The Scent Crimes Series: No 14 - Stealth perfuming roses

Goodness, there seem to have been a fair number of scent crime posts lately - either that or I am just becoming more irritable in my old age...but here we are at No 14 already.

Some readers may remember my post last year, which could perhaps be described as a paean to the roses in my garden, and the variety of their scents. Okay, one or two didn't appear to smell of anything - for reasons I never did quite fathom - but mostly they did, with the peachy-pink and yellow ones coming out on top of the fragrant league table.

Nine months on, my garden is still going through its kaleidoscopic spring flower display of cherry blossom and clematis, with the odd splash of scarlet from an errant tulip, or bank of yellow from wild poppies. I did, however, have a strange encounter with a rose recently - in an Indian restaurant, to be precise.  A group of us had gone there last Saturday night, and the customary ritual at the end of our meal of hot towels, a complimentary tot of some unspecified liqueur, and After Eight Mints was swiftly followed by the bestowing of a single long-stemmed yellow rose on the ladies of our party, to wit my friend Clare and me.

Well, the first thing someone like me is going to do when presented with a rose is have a jolly good sniff, isn't it?  So imagine my surprise when my nose was greeted by a very artificial-smelling vanilla scent - of the same calibre as those cheap tea lights you get in pound shops, if you know what I mean.  Now I love vanilla as a note, but this was a very poor rendition, trust me. So I immediately made a moue of disappointment and instinctively thrust the flower in the general direction of the waiter. 'Look, it seems to have had perfume sprayed on it!' I exclaimed in a tone of shocked concern.  The waiter was inscrutable on this point, and promptly disappeared into the kitchen, giving just the ghost of a shrug as he went.  But I knew the restaurant had to be responsible...for I have protested my own innocence before now, following an act of stealth perfuming.  I am thinking of the time I spritzed ex-Mr Bonkers's side of the bed with L'Artisan's L'Eté en Douce to extract humorous revenge for a slur on my laundering capabilities (it being a very laundry musky style of scent, you see).  The full escapade is recorded here.

Source: wilko.com

Meanwhile, Clare agreed that her rose also smelt odd and had plainly been tampered with, but we dutifully carried our flowers home, whereupon I put mine in water and went to bed.  The next morning I came downstairs to find the unpleasantly cheap vanilla scent still permeating the immediate surroundings of the dining room table.  Moreover, the petals looked visibly withered and darkened in colour.  'Oh dear', I thought to myself, 'the aromachemicals in the fragrance must have got at the petals in some way - unless the rose was not long for this world anyway.'  Deep down though, I suspected the perfume of having hastened the poor plant's decline, but maybe some horticulturalists out there can confirm this either way.

So I have to ask - have you ever come across an artificially scented rose - in an Indian restaurant or anywhere for that matter?  

And if so, in your opinion is the spritzing of roses with perfume injurious to the health of the flower?

Hmm, I must say this incident certainly brought the message home that in certain instances - on plants as on the public at large - 'no perfume is better than some'...

The Scent Crimes Series: No 13 - Suggestive storage in bathroom showrooms

A few redeeming points for colour coordination

I am in between work projects at the moment, so as is my wont in such circumstances, I thought I would conjure up a domestic project instead, to wit refurbishing my bathroom. For I have a scratched cast iron bath that is 104 years old at a conservative guess, an extinct model of lavatory that had the local plumbers merchant poring over their catalogue of 'archived designs' to locate a compatible loo seat, plus the bathroom is painted an aggressive shade of peppermint topped off with a mood-disturbing ceiling of bottle green.

Since formally embarking on the research phase associated with all my renovation projects, I have learnt all manner of new arcane vocabulary pertaining to sanitary fixtures and fittings. Would you believe there are such things as 'comfort height close coupled slow close WCs', as well as the disconcerting 'wall hung' variety?  Then there are 'flat bottom bottle traps', 'pop up wastes', 'slipper baths', 'offset quadrant showers', 'sail panels', and my personal favourite, 'rigid risers with concealed elbow'.

In addition to studying styles and materials on the Internet, I have been visiting a number of bathroom showrooms (five so far!), because I am compelled to subject all potential bathtub contenders in my price range to the Bonkers 'knock' test, ensuring that even the near ubiquitous acrylic models are sufficiently reinforced so as not to sound cheap and flimsy.  I have also been - quite unselfconsciously! - lying in quite a few baths, in order to figure out the optimum height for reading and drinking wine while having a good long soak.  (This is all predicated on a new boiler, I should perhaps mention, for the benefit of readers to whom I have historically bemoaned my erratic hot water output and associated poor reading rate.)  The ledge of the bath must also be able to accommodate a wine glass.  So many things to consider - I tell you, baths are not unlike beds on the comfort front.

They may be empty (and partly J-Lo) but there's a principle at stake!

And in the course of my research - both in showrooms and flicking through brochures - I have been shocked and concerned to see legions of perfume bottles posing in bathroom cabinets, perched on the shelves of vanity units, and sitting pretty on the corner of baths - they are simply everywhere!  Admittedly some of the bottles were empty, but even if 'no actual perfume was harmed' in the staging of these product shots / room sets, it is sending out completely the wrong message to the public.  Anyone would think this is precisely where you should keep your perfume bottles, but of course we know better...

Niches of steamy doom

A few redeeming points for this bottle of Angel being in its box

It is over four years since I wrote my opening post in the Scent Crimes series about the evils of bathroom storage.  I am sorry to report that it has only had 110 page views in all that time, so in terms of the task of convincing the public at large to keep their fragrances in their boxes in a cool dark - and dry - place, I fear our perfume community has still got it 'all to do', as they say...

Brochure behaving badly

Another brochure - a few redeeming points for having a sliding door

It just remains to wish everyone a Happy Easter weekend - I am off to Sidmouth again for a few days, and will be back next week with any fragrant observations from my trip, plus a review of Vero Kern's Rozy edp!