Valentine's, Schmalentine's: aka tolling the bell for the rose with no smell?

Yesterday I paid a visit to a luxury hotel on the outskirts of town, which is well known locally as a venue for conferences and weddings. A friend had been at a work event there recently, and was singing the praises of the hotel's promotional pen that she had used on the day. It wrote so smoothly, apparently, and was lovely to hold. Although she had taken it away with her, it had since run out, as she had used it so much. "Aha, I said", quickly diagnosing the attraction. "I think I know exactly the pen quality you like - partly haptics in the hand, and partly glide performance", to which she replied: "Haptics and glide. Exactly so." 

Sensing a challenge to which I could rise, I first made a telephone inquiry to the hotel, to confirm the identity of the pen and check they still had some in stock, then called in and met the receptionist I had spoken to, who immediately handed me a pair of pens to give to my friend, and refused to take any money for them. "We can't even remember what they cost!"

On the desk at reception I couldn't help but notice two large boutique paper carrier bags with rope handles, each containing dozens and dozens of single stem red roses, individually wrapped in cellophane. It took me a moment to compute that they were probably going to be favours at place settings for romantic Valentine's Day meals the following day, rather than the unsolicited kind touted in armfuls from table to table by the rose-equivalent of a Big Issue seller, endlessly repeating the question: "Flower for the lady?"

Source: flowerspeterborough.co.uk

I remembered how characterless and bland such roses are, with their tiny compact heads - and crucially no smell. Sour grapes you could say, hehe...

Mind you, there was an interesting poll about Valentine's Day reported on the radio yesterday, which found that only a third of couples were planning to mark the occasion "with a romantic interest", and of those, just under two thirds were going to stay in rather than have a special meal out, go to an event, or travel. Along with the Danes and the Spanish, we Brits are the most sceptical and bah humbug-ish nation in the world, with over 80% of us believing that the 14th February is not a "proper" special occasion, but one "celebrated more because of pressure from commercial entities". Perhaps surprisingly, the Chinese lead the table of considering Valentine's Day to be a genuine day for lovers (41%, compared to just 13% of Britons and a paltry 5% of Danes). I found those statistics quite revealing, for if you only based your judgment on the window displays of Clinton Cards and the M & S Food Hall you would get the impression that every woman in the land is going to cop for a bunch of of odourless roses, an oversized and disconcertingly squishy teddy bear, and a heart shaped box of truffles.

I was trying to remember the last time I received a mystery Valentine's card, and I fear it may be as far back as 1983. I eventually worked out who it was from - a boy on my college course in whom, sadly for us both, I had no interest. I am not sure I have ever received a secret card which did turn out to be sent by the person I hoped it would be from. This of course excludes "open exchanges" of cards from partners - and from cats indeed. For most of my time with ex-Mr Bonkers, four cards would change hands each year. I was always very impressed at the coherence of the writing. 

This morning I heard the thud of the post and scurried downstairs to find a pizza leaflet and two catalogues. One of these was called Owl and Barn, and featured a host of ornaments of questionable taste, including a pair of resin ducks dressed in gardening clothes, a Thoughts Tube Lamp (don't ask), a Special Friend Butterfly Tribute "with pink Austrian crystal elements", no less, an Angel's Blessing Music Box, an Illuminated Everlasting (= Faux) Orchids Terrarium, and a selection of the most depressingly mumsy fleecy sweatshirts with demure collars I have ever had the misfortune to lay my eyes on, in equally unflattering colours like Man City blue. Clearly I haven't been surfing right, to have been targeted with a catalogue of such arresting tweeness.

Now I was going to wear a rose perfume as a small concession to the day, but I accidentally sprayed on Miller Harris Fleurs de Sel before I remembered, haha - a more dissimilar scent to rose could hardly be imagined. There is at least a mini bottle of pink Prosecco in the fridge, although it is only Tuesday.  I will also launch a surgical strike on the supermarkets tomorrow, and buy myself some more flowers at a hopefully reduced rate. These cheery tulips are arguably beyond the pale now... 

Do you celebrate Valentine's Day with your significant other - or yourself, even, in the spirit of "self-care"? (Please feel free to shoot me for using that term)

How properly special vs commercial do you feel it is?

And do you also choose your SOTD with the occasion in mind?

If you would prefer to read a more romantic, "on-message" Valentine's post (well, that might still be a stretch in places), here is one from ten years ago today!

Pink grenade : how Viktor&Rolf Bonbon (flower)bombed my search for myself

Source: Soundcloud

 

It's Valentine's Day again... regular readers know better than to come to Bonkers looking for inspiration on the Ten Best Rose Perfumes to give your loved one, or anything else of that predictable romantic ilk. Which is not to say that I haven't written posts in the past tailored to this (sadly increasingly commercial) occasion - several may come up in this link - but the post that popped into my head to write this morning is more pink in its inspiration than the classic deep red of rose and heart motifs...

For at the weekend a friend in the US sent me a link to a Luxe magazine article; it lists the "37 Best Perfumes for Women", with the byline: "Find your signature scent". You can immediately tell that this piece was aimed at a mainstream audience, for perfumistas prefer to own fragrance wardrobes, on the basis that "more is more". Anyway, each of the 37 perfumes listed had won a separate category, which included "Best Luxury", "Best value", "Best floral", "Best for night", "Best as gift" (another notion we don't hold with, unless the person has specifically requested said scent as a gift!), "Best over 50" (Dior J'adore- pardon?!?), "Best for young", and so on and so forth in that reductionist and inevitably doomed pigeonholing vein. FYI, Black Opium was "Best for night", which says it all right there. And how Byredo Bal d'Afrique could take the prize for "Best earthy" beats me. Where is the oakmoss and patchouli? And right at the top of the list was the perfume deemed "Most popular"- or should that be "Best popular" for the sake of consistency? - namely Viktor&Rolf Flowerbomb.

Seeing this accolade awarded to Flowerbomb fired me up with indignation, which may have coloured my reply to the friend:

"Ah, that list had more of a 'designer' bias than the niche perfumes I am mostly into, and when that happens I always wonder if the perfume house has chucked them a load of money to promote their product. I say this, because Viktor&Rolf gets a mention, and if I do an Internet search for my blog - Bonkers about Perfume - up comes a load of images of V&R bottles as the first result, even though that clearly has zilch to do with the search terms. So I tend to completely disregard 'Best of' lists in women's magazines, sorry!"

 

 

 

I may have been a bit harsh there, but I have been really exercised by the monotonous regularity with which Bonbon ads bombard the search results for the blog, the butterfly-shaped bottle serving as an additional taunt, in view of my online "flittersniffer" identity. It doesn't happen with any search engine, mind - just on Microsoft Bing, which I have on my netbook. Google has no ads, whether accessed through my Firefox browser (desktop PC) or Chrome (phone). I spend most time on my netbook though, so the pink-winged bottles will continue to torment! Do let me know if you use Yahoo or any other search engine (eg Duckduckgo?), and get ads as the first search result.

 

I would also be interested to know whether you would assume that Flowerbomb really is "the most popular perfume" through its own merits, or whether a massive marketing budget has managed to lob it front and centre of consumer consciousness, like a great big pink grenade on a mercenary mission. And I don't necessarily even mean by greasing reviewers' palms with silver - which is mere supposition on my part, after all - it could be by aggressive in-store promo campaigns, or saturated magazine advertising, or SEO-jiggery pokery, or any other kind of above or below-the-line spending.

Anyway...I guess I got myself a bit worked up - more over the nefarious power of brands to buy exposure and/or influence than the mere fact of my blog not having the prominence you would expect for an exact match of the search phrase. Tomorrow I will sally forth as is customary, and hoover up any out of date Valentine's bargains I spy in the form of flowers or foodstuffs. I would say "in a therapeutic act of 'self-care'", but I have come to dislike the expression "self-care" every bit as much as "uptick", "put food on the table", and "baked in". "Baked in" being my newest and most irritating mot du jour - usually used in connection with Boris's character flaws rather than to denote the inclusion of dried fruit in a cake. That's assuming you have the funds to put the ingredients for food on the table.

Then tonight I am off for a girls' night in with two friends. As an offering I am taking a large jar of Sauerkraut, a partly used bottle of magnesium tablets, and a small hot water bottle cover I knitted for the hostess's son's puppy**. Oh, come to think of it - that is red (though it looks more like "hot pink" in this photo, haha).

Happy Valentine's Day, however you are spending it!

 

**NB The hostess and I do have a long and honourable tradition of unconventional present exchanges - packets of quinoa, half bars of chocolate, open bottles of wine and life-limited fruit have also featured.