Results of the Papillon-hosted (and -posted) - Plum prize draw!

Source: beachplum.cornell.edu

Last night's deadline for the Plum prize draw has Mary Greenwell and truly passed, and in time-honoured tradition I have had my usual recourse to that trusty number tumbler, Random.org, to pick the winner.

So without further ado, I can reveal that the bottle of Plum is going to:


ANGIE

Congratulations, Angie! I hope you will like Plum, or find a good home for it otherwise. Please drop me a line with your address, which I will forward to the powers-that-be at Papillon Perfumery.

Yes, a big thank you is due to Liz Moores for kindly donating her bottle of Plum to this giveaway. As mentioned in my previous post, it has the added cachet of having spent some time in her 'never a dull moment' home and company HQ.

Daisy may well have had fun taking the top off and putting it on again, or at the very least a Bengal cat will have brushed past it with its tail. It is to be hoped not a snake at least.

PS That plum picture was the closest I could find to those multi-coloured lottery balls. ;)

Papillon Perfumery is poised to post a Plum prize in the latest Bonkers giveaway!

So in my review of Hermès Muguet Porcelaine last week I compared Jean-Claude Ellena's craggy looks to a softer, more approachable version of Samuel Beckett. It was one of those random similes that seem to pop into my head all the time, for better or worse.

Imagine my surprise then, when I received an email from Sue Phillips, the CEO of Scenterprises. Scenterprises is the US equivalent of The Perfume Studio over here, of which I used to be an associate. I helped people create their own custom perfume from 'building blocks' in the form of 18 pre-prepared accords / blends, which had in turn been created by a UK perfumer, whose name escapes me now(!), but who had worked with The Body Shop, and whose understated style had garnered praise from Luca Turin himself. And here my blog post about my own experience as a punter, which is what prompted me to become involved as a facilitator.

Sadly, I gave up the job after about a year, because I couldn't make any money from it after the cost of materials and packaging - it was taking me three hours in all, half of which was spent on the session with the client, and half in setting up the room to create a nice ambience, making up their chosen scent afterwards, and clearing away after they'd gone.  We were encouraged to offer the experience for one person at about £40 - having just checked the website, that seems to still be the case.

By contrast, I see that Scenterprises charges $500 for what I take to be a broadly equivalent one-to-one service in the US. This is in New York, mind you, where people clearly have a lot more disposable income than in The Midlands, and where the venue would be be subject to higher overheads. On the face of it, it does still strike me as a big differential between our two continents, though.

Some of the blends as they were in 2010

So that was by way of background...I am getting to the bit about Ellena now...as Sue mentioned in her email:

"I loved your post about Jean Claude Ellena and met him and his wife Susanna (who is the niece of Samuel Beckett), so I got the reference!"

The thing is, the reference was quite fortuitous! Sue elaborated further in the course of our email exchange:

"I worked with Jean Claude when I was at Elizabeth Arden and he had worked on Lagerfeld for Men in collaboration with a US perfumer friend of mine, and when I visited him and Susanna I was overwhelmed at all the Beckett first issues and books."

Well, what a remarkable and satisfying coincidence, for I had no idea that Jean-Claude Ellena had any family connection - even by marriage - to Samuel Beckett!

So that was one surprising thing. But there's more... For while at The Fragrance Shop chatting to the sales assistants about Muguet Porcelaine, I clocked the deep discount on Mary Greenwell's range of fragrances, including Plum,which is the only one I have tried personally. I mentioned it in my previous post, and also on Facebook, where it prompted a small stampede(!) of people worldwide, availing themselves of this offer, partly on a blind basis, which readers know I don't normally condone, haha.

Anyway, Liz Moores of Papillon Artisan Perfumes was one such who took the plunge and found that Plum wasn't in fact quite her cup of tea. And she has kindly offered to donate her bottle to a giveaway on Bonkers, and post it from Papillon HQ free of charge to the winner. So not only do you bag a bottle of Plum - it may even be the 100ml size, I can't recall - but one which has spent a little while in the lively menagerie which is Liz's home and studio, which I am betting will considerably increase its cachet!

So many thanks to Liz for her generosity. Then in order to be eligible for the giveaway you have to be in the UK, alas, after my recent overseas mailing misdemeanours, painfully documented here.

And please also leave a comment saying why you would like to win a bottle of Plum, whether you know it already, and if not, what you plan to do with the bottle if you don't like it when it comes! ;)

The draw will close on Sunday 7th August at midnight, UK time (well, obviously). Liz will mail the bottle at her earliest convenience once I have notified her of the winner's details.

But here's the other funny thing. The perfumer for Mary Greenwell is François Robert, and blow me, if he isn't the new perfumer behind the blends for The Perfume Studio!

I have had a look at the website and the notes in the different blends have changed since I worked with the company, so I would be curious to smell Robert's creations and see how they compare to the ones I remember. In the absence of myself, it seems I would have to go to Manchester, Stratford-upon-Avon or Nottingham to find out firsthand...;)

Results of the Travalo Milano and Classic giveaway!

So, some considerable time - aka that whole Christmas business - has passed since the closing deadline for the Travalo prize draw, and it is only now, in my slightly jaded and partied out state, that I am finally getting down to housekeeping matters...you know, doing something constructive with the turkey leftovers, thanking people for presents, and, most importantly, drawing this draw. Well, as ever, Random.org did the aleatory honours, and I can now reveal that the winner of a Travalo Milano and Classic is:

AnnieA 

Congratulations, AnnieA!

Drop me a line at 'flittersniffer at gmail dot com' with your address details and I will liaise with the PR lady for the brand, who will ship your prize directly once she is back from the holiday break.

Meanwhile, you can start thinking what colours you would like for each Travalo from the selection mentioned in my earlier post, and which of the two might best suit Encens Mythique, if that is still your top pick... ;)

Results of the Puredistance BLACK sample draw!

Source: Puredistance

Right, so the shortest day of the year is past, and with it the deadline for this latest sample giveaway hosted by Puredistance - for three 2ml vials of their new BLACK perfume.  I have done the biz using Random.org, omitting those readers who opted out of the competition for various reasons.  By my reckoning this leaves eleven people who are both interested in receiving a sample and have met the conditions set by Puredistance of either following them on Twitter or liking their Facebook page.

These readers all went into Random.org's virtual tombola and the winners have been drawn.

Come to think of it, because Bonkers attracts relatively few comments compared to the larger blogs that host giveaways, you do get particularly good odds on here!  Just saying...;)

And now without further ado, I can announce that the three winners are:

HANNAH

HOLLY

SABINE

Congratulations to the three of you and I hope you like BLACK as much as I do!

Drop me a line on flittersniffer at gmail dot com with your address details, and Samira, the PR lady at Puredistance, will get your sample off in the post, fearlessly braving the postal regulations of your respective countries! Depending on when you clock this announcement, it will either be this side of Christmas or when the PD team come back to work on 30th December.

Another Bonkers milestone giveaway! - 400 posts & 150 followers

Source: lifewithasideofcoffee.com

Well, it was back to work with a vengeance this week for me - I may appear to be on Facebook all day, but I am just logged in permanently and treat myself now and again to five minute bursts of activity on there, honest...!  So yes, posts may become a bit more sporadic as the autumn kicks in in earnest, though I hope to avoid the yawning hiatuses (hiati? No, that looks like Haiti spelt wrong) of last year, when I was 'with woodworm' (on multiple fronts) and without furniture - for what felt like endless tracts of time.

And it just so happens that this is my 400th post, and that it coincides with the appearance of my 150th follower - thanks, Pop!  Followers are like gold dust on Blogger, because people have to actively choose to follow you, much like prospective organ donors.  Actually, I just checked the statistics, and in 2011 an impressive 30% of Britons had registered for organ donation.  I can only dream of such a high conversion rate of readers to followers, but am delighted that as many as 150 have taken that trouble.  More on taking trouble anon...

Source: taterstalltails.com

400 posts is not an especially high figure in today's blogosphere, with some stalwart bloggers clocking up that number in little more than a year.  However, up until last year I used to go away a lot with work - so I guess that is a plausible tally for the amount of time I have been able to devote to blogging - and I expect it will trundle along in future in similarly ad hoc fashion.

Then back in June, I marked the (completely arbitrary!) occasion of my 3.6 year anniversary with a stock take of where I am up to in my relationship with perfume and some thoughts on blogging itself.  So I thought I would take this opportunity to bat around a few more ideas from the semi-philosophical to the wholly mechanical.

What I blog about, and why

It's a bit late to be puzzling over what Bonkers about Perfume is all about,  you may well say, and I guess I probably set out my stall at the start, when I described my output/-pourings as 'random musings of a born again perfume anorak - an aldeyhdic blend of passion and irreverence'.   That is still a pretty fair descriptor of the staple fare on Bonkers, interspersed of course with travel posts cataloguing curiosities from other cultures and my foreign (mis)adventures.

Unfeasibly long place name in Hungary

In this connection, I also want to quote from a lovely post - that just appeared today  in fact - on novelists Tania Kindersley's and Sarah Vine's blog, Backwards in High Heels. (I am not at all sure about those apostrophes.)  Backwards in High Heels could best be summed up as a journal of whimsical observations from everyday life, and there is much to savour and admire in the duo's eye for detail and humorous take on the curved balls and lemons of outrageous fortune.  

Here, Tania Kindersley hits the nail on the head in her summary of what propels her to write in the public domain:

"It is a marking of the days, a recording of my beloved Small Things, a small existential stamping. Yes, yes; here I was."

I can related to the aspect of 'beloved Small Things' - I suppose I call the odder end of the Small Thing spectrum 'foibles'.  I recently wrote on Natalie's blog that I love winkling out foibles, the foiblier the better in fact.

An existentialist stamp ~ Source: minitrue.it

And blogging is undoubtedly a kind of 'existential stamping' too.  After all, if I just wanted to record my personal thoughts for myself, I'd still use a five year diary, as I did from 1973-1978, keeping it locked and in a drawer.  I even wrote 'Keep Out!' in (my own) blood on the inside cover, which feels a bit Twilight series now. By choosing to blog, I clearly wish to leave some kind of a footprint in cyberspace, however light - and hopefully to entertain a few people along the way.  

Posting frequency

Well, I may have partly answered that one above, and also in my previous milestone post where I explained how my friends are becoming increasingly worried about my Internet dependency, and are encouraging me to get off Facebook and out more (and by implication, blog less).  Tania also touches on this issue of frequency, and voices another of my concerns, that of reader expectations:

"I feel a very faint bat’s squeak of obligation. This is nuts, of course, but sometimes I do not fight my nuttier imperatives...You come here, and give me the gift of your time. I feel that in return, I must give you something, as many days as I can. I sometimes feel bizarrely guilty when I go missing in action, even though there is usually the most excellent excuse of life getting in the way."

Source: zazzle.com

Is Bonkers too British?

I am mindful that quite a number of my recent posts have been British in their focus - the review of Iris Prima, the upcoming Penhaligon's release, the ones of Bex Londoner SE1 and of Time to Draw The Raffle Numbers from Sarah McCartney's quirky perfume house, 4160 Tuesdays.  Not to mention my review of the decanting supplies situation over here or my account of a visit to a perfumery in Sidmouth, Devon, though that did - most unexpectedly! - unleash memories of happy childhood holidays for one US-based reader, Blacknall Allen of aperfumeblog.  

Now according to my Google stats, only about 30% of my readers hail from the UK. Some 50% are from the USA, with the balance made up from a whole clatter of countries, notably Germany, Russia and France.  So put like that, I don't appear to be making much effort to gear my content to my audience... ;-( Though you could argue that the population of the USA is 5 times that of the UK, whereas my US readers are not even double my British ones, so I do in fact have a British bias after all!  And the bottom line is that I am British, so it is natural that I would wish to cover local perfume houses and stores, just as some of my favourite US bloggers feature a number of indie perfumers, notably a bunch based on the Pacific West Coast.  All of which is just to say to overseas readers everywhere that I really do appreciate your interest, and sincerely hope you aren't too deflected by the British bias.  

St Chad's, Stafford ~ Source: geograph.co.uk

The infernal faff of Blogger comments

This section is dedicated to Birgit of Olfactoria's Travels, whom I am delighted to have introduced to that most useful of words, 'faff', the other day. Earlier in this post I alluded to the fact that a modicum of effort is involved in following a Blogspot blog, however, this pales into insignificance compared to the annoying protocol associated with the Blogger comments system.  Readers have reported all manner of obstacles to me down the years: there's the need (sometimes, but apparently not always) to have a Google account - though hopefully there are other options on Bonkers - please do say if not.  Then there is possible incompatibility between the commenting software and certain electronic devices - iPads have been cited as a prime example.  Adding insult to injury there's that infamous phenomenon known as 'Blogger ate my comment', where one's carefully typed thoughts suddenly vanish in a puff of blank box.  And lastly but not leastly, there is the everpresent spectre of the gobbledygook par excellence that is the captcha.  Very occasionally it tosses up fortuitously apt and amusing offerings that perfectly match the blog post on which the reader is attempting to comment, but mostly it just hunkers down there like a sullen gatekeeper, spewing out its indecipherable nonsense - and yes, both letters AND numbers have the capacity to fox even those with pin-sharp vision and an enduring love of puzzles.

Source: singularityhub.com

To all those readers who have been baffled or frustrated by captchas on Bonkers, may I extend a blanket apology, and take this opportunity to thank those who have persevered and managed to comment regardless.  I will say that latterly the captchas have seemed to regain a bit of clarity, so if you are minded to comment in principle, it is worth quickly looking to see how unfathomable the captcha is on any given day, for you may just strike lucky.  I would not, on the other hand, expect anyone to be arsed to make repeated attempts to second guess the more arcane formations Blogger has been known to generate.

Which leads me neatly to my last point, which is to mention a small giveaway, to mark the above milestones and also perhaps the fact that I recently passed the 500,000 page view mark.  So I figured that as the summer is all but over (in this neck of the woods, anyway), I would try to stall its passing just a little bit longer by offering a 5ml decant (or thereabouts) of any of the following summer-appropriate fragrances from my collection:

L'Artisan Séville à L'Aube 

Guerlain Aqua Allegoria Lys Soleia

Tom Ford Black Orchid Voile de Fleur

Penhaligon's Orange Blossom Cologne

Penhaligon's Castile 

Annick Goutal Le Chèvrefeuille

Olfactive Studio Lumière Blanche

OR

A decant of La Perla edp in case my recent review has piqued anyone's curiosity!

OR

If you don't like the sound of any of those, let me know, and I am sure that in the event of your winning the draw I could probably sort you out with something that hit the spot instead. 

The giveaway is open to anyone anywhere (as ever, we fly in the face of postal regulations!)  Just leave a comment indicating your preferred fragrance by close of play on Friday 6th September.  And please feel free to have a good old moan about captchas or to flag up any wishes about content you'd like to see on Bonkers in future.  There is of course a very real risk that I'll just keep writing about wispy gauzy fragrances and Strange Things on Poles, but it is always worth a shot.

NB You don't have to become a follower to qualify! ;-)

And finally, I have to confess that following the redecoration of the spare bedroom, my twin perfume fridges have been decommissioned and relegated to the garage...  As I type, my perfume collection diaspora is regrouping in plastic containers in the dark (and relatively cool) cupboard under the stairs.  Their next move is not yet certain, but I will continue to publicly document their continued displacement round the house.  

Now this doesn't mean I am growing disenchanted with my stash, just that the fridges would be an eyesore now in that room.  Moreover, I have taken to sleeping there at weekends - for a change of scenery really - and can no longer tolerate the intermittent whirr in the night, even with ear plugs in.  Maybe I am becoming more detached from my collection, who knows?  Hmm, maybe my obsession with paint is gaining the upper hand after all....;-)