Twentieth Night: Taking The Christmas Tree Down And A Tale Of Two Festive Perfume Cards

So I just finished my project late on Friday night, and yesterday I was a whirling - well, maybe more of a slowly twirling - dervish of activity: dishes washed and tumble drier emptied from Tuesday, plants watered, a load of washing on, prescription collected and....Xmas tree and decorations finally taken down(!). Not the one in the living room window facing the street, I hasten to add, which Mr Bonkers had already consigned to the garage in a timely manner. No, I mean the less conspicuous one in the conservatory at the back of the house, which hopefully only a handful of neighbours will have noticed after its due date for removal...

"That's shockingly slack of you!" I hear you cry, and it's fair comment. I may even have just heaped a year's worth of bad luck on my head by this failure to follow the tradition of taking down the tree and its trappings on Twelfth rather than Twentieth Night. But orderly routine and compliance with social convention (on any front!) - while not exactly strangers to Bonkers Towers - are certainly not seen there on more than an occasional pop-in basis.

And given that the paraphernalia of Christmas is still fresh in my mind, I will take this opportunity to post some pictures of my presents from Mr Bonkers this year: a corporate Christmas card from Chanel (sent to one of its staff, who - as we learnt in post-purchase correspondence - has since left and had the foresight to stick it on Ebay!), and a Christmas tree-shaped perfume card, also from Chanel.

Following a brisk bidding war, the Christmas card - with its pretty dangly gold charms of snowflakes, perfume bottles and the intertwined "C"s of the Chanel logo - ended up costing Mr Bonkers as much as a bottle of Coco Mademoiselle. However, it is a much more desirable object in my eyes, not least because I am of course already sorted on the Coco Mademoiselle front with a couple of bottles of Lidl Suddenly Madame Glamour. : - )

So yes, the card will come out every year and take pride of place on the mantlepiece, and I shall continue to puzzle over who the signatory may be...If anyone can make out that name and knows who they are, I would be most curious to know!

Then the second card - shaped like a Christmas tree, and fashioned out of a collage of bottles of No 5, No 19, Coco and Allure - is very small by comparison at 4.25 inches tall. This is because it is in fact a rather elaborate fragrance blotter. I am so used to the ubiquitous long white blank ones, that I forget that there are also these more colourful preprinted ones in assorted shapes and sizes.

A quick scurry through the Interwebs has revealed that perfume cards date from the late 1800s and were originally impregnated with the fragrance, though this one is not very old. Well, not older than Allure at least, which places it in the mid-90s onwards.

Funnily enough, I recently came across the Versace Yellow Diamond blotter pictured below, and kept it because it struck me as rather impressive - more so than the fragrance, certainly - but by and large I don't tend to encounter anything more patterned than the normal white strips, with at most the name of the perfume house or the store printed on them.

Now it turns out that the seller of the perfume card is a journalist and published author called Kathy Flood, who has another book coming out shortly on the subject of faces in jewellery*. Kathy lives in the mid-West, but has also spent time in Europe, where she studied French like me. Her Ebay store is also mostly devoted to vintage jewellery. So she sounds an all-round interesting character, and we have got into a bit of an email exchange since the tree card arrived, which is a nice spin off of the gift itself. Kathy reckons it is quite rare, and I have certainly not managed to google anything similar on collectors' sites.

For yes, there seems to be a thriving special interest based around collecting these speciality blotters, as well as perfume-themed postcards and other promotional bits and bobs.

And in terms of actual samples of perfume, as opposed to unfragranced blotters or other printed matter, I have now learnt that "liquitouch" is the correct term for those credit card-sized plasticky samples, which include a small amount of perfume encased by a thin film. Then of course there are the peel-back fragrance strips you get in magazine ads, while somehow I have also managed to acquire a "blister pack" of DKNY Delicious Night (which looks for all the world like one of those plastic bubbles disposable contact lens come in). So when you think about it, there is a whole host of promotional perfume delivery systems of which I am only vaguely aware, being so focused on getting my mitts on a proper sample vial!

Hmm...I do hope I haven't suddenly uncovered another rabbit hole down which to fall, having so far largely managed to tune out to the twin allure of vintage and extrait versions of scents. I note that one of the books Kathy has written is about the whole business of collecting. Called Things, it features a chapter on fragrance! As for our perfume cards, there is even a name for people who collect such things - or there is in French at least - and I daresay the English is the same word:

OLFCARTOPHILE

I tried googling it, mind, and all I got was "olfactophilia", a type of fetish into which I shall leave you to make your own inquiries... : - )


UPDATE: Following a suggestion from Cymbaline in the oomments below, I contacted noted wordsmith Pyramus via his blog, Cephalogenic, about the origins of the word "olfcartophile", and on Monday (16.1) he kindly devoted a whole post entitled "Card Games" to his reply!


So, I have to ask - and I know I am rather backward in coming forward when it comes to asking readers questions...

Are you already - or do you reckon you have you the potential to become - an olfcartophile?

What promotional perfume delivery systems have you encountered, and what are their relative merits?

Do you come across many of these fancier perfume blotters, and if so, did any of them smell?

Could a more striking style of perfume blotter ever boost sales of a given scent, or is it just a bit of harmless point of sale fun?

PS The other three cards pictured were extras that came with my Chanel tree!


**The Jewelry Face Book of Pins & Pendants: Vintage Visages

Bleary-Nosed Sniffing At Birmingham Airport: "Eyeing" Candy, Molton Brown Perfumes, And Floris Mahon Leather & Sirena

I went out to Germany and back yesterday for one meeting. I don't recommend it - I was up and abroad (quite literally!) before I was properly awake. And that is such a quick turnaround that you are never quite “in” the foreign country in question. There is a slightly unreal quality to the day’s events, which started for me when the alarm went off at 5.20am - a time which is just as much a foreign country to me as where I was headed...

And it seems hard to credit that I was wandering around the duty free perfume hall of Birmingham airport at 7.30am! That’s a full hour before I normally think of opening my eyes – and sometimes even when I do, I promptly think better of it again.

All of which is just to explain that I was in a bit of a daze yesterday as I cruised the fragrance fixtures on auto-pilot. Yes, I can say with authority that I have no interest in testing perfume, or giving it much thought at all, before the "nine o’clock watershed" – a.m., I mean. Yet even in my dopey state I couldn’t fail to spot a very good deal on a set of Prada Candy perfume and body lotion, and on cue I did that picking up and fondling routine again before putting the box back on the shelf. It wasn’t so much the price as the weight I baulked at, given that I was going to be on foot all day. Also, this week I have already treated myself to a hot pink and black satin Candy iPhone holder(!).

This irresistible and impractical accessory was a GWP on a large bottle of Candy that was going for a whopping 89 euros at Schiphol airport last weekend. I wrestled that lemming to the ground and beat the life out of it with my boarding pass, but the hankering - for the free gift at least - remained, and I didn’t hesitate when I saw it for sale separately on Ebay the other day for just £14 delivered. So that is my fix of Candy for this week. Now it won’t protect my iPhone against any impact stronger than a stray hair or bit of lint, but I will of course put it in a case first before putting it in this pretty pink padded apology for one – what my late father would have dismissed as a “frivolous fabric frippery”. (And before you ask, my penchant for alliteration is genetic.)

UPDATE - the iPhone doesn't fit! I shall have to use this frivolous fabric frippery flop as a soft glasses case instead. My specs are black, so they match at least...

Going back to my meanderings in the fragrance aisles, as on my last visit I skirted round the Chanel Les Exclusifs counter, keen to dodge another close encounter with Jersey. Then, directly opposite the Chanel section on a prime “end of gondola” position, a new range of perfumes from bath & body brand Molton Brown suddenly caught my eye. Five squat, rectangular, stippled glass bottles, not unlike a dumpier version of Boss Orange For Men.

Behind the bottles was a line of trumpet-shaped flowers made of wood, with a wooden pole-cum-stamen poking out from inside each one. As my visit to IUNX Parfums was still fresh in my mind, I immediately picked up the first wooden flower and stuck my nose in it. It didn’t smell of anything. Feeling a little foolish, I went and grabbed a load of fragrance strips from the Escada counter and set about testing the Molton Browns from the testers instead. First impressions - based purely on the presentation, and also factoring in the self-consciously quirky names – were that this was going to be a me-too exercise in Tom Ford PC / Armani Privé territory, just as the latest D & G numbered collection always struck me as a very poor rip off of Chanel Les Exclusifs. In its own product segment of bath and bodycare products Molton Brown is pretty high end. However, as I stood in front of the fixture armed with a fistful of fresh blotters, I couldn't get my head around the notion of Molton Brown as a credible perfume brand, any more than I would a scent from Bayliss & Harding, though I would be happy to receive a gift of liquid hand wash by either brand.

So I embarked on my sniffing session in a somewhat cynical frame of mind, compounding my general lethargy and desperate wish to be back in bed. Of the five scents in the Molton Brown range, I quite liked one, disliked one a lot, and could take or leave the other three. That said, I could see them appealing to some people, even in perfumista circles. So please do take these mini-reviews of the range with a big handful of salt, as the sampling circumstances were massively stacked against it!

SINGOSARI

Soft, peppery spice – a homoepathic version of Marc Jacobs Bang – busy, without enough going on, if that is not a contradiction in terms.

IUNU

Woody scent with an offbeat vegetal note – a bit like PG Papyrus de Ciane, but not as bleak.

ROGART

Woody, fruity, leathery number. (My second “favourite”.)

APULDRE

Incense? and flagstones overgrown with miscellaneous herbaceous matter from the contents of a counter top compost bin. This one reminded me a bit of the cool dead stoniness of Pierre de Lune by Armani Privé, with added vegetation and more fight in it.

LIJIANG

A light, vaguely fruity floral. It had stylistic echoes of Xerjoff Lua ie pretty, but not original enough to be in keeping with the other scents in the range.

UPDATE - I wrote up my impressions of the Molton Brown scents over a beer and another exceptionally creamy bowl of soup(!) at Frankfurt airport. I didn't get a chance to google them till I got home, whereupon I discovered that the collection is in fact called Navigations Through Scent, and has a whole story behind it comparable in its complexity and detail to the Scents of Time range.

Yes, turns out each scent has its own geographical associations and "mood board" of sorts: here is the one for Apuldre, which represents LONDON VIA KENT, and was the one I actively disliked:

May Contain Mischief

"Twilight on a summer's day in the garden of England. Picnic blankets on fresh cut grass. Fizz and gin. Irreverent. Cheeky and a bit mad."

Notes: juniper berries, wormwood, cedar wood, violet leaf absolute, modern leather accord, styrax absolute.

I'll give 'em a bit mad! Look at those notes - with wormwood, styrax and leather it was never going to be my glass of G & T. And Juniper Sling it ain't neither, but it gets brownie points for weirdness. In fact it is not unlike that scent I once likened to "sticks of celery peeping coyly through a freshly creosoted fence" - Unicorn Spell by Les Nez, that's the one.

I have also since come across proper reviews of two more from the line (Lijiang and Iunu) on Candyperfumeboy here.

Now I don't know if my reaction to these scents would have been more positive had I known IN ADVANCE about the idea behind the collection and the theme for each of the five scents. The Molton Brown website sums the range up as follows:

A brief history of perfume,
told through five distinct fragrances.
From lost worlds,
along ancient silk and spice routes
to a brave New World.

Hmm, quite possibly, as the colourful imagery in the press material and the exotic associations with the four other countries - China (Lijiang), Egypt (Iunu), Canada (Rogart) and Indonesia (Singosari) - do rather get you in the mood for an olfactory adventure. And to their credit most of them smell original. But they still weren't for me - not at that time of the morning, and probably not ever.


Additionally, I sniffed two new Florises.

FLORIS MAHON LEATHER

Too "Rawhide" and chaps. I know I wasn't at my best, and it is a masculine, but the opening seemed a bit rough.

FLORIS SIRENA

Watery floral with top notes of peony and rose, and a heart of yawn-yawn. Sirena it may be, but it most certainly isn't calling my name.

On the way home, I spent four hours hanging around Frankfurt airport. It wasn't so hard to do, as they make the travelling perfumista feel right at home!




Photo of Rogart bottle and poster from Molton Brown, photo of Floris perfumes from Fragrantica, other photos my own

A Trio Of Bonkers Trips: More Tales Of The Unexpected...

My recent spate of work trips leading up to Christmas has spawned a phenomenal number of travel posts. I realise it is a good while since I wrote a straight up review of a perfume, or anything approaching what passes for a "normal post" on Bonkers. The travel posts have all been scent-related at least, while this one is not, so click away if you are after my 2012 resolutions, "Top Sniffs And Nasty Niffs" of 2011 list, or something else appropriate to the time of year.

I will get to some more seasonal topics soon, but next up - as is becoming something of a tradition - here is the latest motley collection of oddities and mishaps from the six-country tour.

Santas behaving strangely

There is something deeply incongruous - and in this particular case, faintly sinister - about a Santa in blue shades.



And you don't come across a pedestrian zone littered with a clatter of Santas in apparent death throes every day either, not even in December.



A disco in a shower

I know this sounds unlikely, but on the first bleary-eyed morning of Trip 1, I was astonished to find that when I turned on the shower, as it dutifully gushed forth, the showerhead lit up alternately blue and green. For all I know, there may be top of the range models that also play Bee Gees numbers, but I was startled enough as it was by the disco light display.

Subsequent Internet research has come up with the proper name for this funky new bathroom fixture: a "Lichtdusche" or "light shower".



For Wuppertal, just read "weird"

Along similar lines to the disco in a shower idea, an art gallery in a lift was just one of the quirky features of a hotel I stayed in in Wuppertal, which was housed in a converted factory. For example, just inside the main entrance was a mannequin in a (very skinny) bird cage wearing goggles.









Then next to reception was a Darth Vader coat stand, while my room had every amenity, including a leopard camouflaged as a chair.

A didactic rev counter

Cruise control was one of the earliest inventions along the development path towards cars that drive themselves. This has since been joined by other useful driver aids such as parking sensors, warning beeps when you leave your lights on or your seat belt off, and a system that registers if you are driving erratically and vibrates to wake you up. For it assumes you have nodded off and aren't just drunk or merely uncoordinated. The full name for this clever invention is the snappy "Nap Alarm Driver Fatigue Vibration Device".



To the growing list of driver assistance gizmos I must now add the "didactic rev counter", for every time I was a bit slow off the mark changing up - though interestingly, not DOWN - a gear, an upwards pointing arrow would suddenly appear. It now turns out that I was driving a Ford Fiesta Econetic model, and that the little arrow on my "nanny dashboard" was in fact helping me optimise fuel consumption, not just avoid knackering the clutch as I at first assumed.

Drinks that are not what they seem...

I love pumpkin soup - it is a seasonal favourite when travelling in German-speaking countries between Hallowe'en and Christmas, and I would happily order it several nights on the trot. I can confidently say that I would never have got tired of it, but the chef in one restaurant in Rudesheim - aiming off for the possibility that I might be sick of pumpkin soup by now - decided to serve it in a most unexpected receptacle.



"Pumpkin capuccino" it said on the menu, aka "cup-a-soup" - but not as we know it.

And here is a cruet, masquerading as two half-bottles of red wine - ideally sized for the lone diner who needs a drink after the shock of the soup surprise.



Stealth creaming

The novel soup presentation above leads me neatly on to the topic of stealth creaming, which I shared on Facebook at the time. For over the course of December, there appeared to be a campaign by German chefs to get calories down me by the shortest route possible. I put on 3lb last month, so I'd say it worked.

The stealth creaming took the form not only of generous gobs of cream floating on top of soups (though goodness knows there were a lot of those), but also starters of bread and goose fat, salads sozzled in mayo, jacket spuds lost under a giant mound of sour cream as big as my fist - or the potato itself. Most bizarre of all was the molten butter simmering on a little table-top stove, ready for you to drizzle over your fish that was already awash with the molten butter they had slathered on it in the first place, topped off by mayonnaise overspray from the salad.



"Ginger cream soup" (with extra cream)

Contaminated cold cuts

Well, I use the term "contaminated" advisedly, but it seems as though you have to stay in a three star hotel or higher to be sure that the cold meats and cheeses will be segregated in the breakfast buffet. The same level of hotel, in fact, as the one where you know instinctively that the bottle of mineral water on the table in your room costs 4 euros, instead of the 40 cents it would set you back if you could only be arsed to toddle down to Lidl. So it is swings and roundabouts, I suppose... Now I am not a vegetarian, but any serious vegetarian of my acquaintance would rather go hungry than eat cheese that has been cosying up to mountain ham or mortadella under the same perspex dome.



Stealth salting - and heating

Related to the hotel ploy mentioned above of leaving a bottle of overpriced mineral water in your room, is the tendency of hotel chefs to oversalt dishes, so that you are sure to develop a raging thirst in the night and - your reserves of bargain Lidl water by now exhausted - be forced to crack open the 4 euro bottle in desperation at 3am. Also playing into this whole scenario are radiators with no - or malfunctioning - manual controls. These will typically blaze away all night, exacerbating your thirst and further boosting sales of in-room water. That said, the hotel's profits on the drinks front may be seriously eroded by the extra utility bills, but the management may choose to ignore this in their eagerness to peddle incidentals.



Xenophobic wifi

Now that title may also look strange, but bear with me. For you see, although I have enjoyed free Internet access in branches of McDonald's in Switzerland, Slovenia and Hungary, when I was in Germany recently I was unable to access the network because I couldn't register on the portal using a German-based mobile phone. Given the international popularity of the chain and the amount of passing trade they must do from overseas visitors like myself, I am surprised that they should discriminate between foreign and domestic customers in this way. So, Ronald McDonald, you need to know that it is never going to be a Happy Meal if I can't get my emails...



By the same token, I tried to buy a metro ticket from a machine in Amsterdam last night. Not only did it not accept coins or notes, but the only plastic it would take was a Maestro card, whatever that is when it is at home - which it clearly is in Holland.

Impotent tea bags

On these trips I was struck by how often the tea bag I was offered in cafes and at hotel breakfast tables turned out to be Darjeeling. Out of the tea bag trinity of Darjeeling, Ceylon and Assam, Darjeeling is possibly the weakest. On a forum of English expats living in Switzerland, one member wrote: "Whenever I seem to make a cup it's as pale as a heroin junkie and as weak too...". The classic blend of English Breakfast is a mix of Ceylon and Assam and Kenyan teas, I believe, and is better suited to the British palate. As another forum member replied in the same thread: "If you like mashed, stewed and spoon dissolving tea, then you can get English Breakfast and others over here too." Well great, but where? Now there's an idea for a phone app..."Strong Brew Finder", maybe?

I tried letting the feeble Darjeeling tea bag infuse for longer. I tried squeezing the life out of it with my spoon. It was still weak, but nastily metallic. Now I know what you are thinking: "When in Rome..." and all that jazz, but tea is one of the fundamental components to my day. So if no one comes up with that app I may just have to ramp up my emergency tea bag stocks...



Encoded chips

On one of my flights, the stewardess brought round complimentary soft drinks and a choice of snack. "Sweet or savoury?" she inquired of everyone, as she passed down the aisle. What kind of silly question is that? That is a clear case of NEI (aka "Not Enough Information"). Why, "sweet" could cover the whole spectrum of offerings from a boiled sweet to a three tier Black Forest Gateau, while savoury could encompass a full roast dinner all the way down to a tiny bag of pretzels. So of course I had to ask what exactly the options were within those broad food groups, to which the answer came: "cookies or chips", arguably shorter words to say in the first place. Ah well, I suppose I might have guessed that really. They'd have struggled to fit a chicken into one of the steel drawers on their trolley, and short of strapping it to the back of one of the engines in the line of thrust, I am not quite sure how they would have contrived to cook it.



And of course no round up of travel silliness would be complete without a picture of something strange on a pole...yes, it's another Chupa Chups water tower!



And here is also a cute one of a cat. He's got the hang of the Buddha squat, but isn't quite in the zone mentally, I sense. The ears are a dead giveaway...





Photo of shower from lifestyle-bunny.de, photo of rev counter from parkers.co.uk, photo of ham and cheese from tripadvisor.com, photo of squirrel from ullocal.wlky.com, photo of wifi from McDonald's website, photo of tea from darjeelingcuppa.com, photo of chips from everydayshouldbesaturday.com, other photos my own.

A Trio Of Bonkers Trips: No 3 (Austria & The Czech Republic) - Meeting The Olfactorias And "A Puffa Of Perfumistas"

Back in the summer, I was lucky enough to be working in Austria and met Olfactoria (aka Birgit) for the first time, in her home town of Vienna. We spent a very enjoyable afternoon in several high end perfumeries, sniffing the latest releases and generally chewing the cud about matters scent-related. Fast forward four months and I found myself back in the area, this time not far from the country bolthole where Olfactoria and her family spend most weekends.

And so it was that we arranged to meet again on the Saturday before Christmas in Sankt Pölten, which turned out to be Mr O's home town, and was fairly close to their cottage. The contrast between the weather this time and in August could not have been more stark: 35C plays -2C. In the summer I had been concerned about my sticky, creased skirt and glistening forehead, whereas the main priority on this occasion was to retain a full complement of fingers by the end of the morning.

I had had the foresight to bring along my good coat - which is lightweight, but as warm as one of those high tech sleeping bags favoured by bivouacing climbers. The Olfactorias were all similarly swaddled in down coats: Birgit's was a very stylish fitted design in matt black (photo is approximate), cinched in at the waist by an integral belt, while the children had anoraks with fur trimmed hoods. There should be a collective noun really for a gathering of quilted outerwear on this scale - a "wadding" perhaps? A "padding"? Or a "puffa"?

So having rendez-vous'ed at the train station, our puffa party set off in search of a cafe for elevenses. Olfactoria's younger son, Niki, who has just turned two I believe!, had a push chair at his disposal but preferred to toddle on ahead, pausing every few yards to hurl himself on the ground, much like a rock star stage-diving or a stuntman perfecting his "freshly-shot-in-the-chest" manoeuvre. Even though we attracted a few concerned glances from members of the public, Olfactoria and her husband remained calm and unfazed, for they knew that Niki would get up from his prone position moments later, only to start his toddle and deck-hitting routine all over again a few yards further on.

We had some difficulty finding a tea room with enough space to accommodate our party, but following a tip off from a passing relative of Mr O, finally secured a large table in a basement cafe in Sankt Pölten's main shopping plaza. Once we were all sitting down, I presented the boys with some chocolate money and a couple of soft toys (a German-speaking chicken and a teddy in a skiing outfit from Utah). I explained that both toys were unhappy in England, and had heard that there were two nice little boys in Austria who might consider giving them a home. I am not sure that Pauli, the elder son, bought this anthropomorphic emigration line I was spinning for one minute, but he graciously accepted the bear, while Niki took custody of the chicken - or he may do in a year or so when he has outgrown the potential hazards of the bird's beady eyes. : - )

Once all our drinks had arrived, Olfactoria and I discreetly exchanged perfume swap parcels, the focal point of which was a small decant of the discontinued Guerlain Plus Que Jamais (for B) in return for a large one(!) of Après l'Ondée for me. Additionally, I received a "starter kit" of Mono di Orio scents, while I introduced Birgit to Roja Dove Scandal and Damien Bash Lucifer #3, as well as rehoming a dirty amber. I also sniffed Olfactoria wearing her new love of Angélique Noir, which Lady Jane Grey had given her when they met up earlier that week. Now, I tried Angélique Noir in 2008 or so and remember it as being a hot, treacly mess on me, while it was spectacular on Birgit. At this point, Mr O leaned in and announced portentously: "Ah, but of course Birgit has 'magic skin'".





Now if Birgit has magic skin, young Niki would appear to have a magic gullet, for in addition to pavement-diving, he showed us his special party trick of finishing not just his own drink (like the well behaved little boy that he is), but also everyone else's. With such a prodigious capacity for fluid consumption, I could see him downing a yard of ale in one well before he is of school age.





After our pitstop in the shopping plaza, Mr O kindly took the children off to look round the Christmas market, giving Olfactoria and me an hour to ourselves. We spent it notionally sniffing in the Sankt Pölten branch of the beauty salon and perfumery chain, Nägele & Strubell. To be truthful, the store's name is the best thing about it, for the selection of niche brands there was quite limited; though I am sure they were more, I can only actually recall Annick Goutal and Ligne St Barth. Birgit introduced me to the Annick Goutal room spray range, notably the seasonal scent Noël, and I enjoyed walking into a generous ambient spritz of that.

Notes: lemon, bitter orange, mandarin and Siberian pine

You know, it truly didn't matter that Olfactoria and I spent as long as we did standing in front of the fixture without spotting anything worthy of our attention. Speaking for myself, we could have stood at a shelf of hosiery, hardware or baby food, and I feel sure the conversation would still have flowed. Perfume was never far from our minds, and yet it seemed less of a lynchpin in our budding acquaintance than at our first meeting.

Soon it was time to rejoin the rest of the family, and head over to a Japanese restaurant for a buffet lunch, to which the Olfactorias kindly insisted on treating me. For one so young, I was impressed at Pauli's adventurous taste in food: he cheerfully despatched dim sum and sushi with equal gusto. Niki slept through lunch in his buggy, flaked out after his earlier exertions, and thereby missing the opportunity to minesweep the last few mouthfuls of his mother's Diet Coke and my own "Apfelsaft, gespritzt", as I learnt to call the Austrian version of sparkling apple juice.

Lunch over, it was the parting of the ways, as the Olfactorias went off in search of a live Christmas tree to serve as a festive backdrop to their al fresco barbecue that night. "Very fresco", I hear you say. They'll be needing their padded coats, that's for sure...!

I wandered meanwhile round the shops a bit more, before ambling back to my hotel. Well, I say "ambling" - it was more of a limp actually, for five minutes after the Olfactorias had gone, I was suddenly aware of a pricking sensation in one of my feet, and discovered a nail protruding inside the lining of one shoe - it was the first time I had worn them since having them resoled. There was a splodge of blood in the shoe and another one staining my sock.

So there you have it - the ultimate sign of a good time with a fellow perfumista is immunity from pain....in one foot at least. Had I been bleeding from both feet I might just have noticed, however much fun we were having... : - )




Photos of Sankt Pölten from pbase.com (Tibor Pospisil), photo of coat from moncler-jackets-uk-sale.co.uk, pefume shop logo from the company's website, other photos my own

New Year Update

This is just a quick line to say that the posts I had lined up for the early New Year may appear a little later than planned. Yesterday I received the sad news that the friend in Holland with whom I spent last New Year has passed away, and I am flying out for the funeral at the weekend. A relative is also seriously ill in hospital at the moment, and I have additionally come down with the communal cold that is doing the rounds here. In view of my looming work deadline, I am hoping I will be able to knock it into submission with industrial quantities of Vitamin C and positive thinking.

So although 2012 has not got off to a great start in this corner, I would like to take this opportunity to thank all my readers for their interest in - and comments on - Bonkers about Perfume in 2011, and to wish you all a Happy New Year!

Next up will be an account of my meeting with The Olfactorias in Austria, but meanwhile, here is a link to my New Year's post from last year, and happier times...


Photo of Spakenburg harbour from Wikipedia

A Trio Of Bonkers Trips: No 2 (Belgium & France) - A "Drowned And Out In Paris" Sniffathon: IUNX Parfums Revisited

I have been back at work for three days, and am keenly aware that this is the season of "Best Fragrances Of 2011" retrospectives, while I am still have a backlog of (mostly scent-related) posts to write up from my recent work trips. I have enjoyed reading about other bloggers' top perfumes from this year, and have spotted a number of personal favourites amongst them. My own "Top Sniffs And Nasty Niffs" round up will be along shortly, however a chronological imperative(!) compels me to finish my travel posts first, starting with the final instalment of the Paris sniffathon, when I popped into the IUNX shop at the very end of the afternoon.

This was my second visit to the IUNX boutique, which is located next door to Hotel Costes at 239, rue Saint Honoré. I first discovered IUNX back in June 2009, around the time of my 50th birthday, when I enjoyed three gloriously warm days of solo sniffing in Paris. While JAR Parfums has just TWO points of sale in the world, IUNX is even more exclusive, for its dimly lit, dark red boudoir of a store is the ONLY place where you can buy their fragrance line.

The original visit - or visits rather, as I went back to make a purchase later that day! - predates Bonkers, but even then I kept records of sampling forays, and found these snippets about the IUNX experience:

"Had a great chat with the man at IUNX, who was from Donegal but insisted on speaking in French both times. This may have helped him forget I was from Belfast."

"I bought Eau Frappée, which smells like lemon sorbet and yellow rose petals. Opening is exquisite but fairly evanescent. Mutes down to a gentle musky rose. Bottle is 150ml @ 103 euros, and looks like Luke Skywalker's lightsaber. Comes in a black neoprene tubular case like a policeman's truncheon, topped off with a neoprene bow tie!"

I still have about 20ml? left of my humungous tube, which proved highly swappable on MUA on account of its rarity, and on that Tuesday I had no intentions of making another purchase, not least on size grounds. There simply isn't the room in either of my perfume fridges for one thing! But I did fancy catching up with the latest releases, and on spotting the same sales chap through the store window, put my head round the door and said hello - in English this time - as our French-speaking routine, however it arose last time, was too silly for words! : - )

"Hey," I added by way of an ice-breaker: "Aren't you the fella from Donegal?"

"Mayo!" he replied with mock-indignation, and we were off. Ron - as I now found out he was called - remembered my purchase from 2009 and invited me to resniff the other fragrances in their strange Plexiglas trumpets, which wafted the scents by means of a motorised fan. I was especially interested to try Eau Baptiste, which was a new addition to the range since last time. Meanwhile, Ron went back to sorting out a pile of thin white tubes that were mostly on the floor, with a few stuck vertically in the window display. I glanced across and inquired:

"What's with the straws, then? It looks like a game of Pick Up Sticks!"

"You are the second person to call those straws!! Those are NOT straws, they are....he mentioned a word I have forgotten, but which began with a "d", I think. Anyway, it turned out that these little straw-like tubes are a light reflecting window dressing accessory. I found an unrelated picture in Google images that nicely illustrates the general idea.

Going back to Eau Baptiste, it was a very "photo-realistic" perfume, to mix sensory terms for a moment. It had notes of wheat, orange blossom and acacia honey, all of which were clearly delineated, and it also smelt green and sappy, like the stem of a rose. It was beautiful and distinctive, but not necessarily what I would want to smell of.

While he carried on creating his straw installation, I asked Ron about his own early scent CV, and quick as a flash he listed his past love perfumes in date order: Azzaro, Eau Sauvage, Polo, Safari and Shiseido Basala.

I had not heard of Basala, and have just fetched it up on Google. Interestingly, while the note list has way more going on with it than your average IUNX scent, the bottle is red like the interior of the store....

Here is my quick take on the other scents in the line, created by Olivia Giacobetti, Queen of The Barely There style of scent to which I am generally so drawn myself.

SPLASH FORTE

Notes: red cedar, bay rum, peppered mint (sic), and Jamaican pimento/pepper

This was moderately spicy, but sadly I didn't care for the combination of notes at all. It was in the same vein as JM Pomegranate Noir, ie reminiscent of a Christmas candle or spicy potpourri. Also, I don't like alcohol in perfumes as a rule - as a note, I mean! - and don't even care for rum as a drink, except in Mojitos. A perfume that smelt like a Mojito I would in fact cross the street to try!

EAU BLANCHE

Notes: white linen, iris butter and teak wood

This smelt much as you might imagine from the notes - it was okay, but didn't have the wow factor for me.

L'ETHER

Notes: myrrh, white incense, sandalwood and rose essence

I didn't dislike this one, but it was rather too indistinct - the myrrh may have blurred it over in some way.

EAU SENTO

Notes: driftwood, cedar leaves, cypress and red algae

Now, as a huge fan of Parfumerie Générale's Bois Naufragé (a partial bottle of which came my way this Christmas, courtesy of the very generous Lovethescents!), I would have thought I would have liked this one, but it had a dank, discordant aspect to it. Oh well.



So I will just enjoy the rest of my Eau Frappée lightsaber, I think, though Eau Baptiste was most striking in a "lovely-but-not-really-a-perfume" kind of a way. The highlight of the visit this time was shooting the breeze with Ron about our respective childhoods growing up in Ireland. A beach ball bought in Salthill, a rag doll in Bundoran (on my side), versus Ron's memories of crashing the parental car. : - )

I also inquired about Ines' and Asali's recent visit. "Two fellow bloggers came by the other day - do you remember them? One had a red coat. And red hair. They may both have had red hair. No, don't quote me on that."

I have checked back and Asali is in fact a brunette, which is a good thing in hindsight, as the IUNX store needs all the colour contrast it can get. : - )

For some reason, I still didn't bother trying the Costes perfumes that are sold alongside the IUNX brand. It was the end of the day, and I had got it into my head that they wouldn't be my cup of tea, which may be totally unjustified. On the plus side, it gives me a reason to revisit IUNX next time I am passing. I will remember Ron is from Mayo next time...



Photo of Hotel Costes from tripadvisor.co.uk, photo of bottle from hotelcostes.com, photo of fibreglass trumpets from cafleurebon.com, photo of light straws from designut.org, photo of Shiseido Basala from fragrantica.com