Have Yourself a Funny Little Christmas!

Well, I promised I would return to a perfume theme in this post, after my woolly digression in the last one. I will be honest and say I am not really in the mood for writing a pure perfume post right now, as I am feeling a bit 'overwhelmed' by the prevailing existential angst and global gloom, which is regularly given a brutal fillip by the abrupt twists and turns, volte-faces (is that a plural? ;) ), and generalised rug pulling of our country's Covid strategy. I know it is a fast moving situation requiring a 'dynamic response', but the constant raising and dashing of expectations throughout the year is proving hard to absorb psychologically. So I will return to those themes I had planned when I am feeling 'more the thing', as my friend Lizzie is wont to say. I am also taking a variety of new supplements, and the promising early results of those may also spawn a future post, albeit one under the wider heading of skincare / health...

That all said, I will mention a few scent-related aspects of this year's festive season: for example, I have quite randomly rediscovered Ava Luxe's Love's True Bluish Light, and am finding its milky-amber-vanilla vibe most soothing. I fancy Undina might like this one too, if she doesn't already know it, due to its crossover with Jo Malone's Sweet Milk. 

I have also dug out my little decant of SL Fille en Aiguilles, with the specific intention of spraying my wooden Christmas tree ornament with it. I ended up on the receiving end of some collateral spritzing(!), and actually enjoyed the scent on me more than I would have imagined. I had previously dismissed pine out of hand as a note solely reminiscent of janitorial products, which I realise is very 'short-nosed' of me.

I am a big fan of joss sticks and burn incense year round. It does feel especially fitting at Christmas. My absolute favourite is nag champa, and not any nag champa either - Goloka, with its distinctive yellow and orange box.  Great for anyone who needs to make up the value of an Amazon order to qualify for free delivery. Assuming you don't eschew Amazon for being an evil behemoth, which I totally respect, even as I remain stubbornly pragmatic.

For any UK-based readers, I don't know if your Christmas plans have changed in the light of the new Tier rules that nobbled London and some of the South East yesterday; the effect in my town was not as drastic as to ban all household mixing, but you can now only see up to two other households on Christmas Day itself, instead of spread over five days. I get why they are doing it, though it will make catching up with friends more logistically tricky over the holidays. Basically we are back to outdoor one-on-one meetings, typically based around a walk, not least to keep warm!

I may end up celebrating on my own, which I have never done before, except for the first Christmas in this house, when I had a migraine and spent the day in bed. Even so, I rallied by the evening and ventured out to a friend's, who rustled me up a plated supper in front of Call the Midwife. If that is the outcome, it will be novel and interesting at least, and there may yet be fellow waifs and strays who come forward to suggest forming a festive bubble. This year has been so comprehensively strange that it almost seems appropriate for the big day itself to be a bit of a departure from the norm! 

Then I have a truly minuscule turkey crown in the freezer, which I bought intending to use to practise on ahead of the date, as I haven't interacted with frozen fowl before, but never got round to it. I will either brave the unknown, hehe, or buy a tried and tested chicken at the last minute instead. 

Truffle will be here, obviously. She is still not bringing in any prey for the Derbyshire Uni survey, the second month's lot of stats for which I am due to upload shortly. Another big fat zero hunting tally is my prediction. Truffle is currently in the doghouse - or cathouse, should that be? - after savaging a wrist warmer that had taken me all day to make and sew up. I was on Facebook, busy defending myself against a sudden outburst of 'microwavable rice shaming', and she clearly targeted that item as 'the last thing I had shown a keen interest in that wasn't her', and set about chewing it with gusto. Unfortunately the glove is beyond repair, but I have just enough wool to start the pair all over again. Up until now, Truffle has only shown an interest in balls of wool - never the finished product that incorporates all those hours of labour! - so this is a worrying development. I mention the cat's presence, for in the light of this delinquent behaviour I feel she may have forfeited her right to the usual festive morsels. By the same token, I reserve the right to relent nearer the time. ;)

To match the turkey, here is a photo of my equally tiny Christmas tree. I put it up on 5th December, which is completely out of character, having been brought up to resist the urge to decorate the house until Christmas Eve (blame Nancy Mitford, hehe). However, something about the pandemic has prompted people to bring that ritual well forward - even into November - so 5th December turned out to be almost fashionably late in our street. I guess whatever else is going on in the world, pretty lights never lose their ability to excite and delight, and so it is with me.

I think that for many, the holiday period - truncated and weird as all get-out though it may be - will be a time of reflection and taking stock. I recently came across this photograph of a gig in Barcelona from a few years back - the first one I have ever watched entirely from behind(!). The contrast between this scene and the masked and socially distanced world we live in now couldn't be more stark. I hope the 'old normal' - or something loosely approximating to it - will return one day, but I am not 100% convinced.

As well as knitting - and soon to be re-knitting, hehe - I have been enjoying reading lately. My current book is Mrs Bridge by Evan S Connell, a superbly understated study of a 1950s housewife's life in America. If you like the little period touches in The Queen's Gambit, this might well appeal. There are some priceless lines, such as this comment about Mrs Bridge's husband Walter:

"For a while after their marriage she was in such demand that it was not unpleasant when he fell asleep."

After I have finished this I am spoilt for choice, with several tottering tsundokus in the living room to dive into. For I am as much of a compulsive book buyer as I am of wool - and used to be of perfume. However, I promised my English teacher (with whom I am still in touch!) that I would read The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton, which I bought when it first came out. Just checked - the print is not too small, which often puts me off tackling books.

Then does anyone else do that thing where you buy yourself presents and put them under the tree unwrapped? I have got into the habit of doing this, and this year so far have bought myself a calendar, a diary - okay, they technically count as 'office essentials' - some socks, a little pottery bowl with a bottle of gin and a cat on it(!), and a bicycle pump.

So I think that is all for now - for those who are celebrating I would be interested to know whether you buy yourself presents on top of the ones you receive from family and friends, and also, crucially, how different your Christmas will be this year...

Dawn Spencer Hurwitz versus Domestic Short Hair: Truffle, the feline felon, finally finds a furry Foxy fragrance!

Foxy detail from my new office chair

Okay, so that was a lot of alliteration, sorry. The 'f' words provide quite rich pickings in that regard. Now it so happens that almost eight years ago to the week, I wrote this highly silly post, exploring the potential crossover between perfume house names and other, more banal acronyms. I was inspired to pursue this whimsical line of inquiry by the sudden connection I made when looking at my late cat Charlie Bonkers' vet record card, which described her as 'DSH', short for 'Domestic Short Hair'. We perfumistas are really big on abbreviations, which often have an additional received hierarchy of upper and lower case letters - PoaL (Portrait of a Lady) springs to mind - and I immediately thought of Dawn Spencer Hurwitz. And Dawn Spencer Hurwitz led in the 2010 post to Strange Invisible Perfumes (Self Invested Pension), Parfumerie Generale (Parental Guidance), and much more nonsense in similar acronymic vein.

Fast forward to 2018 (or a recent year, certainly, as my sense of time is a little sketchy these days), when I fell hard for the furry animalic amber beauty that is DSH Foxy. Dawn sent me a selection of samples of her newest releases, all in dinky little roller ball pots, and that was my standout favourite, closely followed by Zibeline. These tiny pots are a perfect sample size, but also quite easy to lose, as it turned out...I should know better than to leave small, easily battable objects on my desk. For I have a cat - a different cat now, also a Domestic Short Hair, you know the one - though I note on a veterinary site from which I ordered a flea treatment at the weekend that to avoid confusion, the DSH option has been renamed 'Regular Moggy'. I can't see my vet changing his record cards to something quite so colloquial any time soon...

So yes, you can guess what is coming next...at some point, not long after receipt of the sample of Foxy, the cat knocked the pot-ette from my desk and promptly made off with it. I do occasionally clean the house, but in the intervening months it never came to light again. Till the other night, when Truffle picked up a pencil in her mouth from under my nose and started 'hunting it' on the floor, as she does.

I knew exactly where this story would end up...the pencil would roll under the wardrobe or the bookcase, and Truffle would reach under each piece of furniture in turn with her paw, but fail to get purchase. The hidden recesses of my office have become something of a graveyard for pencils, but frankly I have enough overall to allow for half a dozen or more to go awol. It was purely the annoying scrabbling noise that Truffle made in her efforts to retrieve this latest pencil that made me lie down beside her and start reaching my own arm blindly under the wardrobe to see what I could feel.

The first object I retrieved was a petrified apple core, sympathetically juxtaposed with a William Morris print.

The next object was the little roller ball pot of DSH Foxy! Oh how happy I was to clap eyes on that again - there are probably three more wears in there.

I never did find the pencil...

Full view of foxy chair

Does your cat routinely steal and secrete small objects? If so, what?

And have you ever lost a beloved perfume sample, only to have it turn up unexpectedly months or even years later?

My as yet unhunted pencil stash

More cat capers, feline felonies, and fur-raising high jinks: a two year Truffle anniversary special

Last Friday marked the two year anniversary of Truffle coming to live with me: I vividly recall the long, foggy car journey from Leicester, during which the little ball of fluff on the passenger seat beside me cheeped all the way to her new home. Two years on, she is fully grown, with battle scars, a loving but feisty nature, and a healthy disregard for the concept of being anyone's pet - the cat equivalent of  'chattel', if you will. Would that be 'cattel' by any chance? One of the 'takeaways' from my recent post on why readers comment on blogs was that more pictures of Truffle would be welcomed. So I thought that as it is nearly a year since I last featured a slew(!) of photos in a post dedicated to my cat's antics, it might be time for another, and the aforementioned anniversary presented an ideal opportunity.

Coincidentally, Truffle (and cats more generally) have been on my mind this week, as I decided to apply to several national pet sitting websites as a carer in the Stafford area - specifically for cats, though I gather the big money is to be made on simultaneously walking the dogs of different owners, rather than visiting a single cat in its home. Be that as it may, cat sitting is my chosen calling, and accordingly I set about creating 'compelling profiles' about myself and my cat caring history, to persuade owners why they should award their cat sitting gig to me. You also had to compile a gallery of photos: these might be of your own cat, or other people's cats you had looked after, or both! One site required me to take a sort of online exam, and answer questions about how I would act in particular scenarios, such as 'the dog you are looking after has been involved in an accident'. The answer to which was either 'not applicable' or prefaced by the statement that I would be recasting this question to refer to cats. (Some of these sites started out by offering dog care only, and have only recently 'grafted on' cats, as it were.)

Here, for example, is my profile on Pawshake:

"I am bonkers about cats, a 'cat person' to the core. I have owned them all my life (insofar as anyone can be said to 'own' a cat - which isn't very far, obviously). My parents got a kitten the week I was born - possibly in case I was a disappointment. ;) The present incumbent is a two year old tabby and white called Truffle, who is extremely adventurous, with a special flair for tree climbing, shed roof leaping, and sabotaging knitting. She is also very loving, and a surprisingly compliant user of her radiator bed, despite its being specifically for that purpose. Some early photos of Truffle are in fact the first hit in Google if you search for 'bonkers kitten'(!). 

As well as my own, I have cared regularly for other people's cats for the past five years, and see cat sitting as an excellent way to get to meet more of these quirky and lovable creatures. I am in my late 50s now, and realistically won't have lived with more than eight cats in a whole lifetime, and even that has required a few 'double ups' along the way. If I pass a cat in the street I always say hello, and am also compiling a portfolio of photos of local cats randomly sitting on walls. If I get up to 12, I might have the makings of a calendar!

I specialise purely in cat sitting, in the form of up to two home visits a day. Job-wise I am a self-employed industrial market researcher, and when I have work it is very flexible and largely home-based, nicely fitting around pet care commitments."

Me with a friend's cat, Hector (early 80s)

If you click on this link, it will take you to my profile on the site, including a gallery of photos. (As if there weren't going to be enough in this post, haha.) The websites take about 20% commission, but look after all the public liability and vetting of clients side of things, giving me as their agent an added layer of security.

But on to what Truffle has been up to, 'up' being the operative word, for she is proving to be the jumpiest cat of any I have ever known, and the most given to perching on high surfaces.

High jinks of the jumping kind

Here she is caught in mid-jump between my garden wall and next door's shed. It has taken me many months of patiently waiting - and experimenting with shutter speeds - to capture the jump itself.

And here is Truffle climbing on top of the kitchen cupboards. She had taken to sitting there last thing at night, prompting me to put her old fleecy bed up there, which hasn't been in use since she was a kitten, when it acted as a (quite unnecessary!) booster seat on the sofa.

And there she is two years on, in her bed but considerably higher up! Please excuse the peeling wallpaper on the kitchen ceiling. That will all be tackled as part of a bigger project to combat damp in several areas at the rear of the house, pending the acquisition of work(!) and funds.

Supervising works

Speaking of my damp problem, another noticeable facet of Truffle's character is her interest in supervising 'works' of any kind undertaken around the house, whether by me or designated tradespeople. Well, I say round the house, but she was also extensively involved in overseeing (quite literally!) the decluttering of the garage, a much-deferred task of Augean stables proportions to which I dedicated a whole post back in the summer. Which reminds me, I have yet to write that post about the perfume memorabilia I found in there!

But firstly, here we are, changing the toilet seat. "You read the instructions, while I sit on the packaging." Cat owners amongst you will recognise this as a variant of 'sitting on important things', in this case an important piece of toilet seat-shaped cardboard I appear to have thoughtlessly discarded on the floor.

And here she is, keeping a watchful eye on the joiner's toolbox. "You won't forget to tidy this lot away afterwards, will you?"

And as billed, below are a couple more shots from the big garage clear out / clean up, which afforded perfect crossover opportunities for 'supervision of works' and 'perching on high surfaces'. Yes, Truffle was quite happy to get 'up and dirty' herself - you can just about make out a cobweb slung between her ears in the first picture.

"Is this really the best spot for the Christmas tree?"

Lying in wait at a major traffic intersection

Another common form taken by Truffle's 'sitting about watching me' is what I can best describe as a kind of 'lying in wait', to see what my next move will be. It is not exactly that Truffle wants to be with me, for it wouldn't take much to find out where I was in the house. No, it's more that she wants to keep me in several lines of sight at once - and where I cannot fail to trip over her.

Sometimes Truffle's curiosity gets the better of her, and she edges that little bit closer to where I am, though still without technically joining me. In the photo below she is heading off my access from the bathroom, a pose which doubles up as 'sitting on important pyjamas'.

And in this one Truffle is ever so slightly in the office, but not quite tipping over into a category I featured last time of 'Keeping my owner in line'.

Her expression is more one of mild interest I would say, rather than disapproval. Though she does still give me some of those looks too!

'Signature folded paw' gesture

The above photo leads me nicely into Truffle's signature paw gesture, in which her right front paw (always this one), is tucked under itself, something I wouldn't have thought was actually all that comfortable.

In this shot, another 'lying in wait outside the bathroom' pose, minus my pyjamas, Truffle is clearly saying: "Hey, I'll be the judge of whether this is comfortable or not!"

Impeding domestic activities

The signature paw pose segues neatly into the category 'impeding domestic activities', chief amongst them being 'impeding bed changing'.

Getting in the way of the weekly duvet change - on either bed - is great sport to Truffle, as it is to Val the Cookie Queen's cat Meeps, and possibly all cats! Truffle likes nothing better than to hide in the snowy folds of the outgoing duvet cover, or sprawl on the freshly laid clean sheet, much like protestors sitting down on a road. Only whereas protestors usually have a cause to which they are trying to draw attention by their blockade, Truffle's determination to sit on bedding seems to be an end in itself.

"Gosh, these are quite deep as fitted sheets go."

This category is of course merely another manifestation of 'Disobedience', which I had in the previous post, but it is such an ongoing issue that I felt it warranted another comprehensive airing. And airing is the perfect introduction to this series of photos of Truffle 'hunting' the old washing line, right as I was in the middle of trying to take it down and replace it.

Here she is, pausing in her savaging of the line for a moment to channel Tommy Cooper.

And now it is back to the serious business of chewing the line, while managing to do a passable impression of a flautist.

And finally, even Truffle has had enough. "Go on, Mum, put the new one up if you want...this one's definitely dead."

No post on impeding domestic activities would be complete without a photo of wool worrying. Check out that glazed look of ecstasy!

This time round I also have a picture for you of Truffle 'chowing on down' on knitting needles. Brand new ones to boot, that had only just arrived in the post as you can see. Perhaps she thought they were chopsticks that needed a bit of 'running in'.

Then, as you won't be surprised to learn, office-related disruption continues unabated. Stationery items, ornaments and perfume vials go missing on a daily basis, only to turn up months later in a terrified huddle under the bookcase or other sturdy and immovable object.

As touched on in the previous post, Truffle has always liked to play with sources of heat - and light - from an early age.

I don't light an open fire in the front room very often, but on the rare occasions I do, pyrotechnician Truffle obviously has to be involved.

The final category of misdemeanour involves unprotected upholstered furniture - Truffle openly flaunts the 'no sitting on pale fabrics' rule in every room in the house where she spies a qualifying chair.

"Any chair you were foolish enough to cover in cream damask deserves everything it gets."

And in case I have given the impression that Truffle is more wilful and disobedient than otherwise, let me redress the balance by adding a picture that shows her still compliantly using her radiator bed, whilst also being suffused in light in a somewhat spectral Close Encounters kind of a way.

Staying with our 'suffused in light' theme, here is fellow blogger Sabine playing with Truffle during her visit on a sunny day last June.

So yes, Truffle is very much a cat who walks by herself, yet who likes to know where I am much of the time. "I've got my eye on you....."

Turf wars: tackling Tootsie, Truffle's neighbourhood nemesis, with a pungent personalised potion from Papillon Perfumery

'Anti-Cat' by Papillon Perfumery

After Charlie Bonkers died, and long before I ever thought of getting another cat, I noticed an occasional feline visitor to the garden and window sill of my new house. My first thought was how handsome he was, and how much he reminded me of Undina's famous orange and white cat Rusty. Much later, I learnt through a friend that this was in fact none other than Tootsie, who lived in the next street to me and was well known for 'breaking and entering' into anyone's house that took his fancy, especially those where the owner had thoughtfully installed a cat flap and left it on a two way setting. But back then, in blissful ignorance of his thug-like persona, I briefly changed my profile picture on Facebook to a photo of Tootsie(!), and went public with the comment:

"I would love to be cultivated by such a cute cat!"

The following exchange ensued - oh, that I had paid attention to the warnings contained within...

Jane: "This one could be staking you out...;)"

Gary: "A lot of feral cats have taken to wearing dinky little bells, just to get inside a trusting human's house and wreak HAVOC."

Jane: "Yep, sneaky little buggers they are..."

Gary: "The only way to be sure is to shave it and check for tattoos."

Jane: "I have tattoos but, sadly, no bell. ;) "

Gary: "Me too, loads of them, but I'm not trying to get into Vanessa's house and wreak HAVOC."

Jane: "That's what you are saying in public..."

Gary: "You can tell by his eyes that his focus in life is to soil some Farrow & Ball..."

Vanessa: "F & B desecration?!! Right, that moggy may not last the week if that is true."

Truffle surveys the double decker interlopers

Three years later, I was a cat owner again, and Tootsie was displaced as the Top Cat in the neighbourhood, who could claim every house and its garden as his own. It didn't stop him still trying to claim them though, and he became an ever more regular visitor to the garden, engaging in long, malevolent staring matches with Truffle from the safety of a high wall. Soon the situation escalated, and Tootsie would come into the house and steal Truffle's food, have a crafty p**s behind the kitchen door, and take a passing pot shot at Truffle if she happened to be about. Once, when I was away for a week, Tootsie managed to bludgeon his way into the house despite the cat flap being locked, and stayed there long enough to soil - not anything Farrow & Ball as such(!) - but several layers of bedding all the way through to the mattress. Months later, I found his unexpected calling card of a fossilised poo under the bed...

And there was worse to come...more recently, Tootsie bit a chunk out of Truffle's ear during a particularly vicious fight. When I confronted him outside - trying to make myself look as fierce as possible by screwing up my face into an expression of pure hatred, whilst waving a lump of wood in an agitated fashion in his general direction - Tootsie shot me a look of withering derision, his eyes as urinous as the puddle he had not long left on the utility floor. Then he lunged at the bit of wood with a dismissive swipe of his paw, and sauntered back along the wall, with an insolent swagger that was as defiant as it was maddening.

Truffle's 'cloven' ear

I happened to mention my bother with cat incursions to Liz Moores of Papillon Perfumery, with whom I have periodic exchanges via Messenger. Well, no one in Perfume Land knows more about animal matters than Liz(!), and she promptly offered to make me up a cat-repelling potion to deter Tootsie from trespassing in future. Ideally, I should get close enough to spray his fur with the disgusting liquid - a mix of hyraceum (as used in Salome, but only in trace amounts!) and civet. It was designed to fool the cat into thinking it had had a brush with another - big, scary, but not quite identifiable - predator. Failing that, I was to spray the wall or other familiar routes Tootsie used to enter the garden with the mixture, thus creating a similar, if more ambient, impression.

The 'Anti Cat' remedy, as Liz had dubbed it, smelt truly ghastly. I diluted it and put it in a spray bottle, and soon had my first opportunity to try squirting it at Tootsie as he ran away down the garden. Unfortunately the trigger mechanism jammed at the key moment, and if Tootsie had thought to look back at this point and note my disarray, he would surely have uttered a disdainful guffaw at my technical malfunction.

Anti-spray bottle!

In fairness that bottle had only cost a quid in Wilko or something, so the next time I was in Lidl I popped into Wickes and picked up a more heavy duty-looking receptacle for a  fiver. Slight overkilll, given the quantity of Anti-Cat in question(!), but I sensed the nozzle wouldn't let me down, and so it proved.

I didn't have long to wait before I found Tootsie in the corridor leading to the back door one night, and promptly locked the cat flap to cut off his line of retreat. Tootsie proceeded to head butt the flap in annoyance, giving me ample opportunity to spray his back thoroughly in Anti-Cat. I was careful to avoid his head, as that might have been a cruel and unusual punishment too far - I was sorely tempted, mind. With Tootsie now well wetted, I opened the flap and he scarpered sharpish, suitably freaked out by the foul smell of his own furry person.

Sadly, as happened that time Truffle fell through the hole in next door's garage roof, only to do the exact same thing again a couple of days later, cats have short memories, and Tootsie seems to have forgotten all about his unpleasant ordeal, and is as much of a pest as ever. Many thanks to Liz for concocting this stinky potion though - it was certainly worth a try!

(On a more fragrant note, the latest release from Papillon Perfumery, Dryad (review here) is due to be released on July 10th.)