Bonkers is 12 today!

Source: Flickr

As regular readers know, I very rarely mark the occasion of my blog anniversary on the actual date. Days often go by before I remember, sometimes running into weeks, assuming I even do. On a whim I took a look just now at my very first post and read something else I had forgotten, namely that my intense and obsessive interest in perfume when I first fell down the rabbit hole was sparked by a phase of my thyroid being overactive, even though my diagnosis is of "underactive" thyroid. The thing is that if you accidentally overmedicate the condition, which is all too easy to do, it is like taking speed, hehe, and you can be prone to frenetic bursts of activity and bouts of insomnia. Coincidentally, I am coming out of such a phase again now - which has unfortunately contributed to my newly discovered osteoporosis, but there's no point crying over a surfeit of trabecular bone perforations. I did this by gradually lowering the dose of my medication (you do need to keep an eye on that, especially as you get older or add other drugs into the mix). However, even when I was at the peak of being in "manic mode" lately, I can report that this did not translate into a renewed compulsion to test every new perfume that moved. ;)

But I do still love the stuff, and am currently helping a friend to find a new signature scent, or better still, a perfume to start off her fragrance wardrobe, a concept I was keen to impress upon her as "the only true way". Moreover, yesterday I nearly met a perfumer in The Cotswolds, who is a friend of an old friend with whom I was spending the weekend, though it didn't work out in the end. This Person of Interest is involved in all sorts of fragrance-related projects, and is bound to know a lot of the usual suspects on the scene, so I would love to chew the cud with her one day.

In another surprise turn of events, I have been wearing Puredistance Rubikona for at least a week (review here). I initially re-tested it as a possible contender for my friend's new perfume (though the cost is admittedly a bit of a barrier!), but it ended up hitting the spot every single day when I was mulling over what to wear.

 

Source: Puredistance

So yes, I am not "over" perfume yet by any means, and greatly value all the friends I have made through the hobby, both real life and virtual, but I don't have that irrepressible urge to try, try, try, and often in the old days buy, buy, buy. Which is probably just as well. 

It also occurred to me that I probably don't deserve to celebrate a blog anniversary anymore, when I post about once a fortnight usually, and also had that long hiatus during my various health investigations. These haven't run out of steam either in fact, but the longer they drag on, the lower the chance of the doctors having overlooked something imminently fatal, one can but hope!

On that subject - not death, the other subject ;) - I would be curious to know if readers have a preference in terms of how often a blog owner posts? There are of course daily blogs, and several times a week blogs, and then the more "leisurely" (read "lazy"!) ones like mine. But I can only write when the spirit moves me, and will never ever have a schedule, even if that erratic rhythm sheds readers and SEO brownie points - as it very likely does.

I do have quite a few things in mind for the future, including - strange to report! - a couple of perfume reviews. I may not keep Bonkers up for ever though, as I would quite like to turn my hand in earnest to travel writing - maybe even a book featuring my many (mis!)adventures down the years on work trips, band tours and holidays. But we'll see...

So here it is, my 724th post, having batted off all the companies who would like to write guest articles here about everything from the Aquibear Countertop RO Water Purifier, to the Goodpapa K1 Multi-Function Spin Scrubber, the Elevoc Clear ANC + ENC Earphones, or the happily more snappily named MP Magic Boxer Brief, which prides itself on being:

"the first underwear with the unique seamless pouch on the current market. Totally seamless briefs for total comfort and once go seamless, never go back!"

Hmm, I bet you are wishing I had reviewed that last one...! And I wonder what perfume he wears? Looks like a Sauvage or a Bleu man to me, what do you reckon?

 

Bonkers turned Ten the other day!

Source: cakecentral.com

I know, I know, another nonchalantly asynchronous blog anniversary - the actual date being 25th October (I am pretty sure, but will just check...). I don't think readers will mind though, indeed I am not at all sure I even deserve an anniversary owing to the spasmodic and infrequent nature of my posts this year: a measly 16 to date in total. Still and all, it is a bit over a month at the current rate till I will reach two million page views, and I have written 678 posts in the past ten years. (679 now...) That does sound like quite a lot, actually(!), especially when I reckon up how long each one takes.

Meanwhile, I could have accepted various offers from would-be guest posters down the years, most recently one from the PR of a company that makes 'fermented skin products'. I was offered $35 for the privilege, but turned her down. I know I hardly post myself, but if you started to see features on beauty in a completely different - and doubtless conspicuously advertorial - style by someone called Mindy (not her real name, but you get the idea) you would probably smell a rat.

The thing about not posting very much, however, is that people naturally drift off after a while, unsure whether you will ever get your act together again. I understand that blogs may be somewhat on the decline anyway, and Instagram in the ascendent, but I am not going to start blogging on there in my twilight years, as it were - OR in bitesize snippets on Twitter, though I have seen that done. The format on that occasion proved spectacular, in a relentlessly bludgeoning kind of a way.

Now I do get a few comments from genuine perfume lovers still, but the vast majority are bot-driven(?) gibberish from spammers of every stripe. Some of these are funny though, so here is a small selection, reproduced verbatim:

"Thank you for the good write up. It in fact was an amusement account it. Look advanced to more added agreeable from you. However, how could we communicate?"

"Yes finally someone writes about url shorten." (I didn't!)

"Hurrah that's what I was exploring for, what a data! present here at this blog, thanks admin of this website."

If I am honest, I do find the slew of spam comments depressing, even if, for the most part, they are intercepted and await my moderation. I know that if Blogger was not such a cantankerous and unuser-friendly format, I might get a few more real people making it through, but I am not going to jump ship to Wordpress at this late stage either.

Rather, I will continue to sputter on, not unlike the tramps in Waiting for Godot:

"I can't go on. I'll go on."

My blogging helper and familiar!

For I do love perfume and wear it most days. It's the sadly discontinued Guerlain Plus Que Jamais today, rather aptly, as it was always my kneejerk choice whenever anyone asked me what my favourite scent was. And maybe it still is, though there are numerous others biting at its heels, not least HOCB Immortal Beloved, and now Bengale Rouge.

And of course there are the great friends in this community, my regular exchanges with whom mean the world to me (you know who you are!).

Then behind the scenes I continue to convert more of my 'civilian'* friends to niche fragrance. One in particular doesn't have a clue what they are wearing on any given occasion - the samples they've been given are all simply called 'sprays'- but the main thing is that they are 'spraying' at all(!).

So, you know, there is still a degree of scented goings on in my life. But while I do genuinely think that some of my early posts were proper reviews with perfume (more or less!) firmly centre stage - eg this seasonal one of L'Etat Libre d'Orange's pumpkin-forward Like This or this ode to body odour and libraries that is my take on Miller Harris's L'Air de Rien - I would be the first to concede that fragrance has become an increasingly tangential theme over time, such that I doubt very much whether anyone would stop by Bonkers these days for a real review of a new release.

But that's okay. I think Nature is quietly trying to tell me that I am if anything a travel writer who happens to like fragrance. I have been doing a fair bit of travelling lately in fact - interspersed with bursts of renovations and repairs to two houses! - and that is my main focus.

One of those black eyes is genuine!

In summary therefore, I am definitely slowing down in blogging terms, but am not at a complete stop yet...and if you don't mind the topic veering a bit to the left and right of perfume per se, you can look forward to more 'added agreeable' from the admin of this website for a bit longer at least...;)

*(copyright Tara of A Bottled Rose)

Results of the Bonkers about Perfume 8th anniversary prize draw!

Well, the deadline for the anniversary prize draw came and went at the weekend, but I didn't want to steal Truffle's limelight by posting the results too soon after her own anniversary special. Plus I don't suppose the few participants who didn't actively withdraw from the draw will have been feeling an overwhelming sense of suspense, owing to the undeniably lacklustre nature of the prizes. ;) I wish I could post perfume worldwide as I used to do, as I really don't like doing lopsided giveaways that are only open to readers in the UK. However, I simply don't dare risk overseas shipments again, as the next time I am caught, we might be talking a fine or a custodial sentence, hehe.

I guess I could try putting up one of my knitted items next year? I do also have some unused metal atomisers that take 20ml and come in various colours. These are left over from back when I used to be an associate of The Perfume Studio, helping people create their own unique scents from a selection of blends featuring different accords. The problem with that idea is that the bottles say 'The Perfume Studio' on them, whereas people might prefer completely generic receptacles. But logo aside, they are rather nice if someone fancied doing a very large decant from an even larger bottle! Anyway, I toss these ideas out there for next time. Assuming I am still writing in 2018, as hopefully I will be.

And now the moment has come to reveal who has won one of the book/magazine-type prizes this time round. I had recourse as ever to Random.org, and can declare that the winner is:

crikey!!

Crikey, crikey, you've won! Congratulations, and PM me with your preferred option and contact details.

Bonkers about Perfume turned Eight (last Wednesday week!), a mini-review of Yves Rocher 8e Jour, and a traditionally rum giveaway

Bonkers-looking cake via Cake Central, Seattle

Well, yet another year has gone by, and in what is fast becoming time-honoured fashion I missed the exact date of my blog anniversary again, which was in fact 25th October. So it fell right between the post kicking off my 'Return to Sender' postcard series on 22nd, and the one on lipstick, on 29th. Speaking of which, it seems ironic that I featured all those photos of me wearing lippie only to be struck down this week with a recurrence of the facial eczema to which I am prone, this time on both lips and in the corners of my mouth. It does look rather as though I am trying to extend the lip line northwards on one side, or as if one of ex-Mr Bonkers' many sock monkeys has been let loose on me with a chubby stick. But it is starting to clear up now, thank goodness. The funny thing is that I do faithfully remember the birthday of my old English teacher, which falls in the same week. Every year for...um...forty years since leaving school (it would have been too Teacher's Pettish while being taught by her, obviously) I have sent her a birthday card, and every year she writes back and thanks me for it. But my blog anniversary seems to slip down the memory cracks much more readily for some reason.

Anyway, I would never have thought eight years ago that I would still be at it in 2017. I have just been testing a big bunch of fairly recent releases by DSH Perfumes, many of which I liked, and some of which I may well feature on here. So that little exercise showed me that while I am still firmly on the plateau in terms of my perfume j*****y, I am far from becalmed there. Hold on, do you even get water on plateaux? Somehow I doubt it, and water strikes me as rather a prerequisite for becalming. Oh yes, and the friendship of fellow fumeheads is as important to me now as it has ever been, and probably more so.

The bare stats behind the Bonkers archive - for anyone interested, and I would quite understand if you weren't! - are that I have single-handedly written 627 posts, had 1,707, 258 page views (at the time of writing, but clearly this is a moving feast!), and collected 150 followers along the way. I did have 151 for a good long while, but managed to lose one the other week, sorry, Follower 151! I try to console myself with the thought that 150 is a nice round number, but I can't help wondering where I went wrong to prompt that person to stop reading. Ah well, you can't please everyone, as my Mother used to say.

So yes, here comes the mini-review of the floral oriental Yves Rocher 8e Jour ('8th Day'), a highly pressurised metal canister of which came into my possession together with a load of other vintage scents that once belonged to a friend's mother-in-law, who has since died. I didn't interact with it for the longest time, as Yves Rocher isn't a brand I have historically got excited about, though I do know it has a number of perfumes in the line that punch above their price tag, and I have also tried a few and liked them. But because this one features the numeral '8' - '8e Année' perfumes being extremely scarce on the ground it would seem, though you can be sure I did look - I figured a few words about it might not be a bad way to mark this occasion. Now Samantha Scriven of I Scent You A Day is of course the Queen of Yves Rocher reviews, though I note that she hasn't featured 8e Jour, possibly because of its historicity. The perfume was launched in 1993 and discontinued at a point I have yet to ascertain.

Top notes: Iris, jasmine, ylang-ylang
Heart notes: Rose, honey, cinnamon
Base notes: Myrrh, vanilla, sandalwood

Close up of the highly pressurised nozzle!

Well, well, with the exception of cinnamon those are all amongst my favourite notes, and the overall impression I have of 8e Jour is of YSL Nu if you can bring that to mind - also discontinued I believe - crossed with Camay soap / the cold cream aspect, but NOT the smell of Dior New Look, and then made sweeter. With bonus echoes of Eau d'Italie's Baume du Doge and fainter ones of L'ELDO's Like This. It is powdery and markedly creamy like high end soap, and woody and floral and incensey and honeyed, all at the same time. Maybe a fraction too sweet for some tastes.

In the opening there's even a touch of Puredistance BLACK, which had a good slug of cinnamon in it as I recall. And there is also what ex-Mr Bonkers used to describe as a 'craft shop' vibe to 8e Jour, though only slightly. This was his way of expressing a spicy pot pourri-type aroma. To be fair, he described almost every perfume I wore in these terms or some variant thereof, such as 'craft shop at the bottom of the garden', 'craft shop with the window open', 'craft shop on fire' , 'craft shop SHOULD be on fire' etc, but in this particular case, were he here to sniff 8e Jour and pronounce it a bit craft shoppy, he might actually be onto something.

Oh I say, I just happened to glance at my very first post in 2009, where the craft shop concept according to ex-Mr Bonkers is explained!

To sum up, I do like 8e Jour quite a lot, notwithstanding the sweetness. And that is pretty much all you are going to get from me on the subject. In my defence, as long ago as 2015 I did moot the idea that I might write - or do I mean 'commit'?- a series of 'tiny unreviews of unprecedented vacuousness'. Hmm, I may have served one up for you right there. ;)

Which brings me to the annual (is it annual?) invariably underwhelming giveaway I host on here. Do you remember the elephant perfume bottle? It did find a loving forever home even so.

There is only one prize, but you have a choice...sorry, no actual rum is on offer, though if I had some I would be glad to give it away, being more of a gin person as you know.

1) The New Book of Perfumes, by John Oakes.

This is a sort of directory or mini encyclopaedia of 150 perfumes.

2) A set comprising firstly a copy of the Roja Dove(!!)* Haute Parfumerie Magazine.

This ultimate in 'coffee table magazines' is semi-informative, and does also boast some rather lush perfume bottle porn in it, as well as reproductions of vintage ads.

(* Did I hear someone say 'booby prize'?)

In this lot also comes the programme from the Harrods Perfume Exhibition, The Perfume Diairies, which is somewhat more informative and also features illustrations of vintage adverts. Here is a link to the first of my blog posts about the event (there was a lot to cover!), which was already seven years ago, I see.

I just remembered that it was at that exhibition that I first met Katie Puckrik, who popped in very briefly on her way to the theatre.

The giveaway is open to readers worldwide. Anyone in the UK may additionally have a sample of 8e Jour, if they would like one. Once again, I am so sorry I cannot post perfume further afield, for I have lots of that which I would otherwise put up as a prize. After my resounding reprimand from the Royal Mail, I am too nervous to attempt such a thing again, and it seems unfair somehow to have a lopsided draw that excludes readers everywhere else in the world from a more substantial perfume giveaway. Hence the rather mixed bag of non-liquid items!

The draw is open until midnight next Sunday, 12th. That is Remembrance Sunday, as it happens, so there is a fighting chance (no pun intended) that I will remember to draw the draw.

All you have to do to enter is to leave a comment (also stating if you would specifically like not to be entered, otherwise everyone will be considered in!). That's it. I know full well that the mere act of managing to leave a comment on a Blogger blog, given its technical vagaries, is a feat in itself! Then if anyone has an idea when 8e Jour was discontinued, I would be interested to nail that fact, and to hear whether anyone has ever owned it in a different format. I can't find any pictures in Google images of the metal canister I have, certainly. A comment about your favourite perfume with a numeral in it would also be fun to know. ;) Not necessarily a Chanel, even!

So there you go. It just remains to thank everyone who has been reading Bonkers at any point along the way. I would witter on into the void anyway, but it is knowing that people are in fact out there - which I learnt loud and clear in the wake of my recent post about commenting on blogs - that makes the whole venture so much more worthwhile!

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Bonkers about Perfume turns seven! (And ponders on the 'seven year itch'...)

Photo courtesy of Annette Tudor of Tiers & Tiaras

Well, notwithstanding the elephant pictured further down this post, with its reputed ability to remember things, I appear to have missed my seventh blog anniversary by a day(!). That is not actually much of a margin for me, taking the long view. I am sure I have missed it by weeks or even months in past years. For yesterday I found myself engrossed in the task of sourcing a specific combination of wool shades for a couple of custom beanies I intend to knit for Portia of Australian Perfume Junkies, and the significance of the date completely passed me by. Portia won't need the hats imminently, as it is of course spring down there, but I do like a challenge and to get ahead of myself. And to avoid doing the housework instead. So that was tangentially perfume-related at least, in the course of which I also learnt how many subtly different shades can loosely be construed as peach!

But yes, seven years - how did that happen? 579 posts to date, which isn't much by today's fast paced, news ticker-type media standards, but I guess each one takes me 4-5 hours on average. Which sounds like an awful long time in terms of the output achieved, but I must have rather a ponderous blogging MO. ;) On a whim I did a quick calculation and that adds up to 413 working days ie more than a year of just blogging!

I mention the 'seven year itch', because I feel I am at a bit of a crossroads. For a while there I thought I was in the perfume doldrums, but my interest can easily be rekindled by a well-timed recommendation from a friend who knows my taste well - big thanks are due to Val CQ Sperrer, Undina, Tara, and Sabine in particular for periodically recranking my perfume mojo. But what has changed for sure is that when unleashed in the perfume department of even a high end emporium like Fortnum & Mason or a specialist store like Bloom, I am no longer that 'kid in a sweet shop' eager to try everything in sight, preferring to stand back, chatting to whomever I am with, and sniffing the odd scent that is pointed out to me - usually because someone has literally handed me strip sprayed with the scent in question! So I appear to have very little self-motivation anymore to seek out new things, which is a new phenomenon.

Still getting a kick from well organised top colours

It doesn't bother me though, as my stash has grown to such unwieldy proportions that from a purely practical point of view it would be bad news if I was lusting after umpteen full bottles of this and that. A 10ml decant of most fragrances that take my fancy these days is quite enough, thank you.

I do additionally seem to have experienced a bit of 'decanter's blues' - a very niche condition as you can imagine!- whereby every time I go to make samples of scents, I get drenched in at least one if not several of the perfumes I am decanting. This is mainly down to a mix of leaky nozzles and the issue of 'blow back' once the vial fills up to a certain level. A level that seems to be getting lower, haha, or that is my observation.

And I guess I was also very chastened by my recent experience of getting rapped over the knuckles by the Royal Mail for attempting to post bottles internationally. That put a real spanner in the works just as I was setting out to monetise some of my stash, and I am indebted to the recipients for helping share the loss. Occasionally even now I am tempted not to bother with a hazard sticker on packages containing one or two samples within the UK, but I cannot risk being caught out again, or I might end up sharing with Rolf Harris in Stafford clink after all!

So given the limited opportunities to offload my perfume collection further afield - I could hold an open house, like Lila das Gupta recently, but Stafford is rather far away for people! - I have turned to knitting as a potential little income stream instead.

My avatar for Runraglan Knits

Oh, and of course since my diagnosis of eyelid eczema in the summer, I have been wearing makeup very sparingly if at all, so as not to tempt fate. I don't think perfume is a trigger, but often I don't bother putting it on either unless there is something I particularly want to try, which as we have just established is not very often these days. A little bit of me thinks it has to be better to limit the amount of chemicals coming into direct contact with my skin. Which isn't like me at all, or the me of old. Why, I have even blogged about the risk or otherwise of chemical overload in the early days of Bonkers, including in my post an amusing quote by Tania Sanchez on the subject if anyone is curious. At the time I was more concerned about my moderate alcohol consumption than being a 'walking chemistry set', but seven years on, the reference to people with allergies has rather come home to roost...certainly as far as toiletries more generally are concerned.

All of which sounds a little subdued or even downbeat, which truly wasn't my intention, yet every so often I start to wonder if I should leave blogging to the old timer behemoths and the new generation coming through, and redeploy the time gained to other activities, like cleaning the house(!), eBaying unwanted belongings, or writing the book that friends have claimed is 'in me'. But you would think that if such a book ever was in me, it would have long since worked its way out again by now...

Yeah, I confess to being an absolute shocker for lacking application, tending to tick off the quick and easy things on my 'to do' list rather than the big ones, to get that instant buzz of faux productivity, when you may only have put the bin out, paid a bill, and picked up the grapestalks the cat has strewn over the carpet. That said, I am proud that I lost my eBay seller's cherry this year, an idea that had previously languished for years in the 'too hard' box, even though I knew it would be a good way of decluttering for profit.;) And my new knitting venture, Runraglan Knits, now has its own Facebook page as of this week, and a few orders in the bag.

This is also almost the first anniversary of my having Truffle, who - although she is starting to bring in the odd field mouse now (all alive and intact, I hasten to add, and safely escorted off the premises!) - is an endless source of delight and amusement in my life. Here she is at just this time last year.

And finally, though I have said it numerous times before, it bears repetition, namely that my interest in and affection for the people I have met through this hobby has never wavered, and if anything gets stronger from year to year. So whether my perfume mojo is firing on all cylinders or quietly sputtering away like those gas rings you haven't turned on properly, I remain fiercely attached to my fumehead friends who help me weather the bumps on the road in perfume terms - or deal with the ups and downs (I would say "vicissitudes" but it sounds awfully wordy, even for me) of life in general.

Coming up soon...musings on Angel Muse!, and a bathroom makeover special, in which I share all the many lessons learnt along the way in my capacity as self-styled 'clerk of works'. There will be no perfumes kept in the bathroom, it goes without saying. Which takes me right back to the beginnings of Bonkers again...

Bonkers about Perfume and the Bonkers kitten turn six (years and weeks old respectively)!

Well, technically the six-themed milestone for both my blog and my upcoming new feline arrival was Sunday just gone. However, though I managed to go and visit her - and take an utterly preposterous number of photos, much like her full name (big - or should that be long? - reveal to follow) - I was dogged again by a chronic headache for much of the rest of the day (to mix my animal metaphors slightly). The headache has been hanging around for six days now in fact, though I feel a little better at the time of writing.

So yes, 25th October, 2009 saw my first post on Bonkers - about the genesis of the blog, where I explain the strange phenomenon of Sudden Onset Perfume Mania which descended on me some 18 months before thinking of writing about scent in the public domain. I am surprised to have kept it up as long as I have, albeit there has been the odd hiatus along the way - notably in the summer of 2012, when I moved house. And I did seriously consider kicking the blog into touch a few times as well: once when it was hijacked by an Israeli site, once when I ruffled a few feathers with a guest post on Now Smell This, which I shan't even link to in case I ruffle a few more(!), and once when my blog template got accidentally corrupted to the point where I had to set it to Private until a friend kindly unscrambled it for me over the course of two nights' work on his part.

I have noticed that some of my 'generation' have also slowed down their pace of blogging or stopped altogether - The Left Coast Nose, Another Perfume Blog and Parfumieren being three much missed examples of 'retired blogs'. And while they each had their own reasons, maybe it is natural to move on to other things after x number of years, because of the not inconsiderable time and effort involved in blogging. I may well get to that point too by and by. Though we do also have examples of behemoth blogs such as NST, The Non-Blonde and Bois de Jasmin, which have been going for much longer than me - and maintained an impressive posting schedule to boot. For myself, I shall continue to pootle on on this ad hoc frequency of 'about a week'-ish, and see where that goes...

Source: pinterest

Oh, together with a number of bloggers 'on the scene', I recently took part in a survey hosted by a postgraduate student at a Swiss university on the subject of the influence of perfume blogs. It was quite an interesting and thought provoking exercise, and I might post my answers in full in a later post, but it is perhaps appropriate on my anniversary to mention here how I answered this multiple choice question about why I blog in the first place. The options were:

'Because you would like to...

1. 'influence people'
2. 'inform'
3. 'warn'
4. 'educate'
5. 'because you enjoy it, because you are communicative'
6. 'because your followers value your opinion'

So I replied:

'Quite simply - to entertain, which is closest to your #5, though not the same. Perfume is a hook on which to hang what I hope are amusing posts - oh, and I also write travelogues, which have the same aim, and may feature perfume sniffing along the way.'

Though increasingly they don't, haha! And it seems only a matter of time before my compulsive collecting of wool aka 'yarn harlotry' creeps into a blog post, that being the other key 'pillar' amongst my interests. Well, soon to be joined by the Bonkers kitten, with whom I expect I shall spend a fair amount of time playing wool games of one kind and another.

So I went to see her on Sunday, as I say, and she was as enchanting and cute as ever, if not more so. My Facebook friends will already be aware that the kitten's mother was killed in a hit and run incident two weeks ago, but most fortuitously, the mother cat's mother happened to have had a litter of her own just four days previously, and by the end of that sad day had stepped into the breach and started to feed her three orphaned grandkittens. She was still feeding them on an 'on demand' basis during my visit, bless her. ;)

The owner said that out of all the kittens, my one - and one other - were the most loving, in terms of liking to sit on laps and be cuddled, which is all very promising. She added that if I had picked Betty - a grey tabby - she would  have been a little more concerned, as Betty is a bit more self-contained, and a darn sight more mischievous than Truffle.

Which brings me lastly to the 'long reveal' of the Bonkers kitten's name, prompted partly by the fact that the owner latched onto one of the names on the shortlist a couple of weeks ago and started to call her 'Truffles' off her own bat. ;) My brother said that Truffles plural sounds a bit like a 1930s burlesque dancer, while it reminds me of someone doing a whole box of Ferrero Rocher watching Strictly. So I will probably singularise the  name when she comes. The other kittens have also all got rather sweet names now, to wit: Lottie, Simba, Betty (as mentioned), Cleo and Willow.

Oh....and Truffle's full name is...brace yourselves!...'Truffle Ganache Salome Bonkers' - or just 'Truffle Musson', obviously, if she is visiting the vet. The complete and decidedly bonkers suite of names was designed by committee, which says it all, really. But I'd like to extend a big thank you to everyone who came up with such a variety of thoughtfully chosen suggestions. I can assure you that they all went into the pot for consideration, even if, as it turns out, a rather eclectic 'dish' of nomenclature has come out of it again.

And lastly it remains to thank readers everywhere for your interest in Bonkers, however long or short a time you have been reading. If there are any types of posts you would like to see featured on here, let me know in the comments. And if you think that I should continue to resist sneaking wool-themed posts in, do please speak up. Also if you love dogs. Actually that might just be too bad. But I realise I am already digressing quite a bit from the supposedly core topic of perfume with my travel / band-related posts, so there may be a natural ceiling to the number of permissible tangents I can go in, hehe.

Bonkers turns 5!, and an updated stocktake

Source: community.babycentre.co.uk

I was surprised to clock the fact that today is the fifth anniversary of Bonkers about Perfume! I have missed a couple of anniversaries in past years, due to being sidetracked one way or another: the three year milestone found me still in the midst of house move related chaos, while the four year one fell during a band tour. I did, however, have the forethought to mark my 3.6 year anniversary in June 2013, and so I thought it would be fun to look back at my thoughts on that occasion and see how much, if at all, my views on the perfumed life and blogging have changed.

A number of the themes from that post still hold true: 'the mania is past, but I still love perfume', 'my collection scares and delights me in equal measure', and 'the people matter as much as the perfume, if not more so'.  I am also still very much into 'slow blogging', whether I happen to have work - or not (as has been the case rather too much this year).

But my stance on a few topics has shifted since last year, plus I have thought of a few other things to mention, so here goes...

Decorating killed the perfume fridges

In my 3.6 year post I voiced concerns that the damp atmosphere in my fridges might be doing my perfume collection as much harm as the chilled temperature was doing it good. And then I had the two bedrooms decorated in the second half of 2013 and it took me all of two seconds to decide that whirring lumps of metal and glass are not a particularly aesthetic look, and both fridges were promptly relegated to the garage, where they remain today. One of them is an actual fridge in fact, rather than just a drinks chiller, so it does get pressed into service at Christmas as a temporary turkey repository. My perfumes take their chances in a cupboard under the stairs or shoeboxes under beds - oh, and I have one open receptacle for favourite bottles, that is just kept on the floor, but in a darkish spot.

The late Charlie Bonkers with one of the fridges at the old house

The Facebook ban has lifted - as mysteriously as it appeared!

Back in June 2013, I was troubled by my inability to promote my blog posts on Facebook, owing to the fact that a supposed 'friend' of mine anonymously had reported my blog as 'spammy or abusive', as a result of which I was not able to link to it on an indefinite basis. Then just last week, some two and a half years after this dastardly deed ;), Liz Moores tipped me the wink that the ban had vanished - as she was able to post a proper link to my review of Angélique. I feel like a suspect against whom all charges have suddenly been dropped. So, to reprise the point in my earlier stocktake - 'You can't please everybody' - you can't, but it seems the obstructive effects of trollery have an expiry date after all.

A bit blurry, but featuring an actual Facebook link to my blog!

I am no longer - even ever so slightly - affiliated!

At the time of my post last year I had recently agreed to display a promotional banner for Ormonde Jayne in the side bar of the blog. It was a house I had a lot of time for, and the static banner seemed in keeping with my general scheme - in fact it added a welcome dash of colour in the margins. I was most particular that I didn't want anything flickering or revolving, as that way lies an amusement arcade. However, it had only been up a matter of weeks when the PR company who acted as the go-between in this arrangement was ditched by the brand, taking my little punt at 'monetising' with it. I haven't had the urge to investigate any further tie ups, though I do get a steady stream of strange requests, the most recent being:

"We are on the lookout for fantastic bloggers (like yourself) to join our new blogger program to utilize our site to help earn more money from the products you write about as well as expand your reach with our network of users and social channels!

I would love to schedule a quick chat with you and our CMO about the program, he can explain how it works, what you get and how to get started! Just let me know a time that suits you and which medium (Google Hangout, Skype or phone) is best."

If I was in any doubt about my lack of fit for such a commercial enterprise, somebody suggesting we meet in a 'Google Hangout', whatever that might be, would pretty much nail it.

Source: torquemag.io

A Top Sniffs and Nasty Niffs post is not in the offing 

At the start of 2014, I ventured a round up of my favourite perfumes from 2013, dubbing it a  'slightly wonky edition'. For I had sniffed so few of the actual releases from that year that I decided to supplement them with any 'newish' perfumes that had crossed my path in 2013. But when January 2015 comes round, I can't see me attempting even a hybrid post like that, because I am so behind the curve with perfume launches - and testing generally - that such a list would be a complete non-starter. ;)

Guest blogging, and liking the sound of my own voice!

I have noticed a trend in the perfume community to enlist the help of guest bloggers - either to add alternative 'voices' or to maintain a steady flow of content. Even at the five year mark I will be honest and say I don't feel the need to introduce another 'voice' on Bonkers, which may be a bit selfish of me, but there it is. I figure that if someone wants to read a different style or tone of writing they have only to hop across to one of the host of other blogs out there. Put another way, I guess I have yet to get sick of the sound of my own voice, as it were (sorry!). As for the need to maintain regular content, in the spirit of slow blogging I don't adhere to any particular schedule, so that doesn't really apply to me.

I am getting more into skincare

Ex-Mr Bonkers used to joke about my being prone to fads: jogging, sudden urges to walk on Cannock Chase, cooking, knitting, whatever it may be. Perfume seems to be a long running fad at least, albeit at a lower level of intensity. Meanwhile, my interest in skincare is at an all-time high, fuelled as of this week by the doctor taking me off my long term regime of antibiotics to combat acne. From now on, the wellbeing of my complexion is in the sole care of brands such as La Roche-Posay and Paula's Choice, which - however well formulated these products are - is a bit of a scary prospect. I do struggle to follow a single routine though, not least because I have accumulated so many tubes and samples that I want to try all of them out, sometimes even segmenting my face into different trial zones(!) Then other days - or more usually nights - I can't be bothered with all the steps of a proper skincare ritual, and end up just slapping on a bit of Astral, my new surprise cheapie love, which may get a post of its own at some point.

Perfume Land is still a warm and friendly place (by and large)

Much has been written about what a courteous, supportive and generous place Perfume Land is, with its many blogs, Facebook groups and off-line gatherings, both formal and informal. My own experience of the 'perfume scene' has also been very positive and heartwarming in the main. Underlying tensions do sometimes surface, however, and there are even occasional outbursts of mean spiritedness, posturing and borderline thuggery. But I shan't dwell on these. I would say: 'You know who you are', but I am not at all sure they do!

Source: lefroybrooks.co.uk

I am still 'bonkers about bathrooms'

My bathroom renovation - research for which has popped up in blog posts over the spring months in particular - has ground to a halt this autumn, owing to all the relevant tradesmen going temporarily awol. As I don't like the thought of being without a bathroom in winter, I probably shan't mount a major cat herding offensive now till next year. But even though the project has stalled, my heart still skips a beat when I see an unusual or particularly sought after sanitaryware fixture. Last night, for example, I spied a Lefroy Brooks deck mounted bath shower mixer set at a friend's house, and was unfeasibly excited!

Finally, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all the readers who have supported Bonkers down the years - or who have only recently come across it! - not forgetting the many who have landed here entirely by mistake. Followers and non-followers, lurkers and regular commenters alike, I salute you all. For while I probably would blether on like this even if no one was out there, knowing someone is reading does make the whole thing feel more worthwhile.