The Rare Witch Project: A REEK Perfume Damn Rebel Witches hunt - with a lot at stake...!

Source: REEK Perfume

I say, did you go a bit mad this Black Friday? I didn't buy an enormous telly, an Amazon Ring Stick Up Cam Battery (in contrasting white!), a Ninja Foodi 7-in-1 Multi-Cooker, or anything of that gadgety ilk, but I did do some impromptu Christmas shopping, the nature of which I obviously can't reveal. I also scored some bargain health supplements - neither vitamins nor minerals as such, but offbeat vegetal things that purport to cure oxidative stress, lower cholesterol, and generally finetune your brain like the Holland & Barrett equivalent of WD40.

Oh, and I stocked up on no fewer than three jars of Neutrogena Hydro Boost Water Gel for my particular type of normal/combination skin, about which I wrote a mini-review a year ago. It is usually about £12, occasionally discounted in Boots by a third to around the £8 mark, but these pots were £6.99 each, so had to be snapped up. I am indebted to Caroline Hirons for this moisturising epiphany, and have been using it non-stop ever since I saw her talking about it on a morning TV show. It is fantastically hydrating, and though goopy going on, soon dries to a silky soft consistency. It doesn't contain any SPF, so I apply a tinted moisturiser by Paula's Choice that has SPF30 in it on top. It truly is like an instantly plumping bath for my increasingly crepey skin.

Source: Amazon

Then the other day a friend contacted me (he features in a number of past posts, including this one), to say that his daughter had fallen in love with a REEK scent I had given him to try in one of my lucky dip bundles of samples, and which he had in turn passed on to her, to wit Damn Rebel Witches - not to be confused with its rhyming stablemate, Damn Rebel Bitches. She had tried to google it with a view to buying a bottle for herself, but drew a blank.

Should anyone need reminding, this duo of perfumes was the brainchild of historical novelist Sara Sheridan and her daughter Molly, in collaboration with perfumer Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays. They wanted to honour the feisty exploits of Jacobite women, whom the brand describe as "powerful" and "unapologetic". The two REEK scents were sold in the Urban Reivers pop-up store in Edinburgh, which opened at the time of the Edinburgh festival in 2016, and sold a variety of Scottish-themed "luxury treats and gifts".

As an aside I simply must mention that my friend Clare had a dog Meg - no longer with us, sadly, but who has been featured on Cafleurebon! - and was also the offspring of a pedigree spaniel rejoicing in the patrician canine name of Whaupley Reiver. This list of his equally whimsical progeny is easily as absorbing as anything you will read on here!

Anyway, my friend's daughter drew a blank with stockists of her new favourite perfume, Damn Rebel Witches, so turned to me for help via her dad. Always happy to help foster the cause of niche perfume in any way, shape or form, I thought to contact Sarah herself, to inquire if she knew of any stock still knocking around the UK - assuming the REEK brand had indeed been discontinued.

Sarah did confirm the demise of REEK, but gave me the good news that she was now poised to resurrect the Damn Rebel perfume pair under her own brand, and pointed me in the direction of her Hot Pink Weekend sale. Knowing Sarah to be an individualistic canoe paddler, I am not at all surprised that she wouldn't be so dull and conformist as to stick with Black.

Source: 4160 Tuesdays

Having consulted with my friend as to his daughter's quantity requirements, and bearing in mind the very attractive discount applying this weekend, I custom bought a couple of bottles, which should last her a good long while. You never know when things might be discontinued again for one reason of another, so it made sense to stock up, I felt.

It was nice to reconnect with Sarah through this quest: she has the rare distinction of being the only perfumer ever to visit Bonkers Towers (on her and her husband's way down from Morecambe). I was very glad to help track down this proxy lemming, and it was a happy coincidence that I knew Sarah and was able to get to the bottom of the supply situation.

Then I learnt from a piece by Suzy Nightingale for The Perfume Society, that another one of Sarah's scents, Maxed Out, is amongst Molly Sheridan's top five smells, along with bread, petrol, Chanel No 5 and Elnett hairspray - august company indeed. I have a sample of Maxed Out somewhere and am curious to give it another go, even though I am not at that point, despite my Black Friday splurge...;)

The empty vial that sparked the hunt!

Insomnia, headaches, and the 'blue light' rescue services: No 1 - Our Modern Lives by 4160 Tuesdays: Blue Screen/Blue Horizon - Perspective review

Visualisation of Blue by Sarah McCartney - even the picture is therapeutic!

For all that people say your fifties are the new forties, I beg to differ. As someone now nearer to the end of this troublesome decade, I would say the fifties are about the body's desertion and malfunction in all its manifestations: knees and hips start to protest or even give way, arthritis raises its ugly bone spur, the collagen has eloped with the muscle tone, moods are all over the place - like the fine fur slowly colonising your face - and to add insult to injury your teeth are yellowing like piano keys, and you appear to have unaccountably developed a need to spit. But worse than all of these intimations of mortality is the fact that despite years of practice you suddenly lose the ability to sleep. And of course I am only speaking for myself in all of the above - your midlife mileage may vary, and I jolly well hope it does.

Hey, even the dry cleaner is having a laugh at my expense!

Going back to the sleep issue, dwindling levels of progesterone are probably the main culprit in women of a certain age, because the problem became acute as soon as I hit 50. That said, I accept that I have only myself to blame for compounding the problem by my 'poor sleep hygiene', as it is properly termed, namely a bedtime regime that is not conducive to a good night's rest. This 'unexhausting' - and by no means exhaustive! - list of offences includes eating late, drinking alcohol, and consuming sugar and caffeine in various guises - all in the run up to bedtime. Then chuck in ruminating aka 'mind wandering', which occasionally escalates into full blown episodes of anxiety - and a compulsion to check my phone last thing at night. You know how it goes...you'll have your pyjamas on and be about to get into bed when you suddenly feel an overwhelming urge to google 'how to sew up a knitted leg', 'shrubs for shady walls', or 'cat that looks like Olivia Coleman'. And it simply cannot wait till morning. And of course in our digitally dependent age, phones and tablets are known to give off a blue light, which in turn affects the levels of the sleep-inducing hormone, melatonin. As a concession to this I have now banished my phones from the bedroom when I finally do settle down to not sleep, but I have probably already blown my chances of nodding off by that last minute Internet search or several.

So as a result of hormonal hoo-hah, combined with my bad behaviours, I am no stranger to the completely sleepless night, and have had two in the last week indeed, interspersed with a couple of Night Nurse comas that lasted a mere four hours each.

Our Modern Lives sample pack courtesy of 4160 Tuesdays

And here, quite fortuitously is where Sarah McCartney, founder and nose behind indie house 4160 Tuesdays, hoves into view with her timely new concept collection, Our Modern Lives, which is being backed by a crowdfunding project. The collection neatly unites Sarah's twin loves of making perfume and teaching yoga (on a Wednesday, as I now learn!), yoga being of course the very pursuit I should be taking up in a bid to achieve inner calm and outer bendiness.

Sarah's latest fragrance venture was born out of consumers' requests for two specific styles of perfume: one that contained no synthetic allergens such as linalool (but which would otherwise be 100% made of aromachemicals), and one that was 'all natural'. The latter style caters to those for whom 'natural' has unfortunately become a byword for 'harmless' and 'best' - when it is of course possible to kill yourself by ingesting just 30g of wild foraged death cap mushrooms, and even drinking water can be fatal in sufficient quantities. So while Sarah personally believes that the best perfumes combine a judicious and complementary blend of natural and synthetic ingredients, 'the customer is king' as they say, and she relished the challenge of creating these two sub-collections.

The synthetics

There are two different synthetic blends with (to quote Sarah) a 'quiet sensuality', and which are 'so benign you could bathe in them'. Of these one is stronger (OML a) and more Paul Newman along the sensuality spectrum, while my preferred scent of the two (OML ß) is pitched somewhere between Hugh Grant and Gina McKee, say. Then the seven natural scents are named after 'seven shades, moods and atmospheres' that span the whole rainbow of colours and also go from morning till night in terms of timezones. The naturals and synthetics may be layered (in an 'add your own base' Betty Crocker kind of a way) or enjoyed on their own.

I have to say I liked all seven of the naturals, with the possible exception of Green - Leaf - New, but only because I am not a fan of the vegetable notes involved. I have lots more testing to do, as the permutations are legion - or 'incorrigibly plural', to quote my favourite poem by Louis MacNeice - so I will home in for now on just one scent from the naturals line: Blue Screen/Blue Horizon - Perspective.

The headache remedy

Now I happened to message Sarah around the time of one of my sleep deprivation headaches:

Vanessa: "Currently trying Yellow over OML ß, which is a cheerful combo. Hoping it might help this headache shift."

Sarah: "To remove headache apply Blue to your temples. Not kidding."

Vanessa: "Will do that, thank you! Added a drop between the eyes like a bindi..."

Sarah: "Good. Fingers crossed."

Vanessa: "Yep, that worked. Just feel whacked now. 4head eat your heart out."

I should interject at this point to say that the mentholated cologne, 4head, had previously been my topical weapon of choice for headaches. It was over its application to my forehead in a Starbucks in Covent Garden in 2009 that I first met and bonded with the now legendary Nick Gilbert!, who worked for Boots at the time and recognised a fellow user...;) But now it is a case of 'roll on and roll over 4head'...

I am happy to report that on two further occasions the application of Blue cured a headache within a matter of minutes. There was another instance last weekend - as the cumulative toll of the insomnia really took hold - that it didn't manage to shift, but it was in good company with a whole strip of Solpadeine Plus that couldn't touch it either.

So yes, as a headache remedy I am impressed - and were it not for that serendipitous conversation with Sarah I would never have thought to deploy Blue in that way.

The perfume 

Sarah sets the scene in the accompanying notes to Blue Screen/Blue Horizon - Perspective:

"A sense of balance. We spend too much time looking at screens,not enough at the horizon. This is a scent to help you meditate. Materials include frankincense essential oil, lavender absolute, vetiver absolute, eucalyptus mint essential oil, patchouli essential oil, hyacinth absolute, organic English lavender essential oil."

I have worn Blue a few times - mostly on my forehead, it must be said(!), where it is that little bit more difficult to smell it - but on the occasions I wore it on more conventional body parts, I picked up a fragrance that comprised about 40% frankincense, 40% patchouli and 20% lavender and vetiver in an unspecified ratio that is neither here nor there. I didn't detect any mint - which is good as I am not a mint lover - or the hyacinth particularly - but the blend of incense and rooty, chocolate-y patchouli was nicely grounding. Lavender is of course traditionally supposed to be good for headaches, though it only played a cameo role in the composition. There is no development to mention, as Blue is not a classically structured perfume as such. I did also try it layered over OML ß, but I cannot begin to tell you how that changed it overall, other than possibly giving it the feel of a fuller-bodied fragrance with its bustle on.

NB In a future post I will be featuring another 'blue light' rescue service - a face cream by Dr Sebagh that is actually marketed on that unusually specific premise!

Oh, and in another of life's little ironies, given that 'anxiety is the new cardio', my old Zara jeans fit a treat now. Doh! And some readers may find it another irony that perfume should be able to cure, rather than cause a headache, but it worked for me...;)

A potpourri of postal musings, including 4160 Tuesdays' new self-adhesive, cushion wrap corrugated packaging

I know, I know. You've glanced at the title and thought to yourself: 'A blog post about cardboard? I'll pass on that, thank you very much...' And that's fair enough, but as an industrial market researcher I have always been interested in packaging, which has been a bit of a recurring theme in my work down the years. This in turn has prompted me in the past to blog about those 'unsung heroes of the swap scene', bubble wrap and electrical insulation tape. It wouldn't suprise me if I had blogged about Jiffy bags, parcel and Scotch / Sello-tape at some point, but I don't believe I have - yet. Or I may have written about them in passing - an observation about the apparent trend towards black and hot pink and metallic Jiffy bags, say - but not on a standalone basis.

Cologne clear out - no casualties reported!

But firstly I wanted to announce the good news that after quite a few weeks and a fair degree of nail biting on my part, all the overseas perfume packages I posted as a result of my recent cologne clear out and giveaway made it through to their destinations in Croatia, Denmark, Australia, Canada and the USA. All the packages contained an eclectic assortment of decoy items, from a wind up reindeer to an unwound paper clip, as well as tea bags, strands of wool, universal ink cartridges, torn bits of material, sweets, skincare samples, an elastic band, a lone earring, a bookmark, a button or two - and a vividly coloured coaster with reindeer on it. (I say, there seems to be a bit of an accidental reindeer theme going on....!)

For the most part, these extraneous items were nothing you would actually want or could use, but their inclusion, however token, enabled me to access whole new categories on the customs declaration such as 'Stationery', 'Jewellery', 'Artists' Materials', 'Children's Toys' - and my personal favourite, 'Haberdashery'. Had space permitted, I would dearly love to have popped in a scarf to one or other of the parcels, so I could have added 'Ladies' Apparel' to the list. Next time I might just try that with entry level apparel items like pop sox! Maybe (clean) ones with ladders in them for added comedic futility.

It seems the recipients were also amused by my creative labelling / inclusions. When two of the packages made landfall in Australia, I received a photo of them sitting on the new owner's desk with the following running commentary as she opened them one at a time:

"LOL! Fabric samples...Nice work!"

Me: "If there's a tea bag in there, on no account drink it. It's something green and nasty."

"Shoe polish sponge. Button. I'm laughing my a*** off in the middle of an open plan office !!"

My next stash of fabric samples, ready to go

The Post Office inquisition, and the onside rule

The other aspect of my postal MO to mention is that I have taken to splitting my custom across multiple post offices for the more sensitive shipments, much as people stockpiling painkillers are wont to visit a number of different chemists. I now pretty much only use my local post office for sending perfume within the UK, which is of course not a problem, except that you are limited to how many bottles you can send, and even what constitutes a bottle. For the fact that you are meant only to send full bottles in the first place is perplexing, given that I mostly want to post decants and samples. Then there is the complicating factor of the 'bottle' supposedly being in its original packaging, which the things I am sending may well not be, if I have decanted them myself.

Then the other day I was sending two decants and a sample of something to a friend - which I gaily construed as 'one bottle' on the hazardous goods label, because on aggregate it was nearer to one bottle than anything else, hehe. And because I had told the postmaster earlier that I was having a clear out of my perfume collection, which is what had prompted the earlier flurry of UK packages he had handled, on that afternoon he piped up: 'Hey, have you got any perfume going spare?' He meant for himself, as it turned out, so I am going to give him a little miniature of a unisex scent by Micallef that Sabine of Iridescents had recently passed on to me, which is a bit rosy and oudy. I happened to be wearing it at the time, and the postmaster sniffed my hand and said he liked it a lot. So the next time I am in I will drop it off, for given how globally dispersed this perfume hobby is, it is quite important to keep your local PO staff onside...

Not my post office ~ Source: Wikimedia Commons

4160 Tuesdays: padded packaging prompts patient prising

The other postal observation I wanted to make is about the packaging in which Sarah McCartney, owner of 4160 Tuesdays, had kindly sent me a promotional notepad featuring a colourful graphic of iconic London buildings interspersed with perfume bottles. It arrived in a corrugated cardboard pack that was so well sealed I had to take both scissors and knives to it in the finish. It was hard to find where exactly the ends of the package were sealed so I could insert my sharp implement of choice between them, but eventually brute force and a ragged kind of cutting action prevailed.

As seamless as your average sting ray

Here for reference is a photo of an average sting ray - bet you can't see the join on it either?

Source: popsci.com

I mentioned the impregnability of her parcel to Sarah, who explained that it was a new style of 'cushion wrap' packaging they were trying out, which cleverly only sticks to itself and not to the item enclosed. Despite having done a project on single, double and triple-walled corrugated cardboard in Poland, Germany and Austria, I was not aware of this nifty technical feature, albeit the project in question was in 1996.

I think the new style of packaging is excellent for protecting contents in transit - there would be no dog ears or creased dustjackets if you were sending a book, say - but it does require a fair degree of patience and the ownership of an armoury of pointy utensils on the part of the addressee.

Gotcha!

Dropping pine needle perfumes and other festive malfunctions

The countdown to Christmas has begun. Well, strictly speaking - as far as the retailers are concerned anyway - it started some time in October, if not before, but I have definitely entered my pre-Christmas 'Oh, my goodness, I missed the last posting date for second class cards and I haven't wrapped anything and will all the chestnuts be sold out already?' headless chicken - I mean turkey - phase. And every year there is a new challenge involving the festive bird, as I always think there is a perfect cooking method still out there that is just beyond my grasp. The other day ex-Mr Bonkers inquired jovially: 'So is it going to be the Nigella brined or the tented foil Delia method - or some bet-hedging combination of the two, more like?' He has vivid memories of one Christmas morning where I additionally spent a frantic half hour googling which way round the legs of the turkey should point in the oven. I have in fact abandoned whole turkeys in recent years, gravitating towards the more manageably sized crown joints. But even though last year's bird was succulently successful, there will as ever be a twist this year, namely that I plan to use a probe thermometer to check the turkey's temperature. So I have been busy googling where to insert the thermometer I have yet to buy, given that there are no legs and the traditional spot of between leg and breast is not an option.

Time to get the shiny Roja Dove coffee table book out

But Christmas is about far more varied and numerous malfunctions than just the turkey. The mishaps kicked off last Sunday in fact - it took six hours from sallying forth with my friend Gillie in search of a tree for each of us to switching the lights on mine and declaring it decorated. For having brought my tree home, I quickly established that the trunk was too fat and knobbly to fit into the stand I already had. I attacked the trunk with a toy saw, then an axe, but to no avail. So I went collecting rocks on the allotments and put them in a silver pail, which I thought would serve as well. It didn't, and the tree toppled over, 'felling' me in the process, and smearing greenish mud on my sofa. I dabbed the offending patch with damp kitchen roll, which seems to have fetched the worst off. Then I went out and bought another, wider stand, and things started to pick up from there.

The next day, however, I was experimenting with a string of fairy lights in the hall, when I knocked my bicycle over, gouging out a small piece of the wood panelling under the stairs, just a few mm to the left of the previous gouging wound from an identical bike-knocking incident last year. The bike has now been banished in disgrace to the corridor behind the kitchen.

Oh, and my pretty Chanel Christmas card that was the last present to me from ex-Mr Bonkers appears to have lost some of its dangly charms. ;(

But some good things have happened as well this week, relating to perfume and Christmas, you will be pleased to hear. Even a fragrance-related accident proved to be a happy one. For yesterday I spilt a vial of Serge Lutens Fille en Aiguilles on the mantlepiece.

Luckily, it didn't attack the paintwork as I feared, just leaving a slight shadow of a stain. This in turn gave me the bright idea of smearing the puddle of Fille en Aiguilles on a small wooden tree ornament Gillie had recently given me - as in one shaped like a tree, not intended to go on the tree - and now it smells wonderfully piney and aromatic, a bit like your better class of sauna.

Out of the blue this week I also received a medallion-shaped tree ornament from Sarah McCartney of 4160 Tuesdays, perfumed with a trio of scents: frankincense, myrrh and citrus.

It looks uncannily like a ceramic Love Heart for anyone familiar with that nostalgic confectionery line - well, you can still get them, actually. I have a tube in my handbag indeed.

And in addition to the 'bridging decant' Tara slipped me at the Les Senteurs event I attended the other week, I have now received two further atomisers of Bois des Iles from Val the Cookie Queen. I know I mentioned that I had run out in an earlier post, but it genuinely wasn't a sneaky way of 'crowdsourcing' some top up supplies, honest! But now I have supplies all the same, and am very grateful to both.

Oh  look, I have just noticed the sticker on the back of one of the vials, keeping our heart theme going...;)

As this is probably my last post before Christmas, I would like to take the opportunity of wishing readers near and far a very Happy Christmas-stroke-Holidays-stroke-Bah Humbug let's just go for a curry! (as per linked post below). I hope all your perfume gifts - should you receive any - are what you wanted. For further reading on this theme, here is a link to my post from four years ago for Cafleurebon on the subject of Christmas present giving and attitudes to the festive season generally.

In that article I note that I include a 'gravy separator' as one of my worst ever gifts. How times change! Why, a gravy separator is on my current Christmas list. So what the heck did I do with the one I already had...? ;)

An amewsing game of aroma-counselling 'tag': review of The Scent of Possibility by Sarah McCartney

I did a quick tot up today and I have in fact written reviews of seven perfume-themed books on Bonkers. SEVEN! I promise that that's as much a surprise to me as it is to you - I would have guessed about four tops. Maybe I am being influenced by a recent downgrade of the designation of these posts from 'review' to 'bitesized not quite reviews', which was the case for the last two: 'The Rottweiler' by Ruth Rendell because there was next to no perfume in the book(!), and 'Chanel: An Intimate Life' by Lisa Chaney, because I couldn't even finish the blessed thing. Though I guess you could say that - assuming I have an average attention span - my failure is as indicative as anything of the book's readability. But yes, it turns out that there were five proper, full length book reviews prior to that.

And here is review No 8, of a novel which was both fragrance-forward and finished fairly fast by me. That said, my review may not be appreciably longer than bitesized, for the simple reason that I couldn't figure out how to say too much about The Scent of Possibility without it acting as a spoiler. But here goes...

Sarah McCartney, as regular readers will doubtless know, is the quirky and colourful owner of 4160 Tuesdays, who has been acclaimed as one of the up-and-coming stars on the perfume scene. She was recently dubbed - in a superb article on the UK's artisan scent industry in Management Today - as a 'punk perfumer', and I have previously featured three of her creations on the blog: Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers (the scent which spurred my friend Clare on in her charity bike ride) and Tart's Knicker Drawer & Doe in the Snow, following Sarah and her husband Nick's visit to Bonkers Towers in the summer.

Sarah and Nick at a Les Senteurs event this week

Without further ado, here is the blurb from the back of the book, to give you a little taster:

'Down a cobbled mews off one of London's rare tranquil rare tranquil backstreets, people come to talk, gaze at the garden, have a nice cup of tea and a biscuit, then leave with a small blue bottle of perfume. Captured inside it is a scented memory of happy times.

What could be the harm in that?

London is a big city, but paths cross, and get all tangled up. A small misunderstanding leads to a seriously large one.

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

This is the novel that accidentally launched a London perfumery, 4160 Tuesdays.'

The Scent of Possibility is divided into lots of short chapters, devoted to - and toggling amongst - the various characters. All of whom sooner or later fetch up at the office - in a mews near Holborn - of a lady called Unity Cassel, who helps them solve their personal problems. The characters don't know this when they arrive, mind...The trigger for their visit is being given a business card with an appointment on it by someone (usually known to them) who has already been, found their own session helpful, and decided that the other person could do with Unity's services more than them, prompting them to pass their card along. I can best describe it as a game of aroma-counselling 'tag', for as well as having a cathartic heart-to-heart with Unity  - plus high calibre refreshments! - each 'client' takes away a little bottle of perfume which she carefully selects for them. Each bottle captures in olfactory form a past memory of a happy occasion that is specific / personal to them, the idea being that the scent will simultaneously comfort and galvanise them into tackling their issues head on.

Pied Bull Court / Galen Place ~ Source: mouseprice.com

The fun in the book, which is very cleverly plotted, is that the stories turn out to be far more intertwined than the reader at first imagines...and that is about as much as I can say about that without really giving the card and the game away!

So instead, I will say that I devoured The Scent of Possibility in a week, which is the sign of a seriously engrossing read. Timewise only Apple Tree Yard by Louise Doughty has come close. I can't stress enough that this is a truly remarkable feat, because in the past year I have only managed to read a derisory seven books in total, which equates to a laughably slow rate of about seven weeks for each. So to finish Sarah's book in a fraction of that time or less is accolade indeed.

The other thing I appreciated about The Scent of Possibility is its easy-going, naturalistic style. Sarah has a sure touch in conveying the 'voice' of each of her characters, so for example, Jessica, who is a schoolgirl, speaks in a breathy stream of consciousnessness blurt, with minimal punctuation. I am pleased to report that Sarah doesn't pepper Jessica's internal conversations with 'like' or 'you know' every few words, to which young people seem inordinately prone.

The characterisations themselves are economically and deftly drawn, for example when Phoebe describes a man she was going out with as being handsome in 'that dark, Celtic, smouldery way'. Elsewhere, she mocks her own appearance in trainers, comparing herself to 'those American women in the last century who came over to the City and went to work in tea-coloured tights, Burberry macks and big hair, with a pair of bright white Reeboks at the bottom, to make them look like they worked hard and played hard and all that rubbish.'

Five of the scents featured in the book are from the current range

Oh, and a quick word on grammar: Sarah loves the semi-colon, and though I haven't conducted a poll as such, I am pretty sure she favours its use over the dash by quite some margin. The semi-colon is a bit of an endangered species in modern usage - and is even considered archaic in some quarters - so I rather warmed to that touch, says she, without actually using one...;)

There is also a fair bit of gentle humour and wry observations of life's foibles, together with some pretty helpful relationship advice along the way. I could very easily imagine Suzi Godson of The Times coming up with the same diagnoses of these familiar - and familial - problems.  Yes, the book is part agony aunt column, part perfume consultation-stroke-aromatherapy session, and part soap opera-cum-thriller. In short, The Scent of Possibility has something for everyone...except a shedload of dashes, obviously. Though it does have a shed.


NB In the spirit of full disclosure, I bought my own copy of The Scent of Possibility - that's it in Sarah's hand, in fact! - before or after she autographed it for me.

An Ealing Comedy? Holly Cranmer *and* Sarah McCartney (of 4160 Tuesdays) come for tea at Bonkers Towers

I just learnt that Ealing is the third largest of Greater London's 32 boroughs, with a population of 318,500, spread in turn across 23 wards each with c13,800 residents. The population of Greater London meanwhile is 8.3m, meaning that a mere 4% of Londoners live in Ealing Borough, the widest definition I could find of the place! In view of these compelling population statistics, it is all the more remarkable that in the space of 10 days, not one but TWO perfumistas from Ealing made the detour to call in on me in Stafford....I make the odds of that happening - using London (rather than the whole universe ;) ) as our universe - 0.000016. But in fairness it is a long time since I did probability at school.

Yet come they did, Holly on her way back from some family history inquiries n Shropshire, and Sarah and her husband Nick on their drive home from a vintage fair in Morecambe. There are a number of similarities between the two visits: both prompted a flurry of house cleaning; especially the bathroom, as I had been bigging up my house as a more well appointed alternative to the nearby Stafford Services - you know, boasting that there were no broken hand dryers in the Ladies or stainless steel teapots with chronically dripping lids. Both also prompted a flurry of baking - the same cake in fact, with slightly different decoration. Holly additionally brought some macarons from a baker in Market Drayton, as a humorous nod to my recent post on the subject. They weren't quite comparable to Ladurée, but they were certainly the nearest match I have tasted.

Holly pre-perfume pandemonium

Holly had brought a few batches of things for me to try, while I lugged my plastic containers of bottles and decants from out under the hall stairs. The usual chaos and scented cacophony ensued, and we both ended up with a little bag of decants from our respective stashes. Holly had given me her sample of Tauer Perfumes Une Rose Vermeille, but in an amusing turn of events - not unconnected with the aforementioned chaos - she accidentally tidied it away and took it home with her again. As luck would have it, I have won a decant of this very scent in Natalie's 'closing down giveaway' on Another Perfume Blog, and when it comes I will be grateful to Holly for alerting me to this beauty.

Stock photo of the garden in...er...spring!

Sarah and Nick's arrival was delayed by the usual holiday snarl ups on the M6, which is just as well really, for moments before they were due to turn up, I was still scrubbing tomato and pepper soup with a toothbrush out of the sisal rug on the kitchen floor. And swabbing gory blobs off every single cupboard door, plus a few walls and skirting boards, with balls of damp paper towel. I wasn't planning to serve soup, I might add, but as household objects are wont to do, it just kind of leapt out when I opened the fridge door to get some milk.

It was a pretty warm day, so we were able to have tea and cake (the Smartie variant pictured) in the garden. Having clocked the elaborate hospitality rituals that go on at The Wall of Scent functions, unbeknownst to Sarah, I had been having practice runs on and off all morning with my £10 bargain Wedgwood teapot and some little cups, on the assumption that Sarah would be too refined to be a 'bag in the mug' kind of person. In the event, Sarah opted for an elderflower spritzer (ha - didn't see that coming!), while Nick asked for coffee. Luckily I keep some individual plastic filter cups for just such an eventuality (don't drink the stuff myself), and Nick pronounced it very acceptable.

A parade of 4160 Tuesdays scents 

Sarah and I chewed the cud about the perfume scene in general, and I remarked on the excellent press coverage her indie brand 4160 Tuesdays has been enjoying lately. We also chatted about the vintage event they had just attended in Morecambe, about Nick's work - and my lack of it. ;) I am sure I must have bored them with tales of my home improvements at some point - Sarah certainly copped for the full house tour. And as they were leaving, Sarah left me a serried rank of purse sprays of her scents, namely:

Doe in the Snow
Tart's Knicker Drawer
The Sexiest Scent On the Planet Ever (IMHO)
New York '55
Rome 1963
London 1969

Nick's sofa-toning teal shirt - he can come again!

DOE IN THE SNOW

Of these, my favourites are the first two: Doe in the Snow is a chilly, citrus-forward, peach chypre, not unlike a sort of lemony Mitsouko, with a glacial blast of aldehydes and a crystalline, candied peel effect in the opening. I was also reminded a little bit of scents like Guerlain Sous le Vent and The Party in Manhattan, but it was less herbal than the former, and less filthy than the latter. And generally more citrus-y and modern in feel than either, though the chypre structure does give it a classic twist.

Top notes: grapefruit, cedrat, yuzu, peach aldehyde, snow
Heart notes: cedarwood, rose, jasmine, musk
Base notes: opoponax, oakmoss, leather, green tea absolute

TART'S KNICKER DRAWER

Tart's Knicker Drawer (formerly 'Tart's Boudoir') is billed as a 'floral amber oriental', and is quite sweet, with a pronounced raspberry note, and generally powdery and aldehydic at all times. It has a retro vibe, like the cosmetics brand Benefit or its cheaper imitation, Soap & Glory. Here I saw a slight resemblance with Lyn Harris's La Poudrée for M & S (review here), though Tart's Knicker Drawer is more approachable and easy to like. Now the expression 'smelling of a tart's boudoir' is traditionally an insult levelled at someone reeking of too much perfume, but notwithstanding the lengthy note list, Tart's Knicker Drawer doesn't feel 'too much' at any point. Nor, despite its raunchy name, is it remotely animalic or smutty. At the risk of being coarse, one can only conclude that the tart in question was having a bit of a slow day.

Top notes: bergamot, orange, grapefruit, pink peppercorn
Heart notes: raspberry, rose, jasmine, sandalwood, cedarwood, violet, tuberose
Base notes: amber, musk, vanilla, benzoin, tobacco

A pensive and sunlit Sarah

I accompanied my visitors to their car, which was filled to the gunwhales with luggage, purchases and all manner of vintage paraphernalia. I was particularly interested in some Liberty fabric squares Sarah had bought at a mill (or a cheap fabric emporium of some kind!) on their way down here, along with several bolts of floral fabric.

I will end this post with a photo of a tea room in Chester I visited recently with my friend Gillie - it reminded me vividly of Sarah and her devotion to pretty vintage style..

Correction - I will end this post with a new infographic Sarah has designed to help people pick out scents from the 4160 Tuesdays range that will best match their personal taste and the wearing occasion. If you look closely, you will spot that there is (quite fortuitously) a scent category with my name on it!

PS The lowdown on Ealing Comedies may be found here...

'Soak my shorts': Clare's rainswept ride for rhinos with perfume-assisted pedal power

Source: Prudential RideLondon via Clare

My friend Clare seems to have been popping up on Bonkers quite a bit of late, between my post about her perfumista protege progress, a couple of posts on Cake Club, and coverage of her cycling feat last year in a London to Brighton charity ride. Despite a bandaged knee, she gamely made it round the punishing 50 mile course, spurred on by whiffs of Sarah McCartney's scent, Time to Draw the Raffle Numbers. This eclectic perfume - featuring notes of marmalade and Shimano gears - was famously inspired by Sir Bradley Wiggins' podium moment when he won the Tour de France in 2012.

In hindsight, 50 miles now seems like a leisurely pootle, for last weekend, my indomitable - and some might say completely loopy - friend took part in Prudential RideLondon-Surrey, a whopping 100 mile circuit that covered most of Greater London before meandering through large swathes of Surrey.  For months she had been following a rigorous training schedule, but until last weekend she had never ridden more than 65 miles in one go. So when last Sunday dawned (wet and stormy, as the remnants of Hurricane Bertha lashed The Home Counties), I was concerned that she might have bitten off more than she could chew this time.

Shortly after 8am, Clare posted this status on Facebook:

"On the start, in the rain. Feeling sick. Vanessa Musson will let you know if I've been taken off the course in the comments below. Fingers crossed!"

For Clare had sent me a link to a whizzy GPS app, which enabled me to follow her progress every step - or revolution, rather - of the way. This was important, as any riders found to be lagging behind risked being intercepted by marshals at one of half a dozen check points and removed from the race.  I kept logging into this app on and off through the morning and all was well in terms of Clare's mileage and average times until 13.57 when the route updates suddenly stopped around Epsom. This prompted me to call her husband in a panic, who reassured me that the battery had probably died on her phone.

Source: Prudential RideLondon

And so it proved. For at 16.13, four minutes short of eight hours since she set off, Clare arrived in The Mall, and understandably burst into tears when she saw the finishing line, in a heady mix of relief, joy and pride. For the conditions in which she had covered the course were nothing short of diabolical - at several points riders had to carry their bicycles aloft through flood waters, and two hills were taken out of the route altogether, as it would have been too dangerous to have people whizzing down a wet road at speed. This actually lopped 14 miles off the total distance, but to cycle 86 miles in such hostile weather took unbelievable grit and determination.

Source: Clare's equally proud husband!

Here was Clare's Facebook update on Sunday evening:

"Thank you everyone. I am totally and completely shattered. We went through crazy floods, thunder and rain like I've never seen. I only lost my temper once. There was a very plump girl just in front of me who, like me, had carried her bike through the floods and trundled on. Two yobs by the side of the road pointed and laughed at her. If I could ride one handed I would have slapped them. Instead, I suggested they get on their own effing bikes and try it. The rest of the people along the way were wonderful and definitely kept me going in the headwinds. Nobody tried to take me off the course. Had they done, I would have decked them."

I wrote back that I was 'proud to know' her, which I most certainly am. In fact I have been a bit tearful writing this post, which isn't at all like the Bonkers you know. ;)

Source: Clare

So...obviously, having given Clare a few days to recover this week, I had to pop the question about whether wearing Sarah McCartney's 'Eau de Wiggo' perfume again helped her focus.

"I couldn't smell anything at all. Throughout the entire route I was sniffing, but the tissues in my sleeves had soaked through. I wrung them out, but blowing your nose on papier mâché is limited in effectiveness.

I did inhale at the Start line before the downpour and felt invincible. That lasted about 20 miles. Then I just felt wet and a long way from the Finish.

I didn't get a sniff of Bradley."

Source: Cycling Weekly

Ah, too bad then, but most understandable. And would you believe Bradley was also cycling in this race? Though he will have started well ahead in the pack, so there was no chance of his catching Clare's sillage during that first section, and wondering about the identity of this olfactory impostor.

I found this amusing quote in The Guardian from another prestigious participant, former Olympic track champion, Chris Boardman, describing the weather on the day:

"It went from torrential to biblical and then just to horrendous."

And what of the rhinos, you may be asking? Well, Clare decided to raise money to protect the rhinos of Pilanesberg in South Africa, and at the time of writing has already exceeded her target by £160!. This is not a fund raising post by any means, but if anyone particularly supports wildlife causes, the link to her fund raising page is here.

Source: Prudential RideLondon via Clare

'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.'

Smelly Cakey Drinky Things On Toasty Meet: Lion Cupboard Love & The Fellowship Of Fumeheads

Angela Flanders store

The Smelly Cakey Drinky Meet - I added the bit about the Things on Toast - was the brainchild of "professional Moomin" and trainee perfumer Pia Long, known to many as Nukapai on Basenotes.   She thought it would be fun to recreate the Basenotes outings of yore, whereby a gaggle of perfumistas would go on a crawl of perfume emporia and high end tea rooms in central London, for as long as nose and stomach could stand the pace.

The chosen day for the meet-up dawned dry and preternaturally early.  My alarm roused me at my friend's house in Teddington at 7.30am.  I must say that 8am is a foreign country to me at the best of times, but there was nothing for it but to leap into action.  I arrived at the chosen rendez-vous point, Patisserie Valerie in Spitalfields, at bang on 10.30 am for a 10.30 - 11 am start.  I was delighted to spot Tara - in the dark coat whose precise colour was a memorable object of confusion on our first meeting - loitering outside, just slightly more unfashionably early than me.  Little did we know that three others had already preceded us and were installed at a large table indoors, while Pia herself stood sentry at a door round the other side to intercept stragglers.

People continued to dribble in over the next half an hour or so, but we got stuck into breakfast without ado.  My conventional-looking scone paled into insignificance beside Tara's humungous chocolate croissant, while Nick's millefeuille was so substantial that he had to abandon it somewhere around the "cinq cents" mark.

Tara, looking unfazed by her enormous croissant

Replete from our cafe stop, we ambled a few streets to our first perfume shop, Angela Flanders, a line with which I was unfamiliar.  Our party more or less filled the store, and we quickly descended on the testers and smelling strips.  A speed sniffing marathon ensued, as we attempted to winkle out our personal favourites, of which the friendly assistants made us samples to take home.

Nick and Pia at Angela Flanders

I sniffed ten scents on card and a further umpteen from the nozzle, which - although not a recognised sampling technique - pretty much does the job on the whole.  I am careful not to touch the nozzle with my nose, however, lest a Health & Safety-conscious SA should ask me to desist on hygiene grounds.

The strips I have retained were mostly drawn from three of the four ranges, the fourth (The Artillery Range) being more geared to men, as a cursory dabble confirmed:

Signature Fragrances: Bois de Seville, Melissa, Ottoman

Collection Florale: Mimosa, Bouquet d'Amour

Collection Noir (sic): Figue Noire, Oudh Noir

Sarah McCartney at Angela Flanders

I additionally tried Precious One on card - an elegant and understated floral chypre, which won a FiFi in 2012 in the Best New Independent Fragrance category - and Aqua Alba, which has not yet been assigned to a category by the looks of it.  It features an intriguing whisky note and was a popular choice with quite a few of us.  I requested samples of these two, plus Bois de Seville (a spicy woody, orange scent) and Oudh Noir (for an oud-loving friend).

One perfume which I sniffed and admired on Lisa (aka Wordbird) was Parchment, another Signature Fragrance with spices, citrus, vanilla and amber.  If my memory serves me, this is the one which Lisa initially thought smelt of fish, but the impression was happily fleeting, and Parchment quickly morphed into a yo-ho-ho-Long John Silver-type scent of the most evocative kind.

Somewhat creepy candles by Cire Trudon

Our next stop - again, within easy walking distance, even for someone as encumbered with luggage as me - was Bloom Perfume in Spitalfields, which carries an eclectic range of candles and fragrance, Parfumerie Générale and Nasomatto being two examples of relatively well known brands I spotted there.  Others included Jovoy Paris, Jardins d'Ecrivains, Phaedon Paris, Ann Gérard, Vero Profumo, Nez à Nez, Grossmith, Nasomatto, Blood Concept (which I had tested and rejected in Zurich), Magnetic Scent, Testa Maura, Undergreen and Six Scents.  I didn't clock several of these houses at the time, but have since looked them up on the store's website!

It was a squeeze in Bloom, and testing a bit of a genial bunfight.  Accordingly, I curtailed my explorations to the Jovoy range (where my sniffing was exclusively nozzle-based), Ann Gérard (I sprayed Perle de Mousse and Ciele d'Opale on strips), and Vero Profumo's Mito (which was awarded precious skin space on account of its iconic status on the blogs!).

Of the Jovoy range, I was drawn to a fig one - L'Arbre de Connaissance - and duly bought a sample.

Notes: citruses, green leaves, fig, sandalwood, patchouli, fig tree wood

The Ann Gérard trio piqued my interest, on account of Bertrand Duchaufour being the nose - I liked Perle de Mousse best (notes are listed below).  The third, Cuir de Nacre, was a leather scent not to my taste.

Notes: aldehydes, ambergris, bergamot, Bulgarian rose, cloves, galbanum, gardenia, green mandarin, hawthorn, ivy, jasmine, lily-of-the-valley, mastic, musk, pink pepper, vanilla

From L to R: Perle de Mousse, Ciel d'Opale, Cuir de Nacre

My first impressions of the hugely feted Mito were not favourable, as it opens with a really tart, almost sherbety and granular burst of citrus, very reminiscent of Guerlain Sous le Vent.  However, I continued to sniff my hand over the course of the day and into the evening, and - as with Puredistance Antonia, with which I struggled initially - the later stages repay one's patience.  The central phase was green and spikily springlike, owing to the galbanum, I imagine, with shades of Miller Harris Fleurs de Bois; the drydown, meanwhile, had a more luminous green facet blended with the sweeter florals, as the magnolia and jasmine kicked in.  I love magnolia as a note, and it lent a tender quality to the final stages of the scent's development, in stark contrast to the acerbic opening.  I think I may have to buy a sample by mail order at this rate.

Notes: bergamot, magnolia, jasmine, galbanum, hyacinth, cypress and moss

After Bloom, we took a bus to Piccadilly and were strolling along Jermyn Street when we spied a branch of Geo F Trumper.  A shade too early for our tea at Fortnum & Mason's, we happily killed the requisite time in this store, a temple to gentlemen's grooming, though its perfume range is aimed at both sexes.  I was especially drawn to the ample selection of dainty nail brushes and shaving soaps in wooden boxes - the sandalwood one in particular.  But that belongs more properly to another post...

3pm saw us settled at our table in the upstairs - and as Pia was at pains to point out, comparatively less expensive! - tea room in Fortnum's.  Tea was £6 a pot, but what a pot!  Scones were £6 the pair, but came with a perfectly spherical "boule" of clotted cream.  I opted for one slice of Welsh Rarebit (at £9.50 each, there was no way I could run to two), but as it turned out, one was perfectly filling, deliciously savoury and fluffy, and topped with two rashers of good back bacon.  

The nonpareil of Welsh Rarebits

The other important aspect of the day to mention was the systematic sampling we undertook - at Patisserie Valerie, on the bus, and at any point in our wanderings where it was practical, basically - of British perfumer Sarah McCartney's range, 4160 Tuesdays.  Sarah joined us for the whole day - in person she was delightfully down to earth, quirky and flamboyant, and these qualities are reflected in her offbeat and unusual scents.  She generously offered us each a large sample of our choice, and after wavering between What Katie Did At The Weekend - a "fruity floral with a twist" - and "The Lion Cupboard", I was swayed in the end by the woody mystique of the latter.  The Lion Cupboard was created by Sarah for her sister, and takes its name from an ornate Victorian cabinet decorated with lion's heads, in which their late father used to store his hats, gloves and scarves.  This comforting fragrance comprises a mix of notes Sarah associated with her father's hug.  

Here is the description on the Les Senteurs website, which stocks several of the scents in the range: 

"A medley of masculine scents including juniper (think well-iced gin and tonic), mint and aniseed (tooth powder) meld with lavender, patchouli and golden helichrysum. Dark, deep, woody and reassuring. Spicy, warm and resolutely masculine."

NB Any knitters out there may also be interested to learn about Sarah's 5 Degree Woolly eco-knitting movement!

As well as sampling Sarah's fragrance range, we smelt one of Pia's creations on blotters - an aldehydic peach scent.  There was also a fair amount of informal swapping of our unwanted niche stash, while Lisa delighted the group by handing out packets of Welsh cakes to anyone keen to try them.

Special mention should be made of the "Ladies' Powder Room", with its gilded baroque mirrors and supplies of individual hand towels.  No broken hand dryers or futile shreds of paper towel for such an august establishment.

Sadly, I had to cut and run at that point, as I had a particular train to catch home, but the others repaired to the perfume department of Fortnum's for a final sniffing foray.

And then, in what seemed like no time at all, I was home, blissed out on scents and good company.  The Lion, The Cupboard And The Welsh Rarebit from Central Casting.  The fellowship of fumeheads is indeed a wonderful thing, and many thanks are due to Pia for her hard work in organising this most enjoyable and memorable day.

Tara, Lisa and Sarah at Patisserie Valerie