Perfumes in purdah: Les Néréides Impérial Opoponax (the sequel), Prada Candy, and Guerlain Shalimar Millésime Tonka

Sniffing Truffle's head

I'm back! A belated Happy New Year to everyone.

Nearly two months to the day since my last post - possibly the longest hiatus in the 13 year history of Bonkers about Perfume (or one of them) - and I am now attempting to type a full draft in the normal way for the first time, and see how that feels. The conservative approach I was recommended to take by the osteopath of cancelling all social plans and leading such a quiet life that it could qualify as a "retreat" appears to have paid off, and I am much better now. I have at last re-mastered the arts of driving, housework, shopping, knitting, and pretty much every other manoeuvre in everyday life except manhandling the loft ladder and opening tins. I wouldn't want to drive many miles yet, or knit a whole scarf in a day, but I am well up to dipping my toe back into these abandoned activities.

Yes, "retreat" is a good word...or "purdah" might be another to describe this strange time I have spent away from society. I hasten to add that I mean "purdah" in the generic sense of "seclusion", and not the practice in certain Muslim and Hindu societies of screening women from men or strangers, especially by means of a curtain, in case I lay myself open to charges of cultural appropriation. That said, I did acquire a front door curtain in December.

Les Néréides Impérial Opoponax (the sequel)

Notes: citrus notes, opoponax, benzoin, vanilla, amber, sandalwood

In my last post I mentioned how much I had enjoyed wearing Les Néréides Opoponax most days until my decant ran out. I would like to give Rachael Potts (whose decant it was), a shout out for kindly donating the rest of her bottle when the Royal Mail stirred into life in the New Year. The bottle is called "Impérial Opoponax", while I referred to this scent as plain "Opoponax" in the previous post. I have since learnt that the name was simplified over time, and Rachael's bottle has the original one on it. I am glad I didn't erroneously strip the perfume of its lofty rank - that would be like referring to the Duke of Sussex as Harry Windsor, though it is tempting.

Prada Candy

Notes: musk, benzoin, caramel (I daresay there are more than these!)

When I first found myself without Impérial Opoponax - and notwithstanding the fact that I have some 60 bottles to my name and countless other decants and samples - I felt bereft, and as though I didn't know what to wear now(!), for I was really craving something in that purring vanillic vein. Then at the end of November I spied a bottle of Prada Candy in a discount chemist in town - 30ml for £34.99. Ever since its launch, and despite loving the scent with its cosseting toffee haze, I had not felt I could justify the cost of a 50ml bottle, and had never come across the smaller format, never mind at the magic price of (more or less) £1 for 1ml, which used to be the norm back in the day, even for niche scents.

Despite this great deal, I continued to wrestle with my conscience and fought the urge to buy it, for based on current stock levels I will never need to acquire any more perfume in my life again. Though I realise that it depends very much on what you mean by "need". Plus I was in pain and deserved a treat. So I decided to let the decision be made by Victoria of Boisdejasmin, whose taste in fragrance has proved down the years to be spookily congruent with my own. I said to myself that if she had awarded Prada Candy four stars in her review (I didn't doubt that there would be one) I would take that as a sign that I should proceed with my purchase. And of course she had, haha...;)

Oh,and look what Colbourne, a reviewer on Basenotes, had to say about the opoponax note  - he mentions "toffee", which is of course in Candy. And props to him too for giving "effulgent" a rare outing in any context: 

"an exudate from the Commiphora eyrthraea tree, this resin has sensuous warmth, a sweetness of toffee contrasted with bitter, leafy herbal undertones, powdery, efflulgent, yet rich, mythic."

Guerlain Shalimar Millésime Tonka

Notes: bergamot, almond, rum, iris, jasmine, rose, tonka bean, vanilla and opopanine.

I am very out of touch with perfume releases - never more so than in recent months - yet my purdah was penetrated by news of this new Shalimar release from sources both sides of the pond, and as a born again lover of Shalimar in most of its incarnations, I immediately dropped £9 on a tiny sample from Etsy. I should point out that I was feeling a bit delicate on the day I tested it, but while the notes sounded promising, and as though Millésime Tonka might serve as yet another comfort scent in this reclusive period, the reality on my skin was a disappointment and triggered an instant headache. The composition was hijacked by an off-kilter accord I can best describe as furry lighter fuel. A bit like my experience with Tauer's Lonestar Memories, which also has jasmine, tonka bean and myrrh, but is way more fizzy. 

I think a retrial is definitely in order, so here goes...

Okay, no headache and no unpleasant notes, but Millésime Tonka is darker and murkier than the original, and a little more bitter.almondy maybe? I think it is probably absolutely fine though, like a "Shalimar Noir" if there was such a thing, and it may only be a question of time. I will wear and enjoy this sample and get my money's worth. For nine quid for 1ml is a bit steep to shell out even on a prize lemming. I think feeling as I did when I first tried it, frankly any perfume might have triggered the headache, and this version is rather rich to be fair.

And now see what another Basenotes reviewer, Shahbaz_2009, says of Impérial Opoponax, comparing it to Shalimar!

"Upon spraying we are hit with the familiar bergamot-lemon-cream opening,which is very sweet and almost reminiscent of Vintage Shalimar and Oscar"

Eyeballing the notes, there appears to be an opopanax-esque component. I have been unable to google the word to clarify the point, however, as my search keeps defaulting to "dopamine".

So it is clear that while ill I was drawn to fragrances with quite a lot of compositional crossover without realising it...vanilla-forward, toffee-ish purrfumes, we could perhaps call them.

Source: Fragrantica

In closing, I would like to thank all my friends and neighbours (not that they are likely to be reading this) for acting as a spare pair of arms in so many useful ways over the past few months - it was a huge help. And Truffle, for sitting on me so comprehensively in what seemed at least like an empathic way. I am sorry to report that her head that I am sniffing in the photo smelt unmistakably of wee - clearly not her own as that would entail a feat of gymnastics beyond the capability of even her athletic frame.

Lastly it occurred to me that I must be feeling better to embrace the right royal faff of adding accents to two of the three perfumes featured, especially the Impérial Opoponax, which has three on its own!

Guardian angel: how Truffle - and my stress levels - went through the (curate's garage) roof (twice!)

Source: Ebay

Back in January, at the height of the bathroom leaks and 'Crack-ageddon', I distinctly remember avoiding any further testing of the samples Mandy Aftel had sent me, including Vanilla Smoke and Amber Tapestry, for fear of imprinting them with bad memories. In an exchange after the event, Mandy agreed that "aromas get tinged with memory in both good and bad ways and are almost impossible to disentangle", adding that she appreciated my careful approach.

Now that is all very well if you happen to know in advance that you are going to have a bad day, but sometimes the crises - like my cracks when they first kicked off - come at you out of nowhere. By this time you may already be wearing your chosen SOTD, which, perforce, becomes caught up in the 'horror and terror of the first water' (to borrow my father's phrase) that subsequently unfolds.

Which is something that so easily could have happened with a bunch of Puredistance scents the other day. I was testing four of them at once to determine my favourite, progressively narrowing the field over the course of the weekend to WHITE and SHEIDUNA. (I am still struggling with the whole capitalisation issue, though writing the word 'capitalisation' in lower case is helping a bit.) And in a final wrist-to-wrist play off, my overall favourite emerged, as...but I will save that titbit for later. ;)

So yes, last Thursday I was engrossed in the fairly thankless business of cleaning windows. Oh my word, what a rich seam for a blog post window cleaning techniques that actually work would be. In my desperation, I tried Mr Muscle, vinegar, and an E-cloth and water - sometimes all on the same window, endlessly rotated until the smears looked marginally less noticeable through half closed eyes and with the roller blind pulled down a few inches - and am now that sad soldier who is actually lusting after a Karcher Vac. But the point about the window cleaning is that I was somewhat distracted, though on and off during the day I had wondered why Truffle had not come back in since breakfast...It was mild weather, so I tried to convince myself she had just wandered a bit further and was enjoying herself in the uncharacteristic sunshine, even though I knew deep down that that wasn't her usual MO.

Truffle on the roof of the shed next to the garage....

First thing the next morning, 24 hours after Truffle had been gone, and following a completely sleepless night, I could no longer think of her as merely being 'out', and reported her as missing to the vet, an animal search charity that also had some useful online tips, and the insurance company - just in case you have to notify a missing pet the way I had to get a crime reference number off the police that time my luggage was stolen(!).

I also downloaded a 'lost cat' poster template, and was faffing about trying to resize photos when a friend messaged me from a train - having seen my Facebook status about Truffle's disappearance - and kindly offered to do the artwork for a poster. I explained that I was in fact nearly there with that, but he was able to combine two photos and make them fit the template, so his intervention was most timely. Not that I needed the posters in the end, as you will see!

Next up, I did some reading on the Interwebs, and learnt that for an 'outdoor access' cat like Truffle, the most likely outcome was that she had become trapped, probably within a short distance from home. The site recommended conducting an 'aggressive physical search' of her primary territory, comprising a five-house radius. It so happens that I am adjacent not only to five houses, but also to 33 lock up garages(!). I had already been round these a couple of times, calling Truffle's name and trying to listen out for any sound, which was tricky, given the ambient traffic noise.

View from the neighbour's garden

Then on a third circuit later that morning, I was passing the garage nearest to my house, which belongs to people in the next street, when I heard a cat crying. I also felt a paw underneath the garage door, though a short while after, the crying stopped and the paw was withdrawn. I still had proof that a cat was in there, even if it didn't turn out to be mine....

BUT I didn't know who the owners of the house were, so I loitered in that street for a few minutes and chanced upon a man unloading his shopping. I asked him if he knew the names / jobs / routines of the home owners. He told me that the wife was a part-time curate at the local church, so I jogged over there at the double, disturbed the vicar's wife, who was in bed, ill!, but gamely staggered downstairs because I had kept knocking. She texted the curate, asking her to ring me, and staggered back to bed, though not before letting slip that the curate's husband was a GP in the next county. And that the couple mostly lived there, only occasionally coming to Stafford.

Well ventilated garage of doom

There was no response from the curate, and of course I was frantic by now, as Truffle had been shut in the garage for nearly 30 hours already with no food and water. I know animals can survive for much longer, but obviously you don't want your pet to suffer for a moment, never mind a day and a half. So I promptly googled all the GP surgeries in and around the town the vicar's wife had mentioned, and found a doctor with a surname matching the curate's. Bingo! I rang the surgery, only to be told it was his day off. I asked the receptionist to try to reach him on his mobile and explain the urgency of the situation.

And thus it was that two hours later, the husband duly arrived and opened up the garage. Even on those odd times the couple come to Stafford, they hardly ever use it apparently! Moments before, my friend, Jim - he of the fine quips in my shortlisted entry for the 2015 Jasmine Awards - had turned up unprompted with a length of rope and a general air of reassurance. I stood outside to catch the cat if she ran out, and it was Jim who found Truffle cowering in a corner - collarless, filthy, frightened, and smelling of 'old stuff in garages' and p*ss. And no, that isn't 'puss', though she was back to her normal smell after a few (self-administered) washes. ;)

This is so going on her next collar...

That evening, I went round to thank the vicar's wife and the man who had been unloading his shopping, both of whom had given me such crucial pieces of information that led to Truffle's successful release. Well, I put a card through the door of The Rectory, knowing the wife was poorly, and the following morning, had a hand delivered letter back from her!

"I'm so pleased that you got your cat back. You wouldn't know how much your thank you card meant. I was feeling low after being in bed for the majority of the day. My husband came and gave me your card. It made me smile."

Oh, I don't feel so bad for getting her out of bed now. ;) Plus it sounds as though she is on her feet again. Unless the vicar played postman?

Then on the vet's advice I kept Truffle more or less indoors over the weekend, just letting her out briefly and under my watchful eye, but by Sunday she was feeling a lot more adventurous and events took another disastrous turn.

Source: Pixabay

Yes...it appears that while dogs have a short term memory span of five minutes, cats have a whopping 16 hours! But I am afraid that is nowhere near enough. For notwithstanding her earlier ordeal, Truffle managed to fall in the hole all over again! Even though I had already spent an hour supervising her outdoor access without incident, suddenly she leapt up onto the garden wall, and from there it was a mere hop, skip and a jump to the garage with the holey roof. Down which she promptly fell. The roof is made of full asbestos(!) and is really friable and crumbly as you will see, but I am running ahead of myself.

As the hideous and distinctly Groundhog Day-ish news sank in, one of the lodgers who lives next door (I'll call him 'L' - not his real initial  ;) ), and who happened to be loitering in the service road, offered to take a look at the hole. 'I'm only small', he said, 'I could probably get down there' - which despite his slight physique I privately thought unlikely. In a flash, L had shinned up the ladder like a rat up a drainpipe, and before he could get anywhere near the hole, he suddenly created a much bigger one of his own...'Er...now I've done that, I might as well go and get the cat?' he volunteered, with an uneasy smile. A second later there was a sickening thud as L jumped to the concrete floor some six foot or so below. He promptly opened the garage door before I could tell him not to and Truffle shot under it like the proverbial bat out of hell! Luckily, she darted back home while the pair of us set about clearing up the bits of asbestos on the floor.

Sun glinting on the polythene sheet

In vain did I try to persuade L to use gloves like me. 'I'm 45, I've had a good innings', he said phlegmatically. Well, I for one would like to live long enough to see Truffle wear out / lose the three replacement collars I had just bought her. ;) Oh, make that four, as I later found the one she lost under a tree. Anyway, after sweeping up the debris, L and I managed to do our own rather nifty roofing job, though I say it myself, involving 'found' things from my own garage - two bits of board from picture frames, a huge piece of plastic groundsheet folded in half, and my old airing cupboard door to weight the whole lot down! I had kept it because it was too big to fit in my car to take to the tip - never thinking it might actually come in handy one day.

Our improvised roof covering in place, I rang the owners to confess what we had done, lump in throat. Luckily they weren't at all mad at us for technically trespassing and damaging their property, and have said that this second incident - which is fast turning into that lost parent business in The Importance of Being Earnest(!) - will galvanise them to get the roof fixed properly as a priority.

So there you have it. In the space of four days, Truffle and I lost at least two lives apiece, and I also learnt that herding cats is an utterly doomed venture. And was also touched by the tremendous support I received on- and offline from concerned friends, as well as the community spirit on the ground that led to both the happy outcomes.

Home Sweet Home

Now I had carried on testing the Puredistance samples meanwhile - well, applying them at least, and occasionally remembering to sniff them. I figured that if they had been tainted by Truffle's first fall through the roof, that feeling wasn't going to get any worse from this point on, besides which, she had been repeatedly rescued!, neatly cancelling out the bad associations from before.

And unexpectedly, Truffle and I seem to have a much closer bond now, I would say - or I do to her at least. Presumably she has no memory of either incident by now, hehe. She has slept on my bed for a total of five nights so far, without spending half of it jumping on my head, as happened the last few times we attempted - and quickly aborted - a 'co-sleeping' arrangement. If she continues to be so well behaved, we might even be able to entertain this cosy regime on a more regular footing.

Then Monday was happily uneventful...Truffle went in and out of the garden unsupervised numerous times, and I have almost stopped worrying that she won't come back...

Oh, and the favourite Puredistance? - the one that really 'went the distance' during this strange r*****coaster of a long weekend, and which not only came out the other side unscathed, but had the power to subliminally comfort and shore up my fragile mood? It was that creamy, fruity, at times discordant, yet mesmerisingly fizzy amber and myrrh-fest that is - SHEIDUNA.

PS Proper perfume posting resumes shortly...

On "Scenterhooks" - Perfumes For A State Of Limbo

That's a shockingly bad pun, even by my lax comedic standards, and a concept which I realise may require a bit of an explanation.

Well, when I came back to Britain following my Bonkers Road Trip, I spotted some mystery bruising all down one leg, which could not be accounted for by even the most incompetent baggage handling or other clumsy behaviour on my part. Bruises appeared spontaneously before my eyes even when I was lying down in bed, which was all very odd. I was also aware that I had unintentionally lost a lot of weight lately - about 9lb in all - whereas my weight is generally very static, or fluctuates within a 2-3lb range at most.

Now if you are foolish enough to put "mystery bruising" and "involuntary weight loss" into Google, up will pop a number of sinister blood disorders, mostly ending in "-enia" or "-emia". Not all of them with good prospects, as you can imagine. You would have to hunt in the fine print of Page 16 of Google references to find any condition combining those two symptoms that is remotely benign.

So having put the wind up myself good and proper, I decided to visit the doctor as a precaution, who took one look at my leg and said: "Right, no, that is not normal - we should run some tests. Obviously we need to eliminate leukemia, lymphoma, clotting diseases, all those sorts of things."

Eeek! I may have emitted a small yelp at this point, inwardly at least. My dear mother died of Non-Hodgkinson's Lymphoma. So you know, the mind starts to work overtime, or it does if you are of a nervous and pessimistic disposition like me. Or, as Mr Bonkers would have you believe, you are a "hypochondriac". He teases me when I complain about the most minor ailment: "What's it now? Hard skin on the soles of your feet? Biopsy!!" "It hurts to turn your arm a certain way? That'll have to come off then!" "Your tummy is swollen? Yes, I know we went out for a meal last night, but you will almost certainly need an -ectomy of some kind. Possibly several, just to be on the safe side." And so on in this vein...

Anyway, the doctor - whether to humour a "worried well" patient or because she genuinely thought the bruising a bit fishy - took some blood there and then, and for three days I sat tight, anxiously awaiting the outcome.

On balance, even I didn't think that there could really be anything serious wrong with me, but in that state of mild apprehension I pondered over which perfumes to wear each day. On the one hand, I was drawn to comfort scents, yet I didn't want to ruin these favourites in the unlikely event of receiving adverse news, because the bad memory of that day would be forever associated with the scent in question. Hmmm - it was quite a delicate decision. So here is what I chose in the end and why:

DAY ONE - nothing during the day, because I was a little distracted following my visit to the doctor. In the evening I yielded to the sprightly yet comforting charm of Chamade, knowing that I was unlikely to get a call at this hour.

DAY TWO - I changed tack and tested Shanghai, a freebie in a swap. This was on the basis that I had never heard of it till then, so I could afford to "excise it" from my collection if the day happened to go downhill from that point! For anyone curious, it is a slightly spicy, fruity oriental that I would consider fine for day wear.

Top notes: ceylon cinnamon, green apple, magnolia and bergamot
Middle notes: apricot, carnation, patchouli, jasmine and chinese osmanthus
Base notes: woodsy notes, plum, amber and bourbon vanilla.

DAY THREE: - I wore La Pausa by day and Apres L'Ondee to bed. In the absence of news, mawkishness was starting to set in, for those are rather bleak choices. Funereal even, which was a tad premature all the same.

DAY FOUR - Jo Malone Kohdo Day: Lotus Blossom & Water Lily. Chosen because it is bright and cheerful and mood-enhancing - I hoped the Japanese vibe would instill a zen-like calm. And if the results of my tests were not ideal, there are other florals I like better, so it manages to be both therapeutic AND potentially expendable, which is a pretty good combo if you ask me. By this stage I was clearly getting the hang of choosing the perfect scent for this enforced state of limbo...

And on Day Four I finally heard that my white blood cell count was abnormally low, but that I didn't have any of the "-enias" and "-emias" they were testing for. Actually, that is not strictly true, for a low white blood count does have a name in its own right along similar lines - LEUKOPENIA - however, leukopenia is not a "destination disease", if you know what I mean, but rather a sign of something else being amiss.

Yet in my case the doctor couldn't find anything specific up with me, so we concluded together that it might have all been due to the acute stress of the trip. I had a repeat blood test this week, because she wanted to be sure of definitely ruling out the other things by getting the same result twice, only to find that my white blood count had gone back up again to within normal parameters of its own accord. Hurrah! The being at home and not having to drive 1200 miles a week may well have helped my recovery.

To celebrate the good news yesterday I wore a number of perfumes all at once, safe in the knowledge that they would none of them be blighted by bad news. Or at least not until I discover the next unexplained lesion, lump or mutating mole...