New year, old and new(!) doubts, some muzzy-headed sherry musings, and a 2015 round up (of sorts)

Traunsee aka Cookie Queen country, Austria

First things first - a very Happy New Year to everyone!

Right, so this is the time of year when - as sure as hydraluron is the Rolls-Royce of plumping agents - I can be found still awake at 2am, endlessly googling holy grail night creams that are within my budget, suitable for oily skin and for layering over nocturnally applied serums; that are pampering, thick but not too claggy, and also safe for use on the delicate eye area. And yes, as you can imagine I am still looking, though wondering about possibly giving Olay Regenerist Night Recovery Cream a try.*

And it is also around this time that I can be found rootling in my holding pen / 'purgatory punnet' of skincare products, which I am as hesitant to sling as I am to wear - for a variety of reasons from allergies to oiliness to lack of SPF to out of dateness (and everything in between). But then in a sudden access of thriftiness I invariably fish a couple of moisturisers out, and as long as they don't look like they need to be stirred with a stick, I reincorporate them somehow in my day or night regime. The Dr Lewinn's Eye Firming Cream may yet be for the high jump, mind, on account of its weird, glue-like consistency, slight sting and disconcerting shimmer, which doesn't even disappear on application.

All that glistens is not good

Yes, New Year is very much a time of  navel gazing, generalised anxiety, and tentative steps towards self-improvement. I plan to drink less alcohol and eat less sugar, yet on Jan 1st I found myself knocking back several admittedly microscopic hobnail goblets of sherry, and dispatching a whole Double Decker in the time it took me to fill my hot water bottle. So that's going well...

I must say that having finally made my highly considered sherry purchase - I went with a Fino in the end - I am disappointed. It is supposed to be 'dry and crisp', and instead tastes flat and faintly sweet, and to all intents and purposes like a bottle of regular wine that has been left open for days. Plus I copped for a wholly undeserved muzzy head after both the times I drank it. In googling how Fino sherry is meant to taste, I chanced upon this tip for identifying 'off' wine:

"If it smells like sherry and isn't sherry, it's probably turned."

So sherry is meant to resemble wine that's turned - and that's a good thing?**

In summary therefore, my New Year was marred by a disappointing choice of festive tipple, dogged by the usual intimations of dermatological deterioration, and to cap it all, my SOTD to kick the New Year off felt all kinds of wrong - none other than EL Intuition, a rancid bottle of which was the only perfume to my name at the time when sudden onset perfume mania struck back in early 2008. As soon as it landed on my skin I recoiled from its discordant grapefruit-forward fuzziness, but my friend Gillie - who is not one for insincere blandishments - turned up shortly afterwards and spontaneously said I smelt nice. We reckon it must have been some felicitous accord of the perfume and the two slices of wheaten toast I had just finished eating.

I should intuitively have avoided this

To reprise the theme of New Year resolutions for a moment, I think I might be better off setting the bar a little lower than something related to my alcohol and sugar intake. Consequently I am also resolving to 'use a teapot more often' and 'finish off at least one of the serried skittles of shower gels ranged round the end of the bath'.

And no New Year's post would be complete without a retrospective review of the perfumed year. Or something loosely perfume-themed by way of round up. It is a while since I abandoned my 'Top Sniffs and Nasty Niffs' format, quite simply because I hardly test any new launches these days - hey, I am barely aware of what they are. And I don't even remember everything I have smelt that was new to me, regardless of its year of launch. So a very lopsided rest of post this will be, but here goes...

Scented highlights 

Roja Dove Danger

I broke my cardinal rule of not blind buying this year when I sprung for boxless, topless bottles of this and Innuendo in a recent Roja Dove 'outlet' sale. (I already own Scandal and drew the line at 'Mischief' on egregious name grounds alone.) Though actually Tara and I did sniff Danger and Innuendo four years ago, and I was sure I had liked them back then. The reviews I could find were favourable in the main, plus my friend Sam Malone, who knows my taste well, said they were both very 'me'.

And so it proved. I liked Innuendo a lot, while Danger was the one that really hit the spot. It is is like a high quality Samsara, with a lovely soft citrus-vanilla-sandalwood vibe, but without the animalic aspect of Shalimar, say. Samsara is the best reference point, but lose the screech. I'll say this about Roja Dove's range: though the regular prices have skyrocketed since I bought Scandal, his perfume always smells high quality. You are never aware of the aromachemicals within, which is not the case with some niche lines. When I told Tara about my Roja Dove haul, she mistakenly read that as 'hall'...whereupon we spent an amusing moment mentally redecorating my (sparsely furnished, predominantly cream and terracotta-toned) hall in an opulent fusion of Chinoiserie and Swarowski bling, featuring black lacquered cabinets, ornate mirrors, and a giant crystal chandelier.

Papillon Artisan Perfumes Salome

If Liz Moores had a quid for every blogger who has included this fearless fandango of filth in their 'Best of 2015' lists, she could buy another horse - or at least another playmate for Jicky, Mimi and Bengal 'studmuffin', Thunderbolt. And Salome is also one of the standout scents of 2015 for me - for nostalgic ancestral reasons, and because it was a surprise grower. I have come such a long way in terms of perfume tastes since my days of being  'VM I hate civet' on Basenotes. Now I have morphed into 'VM I even embrace fossilised hyrax excrement'. Who'd have thunk I'd learn to love funk?

Puredistance WHITE

This wasn't love at first sniff - indeed, as Birgit and Tara are my witnesses, the opening on my skin had a bit of an austere, haylike facet that I really didn't care for to start with, though the cosy tonka drydown always appealed. I have since tried WHITE in winter and it is playing much more nicely on my skin from the off, and shaping up to be a cold weather staple.

Giorgio Armani Privé Myrrh Impériale

Uncharacteristically for me, I actually did a bit of airport duty free sniffing at Charles de Gaulle(?) and was reeled in by this soothing oriental blend of myrrh, benzoin, amber and vanilla. I have yet to acquire a sample of it, so that can go on my list of moderately achievable resolutions for 2016!

By Kilian Beyond Love

I had a surprise rapprochement with this heady, gourmand, tuberose soliflore and soon sprang for a purse spray of it on eBay. 2015 has been a bit of a year of tuberose exploration in fact. Please don't ask me what else I have tried - though I did buy a bunch of tuberose scents in Bloom in May, I do remember that.

4160 Tuesdays Goddess of Love and Perfume

I have Bonkers reader Crikey to thank for alerting me to this scent, her favourite and mine of Sarah McCartney's new extrait strength Crimes of Passion line. It is an unctuous fruity chypre with a cocktail of fruit in it including peach, so I really shouldn't like it, but I do. I thought it might be a bit like Mary Greenwell Plum, but it's smoother, more velvety, and with more heft. The full-on fruitiness is cut through with yuzu and grapefruit (though happily I don't compute the grapefruit in isolation) and the musks and vanilla round and soften the whole composition out. I bought myself a purse spray for Christmas!

Azzedine Alaia Alaia Paris - a scented 'WTF!' moment

I have read a number of very positive reviews of Alaia Paris and happened to be given a sample by a friend who picked one up in a shop. I have worn it three times now but am still waiting for the 'WTF' moment to become an 'Aha!' one. The opening on me is some kind of clean, abstract, aqueous floral, a bit like Hugo Boss Femme if anyone remembers that, then it quickly segues into a warm, musky, woody base with a liberal sprinkling of pepper. The base is pleasant but unremarkable, while the opening leans more generic. My nose was never that great at the best of times, and I honestly think I am losing the plot with this one. Why, I can't even be bothered to doubly double dot my 'i's!

Then I turned for help to Robin's review on NST, as my taste has historically been quite closely aligned with hers; thankfully she has nailed Alaia's kaleidoscopic will-o-the-wispiness:

"...fresh, airy, mineral, peppery, warm, all at once. On paper, a chilled watery citrus aspect is more noticeable than on skin, and the pepper seems even more dominant."

So I was right about the pepper at least. Robin goes on to say that she feels this would be an inoffensive general purpose scent that has more gravitas than your average designer offering. So the fact that I find myself underwhelmed by a perfume that five years ago would probably have been just up my street is perhaps indicative of the fact that my taste has moved on to scents that make more of a statement. Like suddenly trying to appreciate the delicate flavour of semolina or junket when you have been living on nothing but curries.

Packaging highlight

Regular readers know that I take a disproportionate interest in perfume packaging, and my impromptu award for this goes to Anya McCoy, for her adorable orange, bias-beribboned purple box of samples. Of these, my favourite was her Ylang Flower Tincture - sadly lost in my stolen luggage in the summer - but I remember it as a juicy, tangy tincture of ylang-ylang, for that's exactly what it is!

An Orangeman's delight!

People highlights and perfume-related angst

At the risk of sounding like a cracked record, it is the encounters with fellow perfumistas that really excite me these days, rather than sniffing new perfumes. To be honest I worry slightly that while I like all the scents mentioned above - like them a lot even - they aren't transcendental as such. I saw a post on the Facebook fragrance site by a chap who had smelt a Micallef perfume recently and actually cried because he had found his holy grail vanilla. And he's a grown man! So I wonder if I have simply tried too little this year for the odds of an epiphany to be stacked in my favour, or whether I am too hardboiled, or have just reached a more mellow phase in my hobby where nothing is going to get my heart racing. I am racking my brains to remember if I have ever felt completely transported by a scent - you know, a feeling of being utterly blown away. I'd like to think so, but as I sit here I can't connect with any such feelings from the past. Even my all-time favourite scents don't move me now to that degree.

So between my lack of nasal nous (which has bothered me for a while) and this new concern about a lack of emotional sensibility, I am starting to wonder whether I should stick to travel writing, where I started out - it does periodically creep back into the blog, after all. Or maybe only write about perfumes if there is a glaringly obvious humorous angle. At times I am perilously close to feeling like a fraud, or at least to someone hanging onto their credentials as a perfume blogger by their fingertips. Particularly as I am no longer bothered to seek out new releases by and large - or even read about them! Apologies for that potentially rather maudlin digression. I guess alarming levels of introspection go with the territory at New Year. ;)

But back to the more upbeat topic of the people highlights...!

These were meeting Val the Cookie Queen, not once but twice this year during the German and Austrian tours of The Monochrome Set. Her epic feats of roadying on her home turf in Ebensee truly saved the day. To that I would add having Sabine and Tara come to stay at my house in August, meeting Liz Moores at Papillon HQ in October, and variously hooking up with Tara, Birgit and Liz in London in March.

I have organised my stash since Tara's and Sabine's visit

Oh, and on the list must go my virtual friendship with Rachael Potts. Rachael is a perfumista who is married to experimental film maker, Tony Potts. Tony Potts is generally held to be the Monochrome Set's 'fifth Beatle' in that he famously lived in a squat with some of the band in the early days, and produced the videos and back projected films for their live gigs. What are the chances of such a fine colliding of worlds? Rachael and I will finally get to meet later this month, after enjoying a steady back and forth of Facebook messages since May. ;)

Card from Carol A Spiros - perfect match for my new glass cat!

And the final 'people highlight' is simply carrying on my existing friendships in the blogosphere. I value that network of like-minded friends more than I can say.

Animal highlight

Oh, if I may be allowed an animal highlight, no prizes for guessing who that might be...;)

Truffle Ganache Salome Bonkers, in her younger kitten days!

2015 also found me on a bit of a knitting craze: scarves, wristwarmers, legwarmers, a greyhound coat(!), and now vintage looking headbands. I promise not to turn Bonkers into a knitting blog, but as I have said, I do feel at a bit of a crossroads in terms of my interest in perfume. Not my love of it per se, but my quest for novelty, certainly. Then I did manage to sell a few albatross bottles in 2015, and to tidy and reorganise my collection, which has helped me focus more on - and appreciate - what I have already, whilst still remaining open to the odd new thing that crosses my radar. Liz Moores' upcoming White Moth fragrance sounds like my cup of tea, for example, and I am also curious about Vero Kern's new tobacco scent.

Mary, sporting her new coat, which took months in the making!

Make up highlight

If there is one item of make up I would like to lob into this look back at 2015, it is a Rimmel Colour Rush Lip Balm in the shade Not An Illusion, which I saw Lisa Eldridge wearing on one of her many inspirational videos. It's a warm, reddy-browny-nude that would be flattering on a lot of people I imagine, and which has a cupcake-y vanilla scent that I don't find at all unpleasant, quite the reverse. I also like the fact that even when the balm wears off it leaves a stain, which none of my other lipsticks do, rather needing constant reapplying. And this Rimmel lip balm is only £5.99. No, that is Not An Illusion! Definitely something I chuck in my handbag and find I am using as a default for any outfit that doesn't call for pink lipstick - it has temporarily knocked Burberry Nude Rose and Copper Mist off their YLBB perch, to give you an idea.

So there you have it - a very mixed bag of a 2015 round up that runs the full gamut from dodgy sherry to bargainous lippy and existential angst. Do please share your highlights of 2015 in the comments - scented or otherwise - I bet I have forgotten a ton of things!


*UPDATE - the latest bout of googling has led me to order a tub of Super Facialist Una Brennan Rose Hydrate Peaceful Skin Night Cream!

**UPDATE - I managed to enlist a friend's help to test the sherry, who pronounced it to be fine, but not as flavoursome as some Finos she has known. I promptly rehomed the bottle with her and may yet buy myself a bottle of Amontillado, even though the holidays are well and truly over.

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.

Ladies that brunch: featuring redemptive French toast and a rose scent recce with OT's Birgit and Tara

Source: Foxcroft & Ginger

It is almost exactly a year to the day that I set off for Berlin, the first stop on The Monochrome Set's 2014 spring tour. On a whim at the airport, and notwithstanding the preternatural sparrow's fart of an hour in question, I decided to have breakfast, and was promptly confronted with an absolute travesty of a dish calling itself French toast. So remote was this all-but-eggless, deep fried monstrosity from the fluffy primrose layers of my recall, that the chef apologised profusely and gave me a full refund.

And now, here I was in Soho, cosily tucked into a corner of the edgily named cafe Foxcroft & Ginger - which I persisted in referring to as Foxtrot & Ginger, even though I neither dance nor have occasion to use police radio - with Birgit and Tara of Olfactoria's Travels, when I spied a French toast option on the menu for the first time since that fateful meal at Frankie & Benny's.

But I am running ahead of myself...there is a bit to say about the journey down to London first. For starters, it took a mere hour and twenty minutes this time!, owing to the fact that I had snaffled a Virgin ticket for just two quid more than I would have paid on my usual London Midland service that takes about two and a half hours each way. Also - and readers may find my wonderment surprising - there were refreshments on the train. On the train - fancy that! In an actual buffet car dedicated to the purpose, where a cup of hot chocolate cost 30p less than in the cafe at the station. By the time I had finished marvelling at the amenities of the Virgin service, I had arrived at Euston, and a quarter of an hour later, found myself disgorged from the Underground and standing on a sunny pavement in Soho with Birgit. As we waited for Tara to arrive, we chatted about Tara's recent visit, from which they were newly returned. I also admired Birgit's HSOTD (Hermes Scarf Of The Day: a beautiful cashmere number in shades of grey - I counted more than two, but fewer than totally torrid, hehe. ;) ) I can also reveal that it was tied in a 'cowboy knot' - I thought it might be a style called 'the waterfall', which I saw in a YouTube video once, but I was mistaken. It looks rather like the Maxi Cheche in this link, but with the two outer points tied in a cowboy knot as a last step. A very elegant and relaxed look, anyway.

Source:  Foxcroft & Ginger

Shortly afterwards, Tara popped up and we made straight for Foxcrop & Ginger - I mean Foxcroft...I only finally mastered the name today, would you believe?! - where the waiter directed us to the last available table downstairs. At the far end was a wall of white subway tiles, a sure sign that you are either in a hip and trendy eaterie or a turn of the century public convenience. Menus appraised, the others plumped for Eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, which looked delicious, while of course I had to order the French toast in a bid to exorcise the painful memory of the last one. In fairness, it was more of a French Toast-Croque Monsieur fusion dish, owing to the addition of ham and cheese. Basically, it was the non-pareil of toasted sandwich-like entities, as you can see in the photo.

Unfortunately, we had to be pretty disciplined about the time, as Birgit had a theatre show to catch in the afternoon, however, we did manage to slip in a quick rose scent recce in Liberty, still on the quest of a Holy Grail rose perfume for my friend Jessica. It was great having the combined thinking power of Birgit and Tara and a very helpful male sales assistant as we speed sniffed our way round the perfume hall, scoping the fixtures for rosy inspiration. The top contenders were:

Acqua di Parma Rosa Nobile
Maison de Kurkdjian A la Rose
ODIN Milieu Rose
Keiko Mecheri Attar de Roses
Serges Lutens Fille de Berlin

Jessica is going to check them out on her next trip to the West End, and I will report back on her findings!

After the Liberty detour, we ambled down to Haymarket - or elbowed our way through the crowds, more like. Tara and Birgit lamented the fact that London is a lot more densely populated with tourists than Vienna. After picking up Birgit's ticket, we still had a little while to kill, so we walked round the block, enjoying the sunshine and loitering out of the wind here and there. On one of these street corners, we conducted a side-by-side comparison of Puredistance WHITE on my skin versus Tara's. I had written in my review of how my skin seems to amplify the coumarin facet of the tonka, making for a slightly dry, austere opening, and sure enough, the OT duo agreed that WHITE was 'sharper' on me than on Tara, whose skin seemed to grab the basenotes and go straight to that softer, more dreamy phase of WHITE's development. So to anyone out there who doesn't believe in 'YMMV' skin chemistry, we stick up two empirical fingers at that preposterous notion! Birgit and Tara also sniffed me wearing Opardu, but I will save those musings for a separate post.

Looking stylish despite the strong wind!

All too soon, it was time for the parting of the ways. Birgit and Tara's leavetaking was particularly poignant, as they had been constantly in each other's company for the past week. In time honoured perfumista tradition, I pressed a pair of tea towels on Birgit. I figured they would be thin enough to pack at least. Tara and I then made our way to Harvey Nichols. En route I clocked a number of young girls wearing jeans that were ripped at the knees. I suddenly remembered that the girl who was sitting next to me in the train down had worn a similar pair just like these pictured from New Look, and it was clear to me that denim's answer to self-harming must be a bit of a 'Thing' at the moment. I may be a middle aged old fogey, but I  really don't approve. When that trend is past, you will be left with a pair of foolishly mutilated jeans. It reminded me of that John Hiatt song lamenting those tempestuous rock stars who 'smash a perfectly good guitar'.

Source: New Look

Arriving at Harvey Nichols with a few minutes to spare, Tara and I stopped by Shu Uemura so I could buy a pair of their iconic eyelash curlers. According to Sali Hughes - despite their resemblance to an instrument of medieval torture - eyelash curlers are in fact an indispensable beauty aid for the mature woman, as long as you avoid crimping your lashes into the high kicking pose known as the 'hockey stick'. No danger of that yet awhile. So far I have only mastered one eye(!), and a look I can best describe as 'mildly surprised uplift'. As you can tell, I have been quite surprised lately, what with one thing and another. I kicked myself when I got home for not thinking to bring with me my Shu Uemura Hard Formula brow pencil, so that I could have asked the assistants to whittle it into a 'Samurai sword shape'. Well, that is how it is known, but to my eye it looks more like a canoe paddle or the bill of a platypus. Turns out that the pencil I have is not 09 but 06, which cannot be sharpened in that way anyway. Plus I think it's the wrong colour for my hair (Seal Brown), so in the bin it should go in my next decluttering putsch. Though I know I will struggle to throw away a 'perfectly good eyebrow pencil', if colour wasn't so key.

The sublimely sultry Tara

After roaming aimlessly round the top floor of Harvey Nichols, Tara and I eventually found the 'green bar' where we were due to meet Liz Moores of Papillon, who had kindly invited us to join her and her daughter Poppy (aka 'Pod')  for a drink. Readers, we could be excused for our failure to locate this stylish watering hole, a) because there seemed to be numerous bars and cafes on the same floor and b) because the seating was predominantly cream, with green accents. And when it came, what a drink it was!

An 'Enchanted Garden' no less, with edible glitter and pansies. I experienced collateral sparkling lip gloss(!) for the rest of the day - I had appreciably more glitter than the others, I should point out. It was, however, an age-inappropriate risk well worth running for the sheer fun factor and intoxicating deliciousness of this cocktail, which featured two kinds of fruit liqueur, vodka and champagne. I am used to drinking my alcohol one variety at a time, so this multiplicity may well have contributed to my feelings of pleasant muzzy-headedness on the train home. Which also took an hour and twenty minutes! A hop and a skip, merely exacerbating the dreamlike sensation I always get whenever I visit London.

Which was compounded further the next day by a 50th birthday party in a Wimpy...

followed by a bracing country yomp in all our finery.