  Even above the all pervasive aroma of Deep Heat. I explained to my husband that it would spur me on and that I would be like the pre-knighthood Bradley, not this year's quitting Bradley. I would be that gritty Bradley. "You want to be Fat Gritty Bradley?" he queried, mishearing slightly. He has been calling me that ever since.'

And how does it smell, you may be wondering?  Well, like sweet orange-flavoured Shimano gears would be my best attempt at describing it, ie hot oily metal - and there is also a muzzy earthy feel to the scent that might be the tobacco.  Comforting for sure.

Of course I had to write to Sarah again after the race, telling her the good news that my friend had made it to the finishing line despite her set backs, and quoting her take on Eau de Wiggo.

'I did wear the perfume and I could smell it while I rode. Loved it and am sure it helped.'

To which came Sarah's delightfully pithy response:

'It must have worked then.'

Paris Is For Perfume Lovers: Part 1 - Meeting Lucy Raubertas Of Indieperfumes And Neela Vermeire

Paris is for lovers, or so the conventional wisdom goes. However, as I wrote in my review of L'Artisan's Nuit de Tubéreuse, that is not the Paris I know based on my visits down the years, admittedly mostly for work:

'I know where Bertrand Duchaufour is going with this idea, for Paris is the quintessential setting for romantic trysts in hotels. I can confirm that this is the case, for I have often heard tryst-like noises emanating from the room next door. I am usually awake myself in the small hours, copying up interviews, polishing shoes and trying to identify bus connections from the end of Line C on the RER. So the whole conceptual premise doesn't really work for me, though I daresay my jaded view of Paris nights is atypical.'

But happily for me Paris is also a mecca for perfume lovers, and thus it was that last Wednesday night found me back in the 5e district near the Rue Mouffetard, my favourite base these days. I was relieved to be there at all in fact, as Easyjet had cancelled my flight owing to an air traffic controllers' strike, and I had just managed to bag a Eurostar seat at the eleventh and considerably more expensive hour. But it was money well spent, and with just an hour to go before my 'blind date' with Lucy of Indieperfumes, I quickly got changed at my hotel, one of the top ten budget options in the city according to The Guardian.

The place was certainly quaint and characterful, though not without its quirks: the showers and WC were on the landing, for example, the former on even-numbered floors only and bizarrely operated by tokens costing 2.5 euros for precisely five minutes. After this time the water cut off abruptly like those manual jet wash wands at petrol stations. By contrast, the nearest WC was right opposite my room, however the instructions about the interior light were a) incorrect and b) in German. In hindsight I reckon that the sign must have been one of those vintage door plaques with a purely decorative role, but I bet it has plunged a few Germans into darkness in its time...

By 8.30pm I had made it to the St Michel fountain, where Lucy was already in position.  Even without her characteristic eye mask on a stick ;-), she was easily recognisable from one of her other photos on Facebook. Lucy was also over here on holiday, and I thought it was a good opportunity to catch her, as she is based in Brooklyn. I knew of Lucy's blog and her sumptuously gothic Clarimonde Perfume Project; I was also aware of her close involvement in Sheila Eggenberger's Devilscent Project, however, the two of us hadn't had any prior dealings really beyond liking each other's posts on Facebook from time to time. And that is just the point really...for thanks no doubt to her background in fine and decorative art Lucy is responsible for a steady stream of the most exquisitely chosen - nay, curated - images of home interiors, languid models, vintage jewellery, luxurious textiles, henna-tattooed elephants, in short, beautiful and aspirational 'objects' of all kinds. On a grey day, chance upon any one of Lucy's status updates and it will lift the soul. Even the grey objects will perk you up - no, really.  And then of course we had perfume in common...so say no more...

Three hours, a glass of wine and a bowl of pasta later, sitting at the table on the left (minus the beagle) outside one of Saint-Germain's atmospheric restaurants - specifically chosen because it was near Rue Dante, the name of Lucy's Italian greyhound - we had found out that we had a lot more in common...including a love of SL Un Lys, to which Lucy treated herself later in her trip. In an email exchange following our meeting, we mused about what fun it is to meet perfumistas everywhere in the world, and how 'sympatico' (to use Lucy's word) they all seem to be, such that one can proceed with absolute confidence on a blind date basis!

Parisian florist from Central Casting

The next day dawned overcast and rainy - and cold, and windy. I had omitted to bring an umbrella or any kind of waterproof clothes, so there was nothing for it but to sally forth with a shopping bag over my head. My first stop was an Internet cafe to finish off my blogoversary post. Well, I use the term 'Internet cafe' loosely - it was a Turkish grocer's with a few PCs in a back room, wedged between some gas canisters and fridges, with an uninterrupted view of the bins through the open door to the courtyard. And I use the term 'courtyard' advisedly too.

But the scenery - if not the weather - changed for the better as the morning wore on...for by 12.30 I had arrived at a Lebanese restaurant in the north of the city, where I was due to meet Neela Vermeire of Neela Vermeire Créations. Neela had reserved a table in her name, and we were both ushered to it, however the two members of staff in question had different ideas about which table was the designated one.  This meant that we each waited for the other in splendid isolation for some ten minutes, before I thought to check my phone and found a text from Neela, who was seated just feet away but out of my direct line of sight.  She had - very modestly I thought, for someone so well known in our community - thought to mention her green scarf, in case I was having trouble identifying her.

Comedy musical tables moment over ;-), we were soon seated together in the window and chatting away nineteen to the dozen. I entrusted the ordering of the food to Neela and before long an array of mezzé dishes arrived, upon which I fell with glad cries, having deliberately skipped breakfast to work up a good appetite. Neela was every bit as bubbly, charming, down to earth and funny as I had imagined, if not more so. I had one or two questions for her that I had jotted down in my perfume testing notebook, but nothing approximating to an interview as such. This is partly because there are many excellent published interviews - or 'conversations', as Neela prefers to think of them - in the blogosphere already, plus I am an interviewer by profession, so asking people questions in any other setting is inevitably a bit of a busman's holiday.

We talked a bit about Neela's peripatetic past, her former life as a lawyer, and how she came to set up a perfume house and find an outlet for her creativity and the 'bon vivant' side of her personality.  We also touched on the creative process and her working relationship with Bertrand Duchaufour - upon finalising the upcoming release, Ashoka, Bertrand apparently told Neela that she was his toughest client!  (In a good way, I am sure... ;-) )  Of the three scents currently on the market I explained that I like all the development of Mohur and the drydowns of Trayee and Bombay Bling, but find the opening of Trayee too fiercely spicy, for example. Neela wasn't in the least fazed by the fact that I felt the need to qualify my liking for two of the trio, which just made me warm to her even more. And then I finally got a chance to test Ashoka for myself, which lives up to the glowing reviews I had read and is indeed a milky-figgy-woody dream of a scent. As someone who owns two bottles of PG Bois Naufragé there was little doubt that I would fall hard for this one, and so it proved.

The Ashoka Chakra - source: Neela Vermeire Créations

For much of the time though we chewed the cud about the blogosphere and Facebook scene and life in general - including national stereotypes, death, trouser suits, sensory pleasures, the oil industry, Belgian traffic patterns, 'skin chemistry', yoga, work/life balance, networking, iPhone covers - ie a gamut of absorbing yet random topics. It turns out that neither of us are too keen on honey in perfumes, and guess what? - Neela has a white iPhone like mine. Fancy that!  I make that me, Neela and Pierre Guillaume so far - though his phone goes commando while Neela and I resort to covers of varying degrees of novelty.  Hers is a cute mock up of a vintage leather book, known - I have since learnt, as my curiosity got the better of me - as the BookBook.  Oh, and I have just remembered that my neighbour Darrell also has a white phone. Okay, that's four confirmed owners of the white version.  Still quite a coincidence...!

Lebanese spicy fried liver - source: Flickr

And the most startling thing to report about our meeting was the fact that Neela actually persuaded me to eat fried liver. No one, but no one has managed to do that since I was made to eat the stuff by a draconian school dinner lady in about 1964, but d'you know what, it was really tasty! And then - clearly on a gastronomic roll by now - Neela coaxed me into drinking something that I swear she described as a 'white coffee' (I don't like coffee!), but which turned out in fact to be a wonderfully fragrant beverage of hot water infused with orange blossom.

Lebanese white coffee, but not as we know it

So, after two thoroughly enjoyable social encounters in as many days, I spent the rest of that Thursday hitting the 'grands magasins' - and a couple of small ones - on a solo sniffing expedition, the upshot of which will be documented in Part 2...