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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Il Profvmo Nuda: A Birthday Bottle In Its (Almost) Birthday Suit!

I wasn't expecting any gifts of perfume for my birthday this week, just as I didn't expect any at Christmas. Most of my friends and family are bemused at my 70+ strong full bottle collection, and don't think I should be encouraged to acquire any more - or not until there have been significant advances in cryogenics - and they are of course right. So thank goodness for enablers, I say! My Queen of Enablers down the years has been the very generous Lovethescents, who this year sent me a nearly full bottle of Il Profvmo Nuda for my birthday.

Nuda is a fragrance I sniffed for the first time last summer with Olfactoria in Vienna, when I described it as "a 'cold cream' skin scent – like a more refined version of Clinique Simply crossed with a de-floraled Dior New Look 1947, if that makes any sense at all to anyone".

Then in April this year I came across Nuda by chance again in Stuttgart, managing to resist the half price bottle on sale in Mußler Beauty. Not long after that trip to Germany, as I was still toying with the idea of buying the bargain bottle by mail order, Lovethescents dropped me a line, urging me not to bother because Nuda was "horrible". I can't locate the original email, but that was the general gist.

I remember thinking at the time that that was an odd remark, as it was Lovethescents who had originally alerted me to this scent and who was also a big fan - or so I thought. I chose to disregard her apparent volte-face, for having tested Nuda twice myself I was pretty sure I liked it well enough. It ticks that box of an easy to wear, calming, silky soft skin scent. And now with the benefit of hindsight I can see that this was merely a cunning ruse on my friend's part to stop me buying a bottle myself, as she had presumably already snagged it for me. : - )

Yes, notwithstanding the fictitious bad press which had preceded its arrival, my "naked joy" was unalloyed as I unwrapped the parcel to find the super securely-taped bottle of Nuda inside. I have stringent wrapping standards myself, as regular readers know - Diana of Feminine Things recently paid tribute to the quality of my bubble wrapping of a large bottle of Marc Jacobs I sent her. And I have previously devoted entire posts to the subject of packing materials, including the all-important electrical tape which plays such a key role in pre-empting perfume leakage en route.

Yes, I may have high personal standards when it comes to tape, but Lovethescents exceeded them all with this impressive triangular construction in a cheery shade of yellow. It reminded me of those Unidentified Large Industrial Objects - at the more obscure end of the "abnormal load" spectrum - which are transported on equally abnormally wide vehicles, lashed securely in place with a scaffolding of radiating ropes.

Or there again, it has a bit of a look of a maypole about it, for example on young Sydney's cake below.

Photo of maypole cake from blog.craftyribbons.typepad.com, other photos my own