Brief Despatch From A Bonkers Tube Trip

I am down to London for a few days on a couple of scented missions, and also to visit some non-fumehead friends. Now I didn't actually get here on the tube, as the title may suggest, but there are a lot of tube trips involved now I am here, and I am positively caning my Oyster card. The weekend got off to a bad start when the train I was scheduled to take from Stafford was cancelled, owing to a lack of crew. "A lack of crew"? Were they all mysteriously struck down with the same virus? Were they travelling to the rail depot together and got caught up in a massive traffic jam? Or was just the driver available perhaps, but not the rest of the crew, because I would have happily settled for that. There are no refreshments on London Midland trains anyway, and the conductor doesn't always check tickets even when they are fully staffed. Whatever the extent or otherwise of this "lack", they knocked my train on the head regardless, and in turn I had to cancel my meeting with Linda Pilkington of Ormonde Jayne, whom I was due to see at the Old Bond Street store that afternoon. I will hopefully catch her next time I am down, but it was a shame. I was preternaturally smart for one thing. As some of you may know, the working from home thing means I am often in my pyjamas for much if not all of the day. But yesterday I was dressed early, in what Mrs Bonkers Senior would call a "tidy outfit", topped off with coordinated accessories!

To be continued...

"Bag Of Hell" Update: Holding The Hellish And Rehoming The Ho-Hum

In my latest post about swapping on Makeupalley, I puzzled over how to offload my "bag of hell", namely the hoard of uncongenial samples I have somehow managed to accumulate over the course of 70 odd swaps.

Spurred on by the comments from readers, I made contact with the Domestic Abuse Liaison Officer at our local police station, and yesterday entrusted her with a shoebox full of scent. In the end, I baulked at giving away samples that I consider frankly horrid - these I am holding on to pending a "Bad Perfume Week" group blog event at some point in the future. You guys agreed with me that these women had probably been through enough without their nostrils suffering a fresh "assault".

So in the end I gave them every designer carded sample I could lay my hands on, of which I either had a spare/full bottle/mini, or which I decided I was probably unlikely to get round to using. Additionally, about half of the bag of hell is on its way to a new life - a mixture of designer and niche scents in mostly 1ml sample vials, which I considered "meh", but which just might be someone else's cup of tea. It turns out that they weren't really that hellish in the first place... And now the remaining, considerably smaller, bag doesn't offend me nearly as much.

A big thank you is due to those of you who encouraged me to bite the bullet and simply give my unwanted samples away - I feel much better for doing so and should have done it sooner!

Atelier Cologne Oolang Infini And Other Infinity-Type Things

I very rarely win anything - where chance is involved, I mean. Every now and then I might win something on merit, like the schools scrapbook project that I entered in 1970, sponsored by the Australia High Commission. I distinctly remember my somewhat eclectic prize of a shoehorn and a packet of butterscotch. But raffles, lotteries, premium bonds, that sort of thing - not a peep. And then, to my surprise, I went and won not one but two prize draws organised by Olfacta of Olfactarama! My first haul consisted of decants of Halston Couture, Les Rosines Rose d'Homme and Opium Fleur de Shanghai, while on this most recent occasion I won a set of Atelier Cologne samples, accompanied by their evocative "photo story" postcards in greaseproof paper envelopes (or glassines, to any philatelists out there).

I have tried all the Atelier range now several times, and my favourite is Oolang Infini, though Bois Blonds comes in a close second. They were both created by the same perfumer, Jérome Epinette.

OOLANG INFINI

Notes: bergamot, neroli, oolong tea, jasmine, blond leather, tobacco flower, gaiac wood and vetiver.

I was intrigued at the reference to blue tea, but it turns out that it isn't actually blue in colour. It is called blue because it is in between green and black teas in terms of its strength and the way it is processed. On reflection, it might have been less confusing just to call it "medium". And its production method also sounds interesting, involving "a unique process, including withering under the strong sun and oxidation before curling and twisting".

Sounds like me when I've overdone it on the sun lounger. Well, the withering bit for sure. Since I turned 40, I'd say. Though I do have a friend a few years younger than me who still dares to engage in "unprotected sunbathing", slathering on the olive oil and lying in a field all day. A one-woman crop circle, she is.

But I digress...The special thing about the Atelier colognes is their strength - between 12-20% - ie more like EDP concentration than typical eaux de cologne at 5% or so. Oolang Infini is the most delicate of the quintet, but even after 8 hours it is radiating a woody-vetivery, muzzy jasmine warmth. I get a delicate tea note and a brisk burst of citrus and vetiver in the opening, before the scent segues into a dreamy, limpid accord - not aquatic exactly - yet it feels translucent and very still, like a millpond. The tobacco, leather and gaiac notes are so muted that they barely ripple the surface. Picture if you will a leather folio bobbing in a pond. Assuming it would bob, that is. As the leather got progressively saturated, I suppose it might actually sink. But in my mind's eye it is bobbing, and there are faint plumes of mist/smoke hovering above the pond.

Now tobacco and leather are the last notes I would associate with an oriental style of scent, yet somehow the meditative quality of Oolang Infini manages to conjure up an oriental backdrop for me, rather than the Roger Ackroyd study ambience of the postcard. Okay, I will split the difference and settle on a writing room in Japan. For some reason gaiac wood also sounds oriental to me, though I see that it originated in the West Indies, and is now grown in Central and Southern America as well as Ghana and India.

And along the way I tumbled to the bizarre fact that gaiac wood was the go-to treatment for syphilis in the 16th century, as depicted in this painting by the Flemish artist, Johannes Stradanus.

So, having jotted down my spontaneous impressions of this fragrance - with just the postcard image of the typewriter to go on - I went and found a YouTube clip where Sylvie Ganter and Christophe Cervasel, the founders of Atelier Cologne, talk about the inspiration behind the scent. Oolang Infini is the "baby" of the bunch, the "wild child", who can do as he pleases. Hmm, maybe that is why I am particularly drawn to it? : - ) And this baby also happens to be a writer, sitting at a typewriter waiting for inspiration to flow...

"His breath fogged the window while he watched new snow fall on the frozen lake. He came here to catch up on his writing and escape the city. At that moment, the fireplace crackled, ice settled in his glass and his thoughts made their way back to the ink."

The last line is a slightly more imaginative rendition of the literal translation of "sa plume reprend vie" as "his pen came to life again".

In the video, Ganter and Cervasel also set the record straight about the nature of the blue tea. Apparently, it combines the freshness of green tea and the smokiness of black tea, and it is this central and unusual note which makes Oolang Infini the most "mysterious" scent in their collection.

Now, while I have been testing the Atelier scents, other Infinity-type things have "mysteriously" crossed my path...Firstly, my good friend Lovethescents put in a request for a hand knitted "circle scarf". I initially assumed this was a scarf with spots on it, but a quick google revealed that it is in fact a "Moebius" or "Infinity" scarf, a new trend in neckwear of which I was only dimly aware. Unlike a conventional scarf, that you just wind round and round, Dr Who-style, - assuming you are not doing that Italian sideways knot manoeuvre or the backwards cowboy thingy, or, God forbid, a spinsterish woggle - the two ends are sewn together to make a gigantic, half twisted oval loop. Or some of them are gigantic, at least. You could end up looking as weighed down as a post for catching quoits, or those tribeswomen in the National Geographic, though admittedly some of them have the added discomfort of saucers in their ears.

And there are different modes of construction for these various Infinity scarves, of which the most tricky looks to be the "knit a volcano/walnut whip in the round" method illustrated. I think I will give that a miss and go for the simpler "start at one end and keep knitting till the desired length is reached" technique.

And also around the same time, I spotted this headline in my local paper: "REDUCED PRICES TO SWIM ON HORIZON". It is actually about a plan to offer the under 16s cheaper rates to a local leisure centre, but you can understand why I thought it was something to do with an Infinity pool. Given the amount of council tax we pay, every home in the Borough should have one really.




Photo of tea from cupmakerinfo.com, photo of writing room from picasaweb.com, photo of 16th century painting from flickr.com, photo of scarf from spudandchloe.com, other photos my own.

Giles Coren - Boondocks-Basher And Dream Lunch Date

I enjoy reading Saturday's edition of The Times. I don't always read it on the Saturday it is published, mind. The carpet is carpeted with unread sections of The Times from several weeks ago. Mixed in with those are bits of the Guardian from the Saturday before last, when I got up too late to catch my preferred paper. And the purchase of today's edition of The Times merely adds to this stealthy accretion of half read newsprint. It wasn't always like this - but since I started writing my own blog and enjoying other people's, my consumption of papers and novels has plummeted. I foolishly asked Mr Bonkers yesterday to name my top three faults and, quick as a flash, he replied:

1. Spending too much time on the Internet
2. Spending too much time on the Internet
3. Spending too much time on the Internet

So, you know, I may have to review my allocation of leisure time at some point... But meanwhile back to our muttons, and an article by Giles Coren that I did find time to read last week. Giles Coren, son of the late Alan Coren, Punch contributor and Sage of Cricklewood, is very funny. He is possibly not quite as funny as my all-time funniest journalist, Caitlin Moran, who also writes for The Times, but he is pretty darn hilarious. However, his coruscating wit can be near the knuckle and below the belt, which is quite a feat if like me you usually keep your hands at keyboard height. And while he is doing all of that, he also manages to sail very close to the wind - so close indeed that he is actually in the wind, busily putting it up other people. Two of his most vitriolic hatchet jobs were the columns he wrote about skiers and dog owners. I would link to these articles if The Times hadn't taken it upon itself to erect a paywall.

And in last week's column there was a telling throwaway line - I'm paraphrasing here, as the paper went out with the recycling and I can't verify the exact wording - but the gist of it was that anyone with an ounce of intellectual credibility moves to the capital at their earliest opportunity. The rest of the country was dismissed as the "boondocks". I had not come across the term before, but it is clearly another term for "cultural desert". A cursory glance at Wikipedia bears this out:

"The term boondocks refers to a remote, usually brushy rural area, or to a remote city or town that is considered unsophisticated. The expression was introduced to English by American military personnel serving in the Philippines during the early years of the 20th century. It derives from the Tagalog word 'bundok', meaning 'mountain'. According to military historian Paul Kramer, the term had attached to it 'connotations of bewilderment and confusion', due to the guerrilla nature of the warfare in which the soldiers were engaged."

Now Caitlin Moran, my favourite Times journalist, is from Wolverhampton, and I feel sure that she would never trash most of the country in such a sweeping, "broad brushy rural" manner. And if my memory serves me, Janice Turner is from Rotherham and Carol Midgley from Burnley. They may all be living in London now of course, but I still don't think they would condone this boondocks jibe.

Now I will cut Giles Coren some slack, because he has just given his baby daughter the sensible name of Kitty, rather than Allegra or Cosima or Calliope, as you might expect from a non-boondocks dweller. And for any humorist - or perhaps any writer - being provocative comes with the territory. As Michael Cunningham, author of "The Hours", sums it up:

"A certain slightly cruel disregard for the feelings of living people is simply part of the package. I think a writer, if he's any good, is not an entirely benign entity in the world."

So, after my annoyance about the use of this derogatory term had subsided, I decided to roll with the punches and let it go. Sticks and stones and whatever. And anyway, I know that it is actually a smart move to live up north, as the cost of living is so much cheaper than in the capital. Why, you can buy a whole terrace for the price of a glass of Merlot in a trendy bar in Hoxton!

But somehow this flip aside in an otherwise entertaining column managed to fester away in my brain, causing it to scramble my synapses in surreally surprising ways. Then out popped the following dream, epically combining subjects as diverse as blogging, the Internet, mental health, immigration, the recently enlarged European Union, food storage, perfume, gastronomy, technology, marine life and disappointment. Why, Wikio's filing system would have a field day with it!

So....in this dream Giles Coren is a practising psychotherapist, and I have checked in for a session to counteract my blogging and general Internet habit. In the consulting room is a big table, and GC is sitting slap bang in the middle, like Alan Sugar in the The Apprentice, with some kind of sidekick/friend/adviser/"eyes and ears" next to him. Now I wasn't expecting a friend, I thought to myself, especially not one who was biblically bearded and kept sniggering as I outlined the reason for my visit. GC himself just smiled inscrutably all the while. And then I spotted another person in the room, sitting cross-legged on the floor at one end of the table. He was surrounded by uncut loaves of white bread and empty Tesco carrier bags, and I knew instinctively that he was from Lithuania, and that if he didn't put most of those loaves in a freezer sharpish, there would be a lot of wasted bread tomorrow.

I hadn't got far with my explanation of my Internet addiction when I decided to tackle GC about the boondocks comment. Whereupon he promptly apologised and offered to take me out to lunch. I brightened considerably at this prospect, for GC is also a noted restaurant critic with access to London's best tables, so I was clearly going to be in for some top scram.

Then the dream cut to one of those long, thin, ultra modern restaurants - a bit like a sushi bar but without the sushi. Though with fish, as it turned out. We were sitting at the bar on high stools, and at one point I leaned over to sniff GC's cologne, but he saw me coming and spun away in time. It was a very forward gesture on my part, I know, especially between therapist and patient, but we fumeheads are driven to sniff strangers with the same compulsion that drives dogs to sniff legs and lamp posts.

Then all of a sudden GC whipped out from his jacket pocket a pair of what looked like 3-D glasses, but they were in fact Blu-Ray glasses, so named because, with them on, you could look into an empty plastic laundry basket (which had mysteriously appeared at our feet at this point), and see an aquarium of fish. There may even have been rays in there, but GC was hogging the glasses. They were so cleverly designed, apparently, that the water didn't run out of the holes in the basket. And then the cat miaowed, wanting her breakfast, and I woke up.

So I never sorted out my Internet addiction. I never got to eat lunch. Hey, I never even saw the fish. I did, however, get an apology out of Giles Coren for the boondocks remark. A retraction in print might be too much to ask. "In your dreams", as they say...


UPDATE: On a whim, I sent the link to this post to the man himself, and today received a humorous reply. GC wasn't apologetic as such, but he wasn't angry with me either for bashing the boondocks-basher back. And if he had been angry, he would have had all sorts of coping strategies at the ready from his book on Anger Management. The gist of the email was that most of the journalists writing for The Times at the moment are from the regions, and he therefore feels the need to defend his beleaguered metropolitan corner: "I am the last of a dying breed".


Photo of Giles Coren from Treehugger.com, photo of Boondocks from thatgrapejuice.net, photo of the North/South divide and of a terrace from flickr.com, photo of a bar from purves-contracts.co.uk

Grès Cabochard & Creed Jasmal: A Baby Boomer Birth Year, Bottled - New Post on Ça Fleure Bon

As the records of my birth are few and rather blurry for the most part, I decided to get in touch with my scented roots, and check out the perfumes launched in my birth year of 1959. You can read the upshot over on Ça Fleure Bon today. It's a bit of a Morton's Fork, as you will see...

Oh, and there is a prize draw to win a bottle of Creed Jasmal, the jasmine floral created for Natalie Wood in the same year I was released. : - )


Photo of me finding my feet - or not finding my feet, even - from the family archives.

More Tales From Makeupalley: My Bag (And Box!) Of Hell, And Going The Extra Vial...

The swap scene on Makeupalley has its own complex etiquette. One of my earliest posts on the subject (and there have been a few) focuses on the curious custom of enclosing a boiled sweet, and touches briefly on the subject of other freebies.

"As well as confectionery, swappers often pop in extra perfume samples - from your 'wish list' if you are very lucky, or from their 'wish-to-be-shot-of list' if you are not. Along with the sweets, some of these less aspirational samples commute regularly to and from America."

After just a few months on MUA, it is clear that I already viewed the calibre of these samples with a jaded eye, and they have continued to prey on my mind on and off ever since. Today, my collection of these "less aspirational" samples has achieved a critical mass - or an uncritical mass, more like - for their growing numbers in no way validates their existence. Rather, they have become the scent equivalent of a bloated albatross that oppresses me emotionally and occupies a disproportionate amount of space, split currently between a cardboard box and a tatty plastic bag under the bed. Out of sight, but sadly never far from my mind...

Now it goes without saying that I have tried to lose these samples by every means I could think of - I have gone through the motions of adding them to my Swap List on MUA, a laborious and largely pointless task. Seriously, who is going to be out there actively looking for a sample of FCUK perfume, anything by Joop!, or some very obscure (and to my nose, peculiar) scent like Demeter New Zealand or Index Pomegranate Anise by Fresh? I have also received quite a few vials that have leaked, evaporated or gone off, and others with labels that have run beyond recognition, or with the wrong name written on them to start with. Such errors are more likely to be due to a slip of the Dynamo than any deliberate intention to mislead, though one particular scent - a "faux-Ajne" - did give me pause for thought.

So no wonder no one wants these. Most swappers I do trades with are after decants of Roja Dove and Penhaligon's, high end Chanels and Guerlains. They like the same things I like, pretty much.

Now I know what you are thinking - those samples don't look at all bad in the photo there. Yes, but in the photo - crucially - you can't tell what they are. At that distance, a vial of Gucci Envy Me looks as niche as you like!

And you might also be thinking that I am lucky to have all those samples, and should just knuckle down and appreciate what I've got. How would it be if I was in prison, say? A more sensorily deprived environment couldn't be imagined, compounded by derisory rates of pocket money - how I might savour every last one of those vials under those very different circumstances! This is beginning to sound like my father's argument when I wouldn't clear my plate as a kid: "Think of the starving children in Biafra". It didn't work then and it isn't working now, I'm afraid - the darn things just upset me. Yes, I may be a prisoner after all, though not a grateful one. And this little lot is my chain and ball...

Yet I can't quite bring myself to throw any of these samples away, clinging to the forlorn hope that a male swapper might come along at any moment and snap up Davidoff Adventure or those posey new D & Gs. And there must be armies of Tweens out there who would bite my hand off for Black XS and that Avril Lavigne.

I have periodically tried using the Wish List search function on MUA to see if anyone out there is combing the site for these wallflower scents, but the "no matches found" message gets depressing after a while. And I also puzzle over the sheer scale of the problem and how it has come about. It may actually tip me over into reviewing my own extras policy. For the most part, I give people w/l extras in swaps where I can - one or two, say - and I may add a couple of non-w/l samples to that, which will usually be niche; these will be things I think they might like or could hopefully pass along fairly easily if not. Then if I am swapping with someone who has no w/l to speak of - or does have one, but not with anything on it that I own, such that I am a bit stumped as to what to send them - I tend to go off-piste in my choice of extras, sometimes descending into the realms of silliness, I freely concede.

The final trigger for this post was a chance inquiry by a swapper recently about a couple of non-w/l extras I had included - two different strengths of the same niche scent. She asked me in all innocence which I preferred, and I was immediately stricken with remorse, indeed I have yet to formulate a reply. For the truth is...I didn't care for either of them...that was why I was giving them away. Oh no - now I have gone and done that very thing of sending something from my "wish-to-be-shot-of-list"!

So this unwittingly rattling question has prompted a flurry of moral introspection as to the ethics of extras. If they are not from a person's wish list, should they be niche, if the swapper clearly prefers niche? And if they are niche, must you as the sender also like them? Is it okay to send things that you don't care for if you are pretty sure the swapper will love them? But hey, can you ever be sure? And are there ANY circumstances in a swap under which you can job off your niche OR designer dross that you don't think anyone in their right minds could possibly care for? Well, there must be, surely, or I wouldn't be in this position! : - ) But there again, one man's Dolce Vita is another man's Poison, so all the swappers I have ever dealt with may well have followed this unwritten code to the letter and only sent things they like - it is just that I don't happen to share their tastes completely, though we invariably coincide when it comes to the main focus of the trade.

Yet, surely the whole point behind swapping IS to match your rejects to someone else's lemmings? I'm afraid this remains an elusive ideal for me. I most commonly trade scents I already love but have spare capacity of, for other scents I like at least equally - or mostly equally. It's a slippery slope if you start agreeing to swaps for fear of causing offence, not unlike marrying someone just because they ask you to.

But I don't wish to paint too gloomy a picture, because I have refined and diversified my scent collection immeasurably thanks to MUA and the majority of thoughtful and generous swappers out there. Some of them with the most exquisite wrapping skills. Just this week I fell hard for not one but THREE scents that were extras in swaps that I would never have thought to try otherwise (of which more anon). At their best, those sorts of "random acts of kindness" on MUA are simply priceless.

No, I don't want to get things out of perspective here, for, on balance, swapping is a fun and low cost way to access a much wider range of perfumes than one otherwise might be able to, whether for reasons of cost or geography. But the bag - and the box - that I have somehow managed to acquire still haunt me. : - (

Now my 200th post is fast approaching, and I had always intended to hold a giveaway to mark that particular milestone. So what shall it be, I wonder? No, no, no, nooooo, I couldn't possibly...


Photo of bag from hell from punkdimage.com, photo of furry bag from thefashionpolice.net, photo of poultry bag from retailhellunderground.com, other photos my own.

Valentine's Post On Ça Fleure Bon

Over on Ça Fleure Bon today, nine contributors write about their Scents of Seduction , and there's also a 14-piece fragrance draw. Mr Bonkers and I have been together for over 15 years, so the notion of a Scent of Seduction is a bit of a misnomer in our household. But if I had to go back and woo him all over again, fragrance clearly wouldn't be the way to go!

We both received two cards this morning - we can always count on one from the cat - but our choices were not without incident. Mr Bonkers picked the same card for me as last year, and ended up selling it on to Charlie. It was one of those pricey ones with things stuck on, and the cat wanted to draw my attention to just how many Iams crunchies had changed paws in the transaction. So she managed to peel off the price label from the cellophane wrapper (after vole disembowelling it was a breeze!), and affix it under her spidery signature, which does not seem to improve with annual practice.

Meanwhile, I accidentally sent Mr Bonkers a birthday card instead of a Valentine, but it had heart shaped chocolates all over it so, hey, it was an easy enough mistake to make... : - )