'Between a rock hyrax and a festival': a pleasantly pungent Papillon pitstop en route to Rockaway Beach

Back when I wrote my 'not a review' of Salome by Papillon Artisan Perfumes - which featured the perturbed reactions of my friend Lizzie and her children to the perfume's thoroughly 'unnecessary' behaviour on my skin, to wit, that I shouldn't really be encouraged to wear this, especially not outdoors - Liz Moores expressed an interest in smelling Salome for herself on my skin, to see if I did indeed amp up the skank factor, as Liz's own skin does. And it wasn't long before a suitable opportunity arose, for I found myself bound for Bognor Regis and a 'boutique indoor music festival' called Rockaway Beach, and realised that Papillon's HQ was only a short squirt away up the M27. So I arranged with Liz that I would pop in on Saturday afternoon for a quick pitstop en route to the coast.

It is well documented - also in my own 'okay, let's call it a review for once' of Angelique - that Liz lives in splendid isolation in the middle of the New Forest. Well, isolation only in the sense of proximity to neighbours maybe, for the household is quite populous, comprising a shifting kaleidoscope of up to five children and (extremely) assorted animals.

The first thing to mention about my visit is that Liz gives good directions. Sat nav is positively superfluous when you are armed with such safety-conscious and meticulous instructions - including a current assessment of the degree of obstructive vegetation that might be compromising local signage:

"On this bend you need to turn right (signposted as a dead end IF you can see the sign which is battling with nature). BE CAREFUL HERE as it's a blind bend!!!"

Papillon HQ, where you are never more than 6ft away from a perfume bottle

I forgot to mention that I was a bit late getting to Liz's house, on account of roadwork-related lane closures on the A34 south of Newbury. Consequently, my first words to her after 'Hello' were - in a for me uncharacteristically ungrammatical blurt - 'I have four unreasonable demands I hope that's okay toilet cup of tea may I fill up my water bottle and charge my phone thank you where is the toilet in fact?'

A few minutes later, I was comfortably perched at the island in Liz's vast kitchen, while Liz's partner Simon put the kettle on, Liz cut me a piece of gooey chocolate cake, and my phone charged quietly on a cable reel normally used with the lawn mower. Over tea, I was treated to a smartphone tour of son Rowan's collection of 'monster' images. Well, in fairness some of them may have been his older sisters, but the more we swiped through, the blurrier our definitions seemed to become.

After tea, we adjourned to the living room, which was equally vast and notable for its squashy sofas, comfy jumble of cushions, and occasional stately Bengal threading its way through your legs. At this stage in proceedings Liz sniffed me wearing Salome, whose delicate powdery trail she likened to the way the scent played on her eldest daughter Jasmine's skin. I was quick to point out that Salome had been on me for seven hours already, and promptly reapplied it so that Liz could experience it straight out of the starting blocks in all its raunchy splendour. 'Oh okaay, now that is rather funky!' she laughed. We chatted about some samples I had received lately, and about the different ways natural materials and aromachemicals behave in perfume compositions, eg how relatively predictable a synthetic ingredient is compared to a natural. We agreed that they both have a role to play, and indeed the Papillon range of fragrances seems to gravitate 'naturally' to a 50/50 ratio of each.

Next up, I had a tour of Liz's studio with its floor to ceiling shelves laden with glass bottles and metal canisters of perfumery ingredients. Some of these were thematically grouped according to the perfume they go into, while others were part of Liz's extensive library of materials. A number sported intriguingly oddball names like 'Bornax' and 'Okanaul'. Okay, so I made both of those up, but trust me when I say that the correct names (which I can't immediately bring to mind) were every bit as random. I do remember another bottle that was definitely called Pink Lotus, and which smelt beguilingly of Toffos.

Source: Twitter

I got to sniff a selection of raw materials, including some of the ones that went into Angelique, Tobacco Rose and Salome. I was liberally anointed with African Stone - and not just hyrax, but styrax, castoreum and red bitter orange, mimosa and Turkish rose, plus a foresty number named after the area in France where I accidentally fetched up in a nudist camp. I also had two different mods on my arms of White Moth, a tiare-centric work in progress, and of course the recently refreshed application of Salome! If the truth be told, I was a bit pungent by now, veering to pongy possibly, but I didn't care...

Liz also showed me her stack of notebooks, full of handwritten formulae and jottings about her impressions of different materials, both on their own and in various accords. It was reassuring to see that her work bench bore the scars of battle in the form of numerous marks, scratches and stains(!), as I have managed to strip the polish off my dining room table in a couple of obvious places due to accidents while decanting...;(

'Piccadilly patio': the cat wanted out and the dogs wanted in

Then we were looking out of the window at one point onto a patio area behind the kitchen - specifically because Jicky the cat had escaped and was sloping off towards the clothes line, prompting Liz to ring Simon and ask him to go and catch her (I told you it was a big house!) - and this was the trigger for Liz to tell me a bit about the creation of Tobacco Rose. I admitted right off the bat that while I admire Tobacco Rose, I find a bit prickly/fuzzy and austere, and neither upbeat nor sultry - nor particularly feminine. It's quite haylike on me - and kind of autumnal - and that's as much as I could say about it, other than the fact that I am leaning ever more towards Salome, the surprise grower of the range for a former hater of animalics!

Me being quite haylike on hay, c1974

Liz could understand why Tobacco Rose might not have clicked with me, and explained that it was a perfume with which she had wrestled for a long time, scrapping and tinkering in an endless and at times furious cycle. For by her own admission, she had been in a bad place in her personal life at that time, and the catalyst for Tobacco Rose had been the combination of this inner turmoil and the sight of the trees ranged around her house and the carpet of autumnal leaves on the flagstones of the patio. I think she may have mentioned that it was also windy and/or raining - and even if it wasn't, in the interests of pathetic fallacy I think we can reasonably add some turbulent weather conditions into the mix. So, short story short Tobacco Rose was created in anger, as it were - or an ongoing state of emotional upset - which got me wondering whether the finished scent embodies that conflicted mood at its heart, and whether that is why I didn't bond with it. Liz also lobbed in the observation that if she cooks when she is in a bit of a strop, she reckons that her dishes actually taste different. Which interesting notion is probably fodder for a whole other blog post on its own. ;)

And before we left the studio, because I had been swooning quietly over the scent strip smeared in this, Liz very kindly scooped some flakes of eye-wateringly expensive orris concrete into a plastic bag for me. I have since decanted them into a plastic container that originally had ear plugs in it, given to me some time ago by DJ and blogger Ron Slomowicz of Notable Scents. I knew it would come in handy some day.

Then having retrieved my phone charger, but forgotten to fill my water bottle, I followed Liz on a quick tour of the snake collection, which - in case anyone wants to avoid them - was just to the left of the cockatiels in the hall. They are housed in a sort of filing cabinet system the family refer to as 'racks', and Liz pulled out a few drawers to see which scaly residents were out and who was in - as in under their little platform to the rear of each drawer. Cleo was out but I am very pleased to report that Phantom, the ueber-creepy white Royal Python, was firmly IN, and out of sight. I also noticed a bottle of Hoegaarden on the worktop to one side. Who knew that pedigree snakes are partial to the odd beer?

From Papillon HQ, it was on to Bognor, though not before I had stopped to photograph this wonderfully vintage petrol station in the next village.

The Rockaway Beach Festival is held at Butlins, which has come a long way as a holiday destination since its Red Coat and 'hi-de-hi' days, though if you ask me my honest opinion, not nearly far enough, haha. I was staying offsite in a very traditional B & B, so much so that I got ticked off the next morning at breakfast for inadvertently taking the communal jug of orange juice to my table, and spilling a drop in the process. Meanwhile, the band I had come to see (The Monochrome Set) and its merchandise team had rooms in the two main onsite hotels, memorable for their whimsical touches of nautical imagery and 'towel animals'.

Photo courtesy of Caryne Pearce

The Monochrome Set were playing the Centre Stage, in an auditorium that was disconcertingly reminiscent of a channel ferry, but without the slight rocking motion and dedicated lounge for long distance lorry drivers. But it was afterwards, over a takeaway pizza in the reception area of The Wave Hotel, that the Papillon story continues...For it was here - notwithstanding the fact that we were eating - that I invited the band to smell the remnants of neat African Stone(!) as well as Salome, which was about six hours in now on the second application of the day, and partially washed off by a pre-gig shower. Yes, Bognor may go down in history as the first time I have tried to un-perfume myself before a gig rather than the reverse.

Butlins with its distinctive meringue peaks

The band duly sniffed both the remnants of Salome AND the African Stone, intrigued by my explanation that it was the fossilised excrement of the rock hyrax, an animal I tried to big up by likening it to a robust yet endearing variant on the guinea pig. They continued to chew thoughtfully on slices of the family size pepperoni pizza several of us were sharing, and didn't bat an eyelid - or flare a nostril in disgust.

Now my wearing of actual African Stone may have been a lifetime one off, but in the light of this rock 'n' roll nonchalance in the face of the ne plus ultra of poo, I plan to wear Salome to the next gig without a backward glance...

Segregated scent strips in the festival programme

Games with frontiers: The Monochrome Set's 'bun fight' tour of Germany and Austria - Part 2: Ebensee and meeting Val in 'Cookie Country'

Traunsee

The final gig of the mini-tour was in Ebensee, a mere 10km from Val the Cookie Queen's home, and the family bike (and muffins!) shop, Armadillos. As things turned out, it was not so much a case of Val going to the gig as the gig going to her. Well, give or take the 10k. But getting from Ravensburg to even Oberoesterreich proved the greatest challenge of all, and at several points in the day we lowered our sights to merely getting back to England 'at some point' - ideally on the scheduled flight from Vienna the next day, but we would have settled for 'at all' when our confidence in the Teutonic transport systems was at its lowest ebb.

Double D dirndl distractions

For the record, this was supposed to be a four train, 'bun fight, reserved, reserved, bun fight' kind of a day. We made it up to Ulm with no bother. Well, apart from a lot of noise from the many groups of revellers got up in Lederhosen and dirndl dresses to commemorate German Reunification Day. Which - somewhat counter-intuitively you might say - is in early October, although the wall came down in November. I remember it well, as I was in the country at the time! Speaking of things coming down, most of the women had that Nell Gwyn-style low neckline, push up corset thing going on, and Steve the drummer complained that he didn't know where to look for cleavage, all of it uniformly pneumatic and distracting.

Source: pinterest

Chimerical destinations

Then at Ulm the games with frontiers began in earnest. Our train - which said Klagenfurt on the front (in the far South East of Austria) - was not in fact the scheduled one, but an 'Ersatz' / replacement service. This meant that the information on the 'composition of trains' board I had carefully studied in advance to minimise everyone's walking with instruments and luggage went totally out the window, and prompted the seven of us to make a mad dash to the opposite end of the platform. Our carriage did exist at least, but four of our reserved seats were in a locked compartment. Here, by the looks of the hat and jacket, a train manager had barricaded himself in, for reasons which quickly became apparent, while our remaining seats had been commandeered by three burly - and surly - looking men. I could do nothing for the moment about the locked compartment, so decided to take on the three men, their burliness notwithstanding.

It was that sort of day, basically

'I'm sorry, but you are in our seats. We have reservations from Ulm to Salzburg.'  

'We've been sat here since Frankfurt.' (This is admittedly a very long way, and it's possible that they were operating on the basis of possession being nine tenths of the law.)

'That's as may be, but we have booked them from Ulm, which is now.'

'It doesn't say that anywhere.'  

'Yes it does, in blue writing above your head.'

At that moment, the train conductor saw I was having problems shifting these seat hoggers and waved us all through to the next carriage, which was first class. Our sense of triumph from this unexpected upgrade was shortlived, however. For no sooner had we sat down when a voice came over the tannoy announcing that the train was terminating at Munich. In vain did I buttonhole staff on our truncated way there about what was going on - they all stoutly denied having any information whatsoever and told us to make inquiries at the Service Point at Munich station. Yeah right - us and 500 other bewildered passengers with travel plans in disarray...

Refugee camp outside Salzburg Hbf

At this rather alarming point in proceedings I messaged Val, who - with the help of her friend Judith - set about tracking down alternative trains that might be running into Austria, by however circuitous a route. Once we got to Munich, I did manage to nab yet another member of staff, who told me that trains had been suspended between Germany and Austria in both directions, due to migrants clambering onto them at the border, and damaging some of the rolling stock in their desperate bid to continue their journey westwards. So instead, the Deutsche Bahn lady told us to jump on a train that was going as far as the town before the border, from where we would be bussed to Salzburg station. She reckoned that the trains would be fine once we got to Austria, albeit we were now running worryingly late for the band to make their sound check.

Val, the roadie with the mostest

Accordingly, a cunning 'Plan B' was hatched: we would take this recommended train and bus combo to get as far as Salzburg (the specific services on our cheap group tickets having long since been overtaken by force majeure-style events!), and then the best onward connection from there. The sound check was renegotiated to a later slot, and Val immediately deployed as a roadie. The original plan had been for me to jump the train at Attnang, the penultimate stop of the day, and to go and visit her home village, but instead, Val 'kidnapped' the band in her capacious people carrier and whisked them to their remote guesthouse half way up a mountain overlooking Ebensee, where they could change and briefly relax.

Band HQ - Gasthaus Kreh

Meanwhile Caryne and Dave and I carried on by train on the last leg of the journey, to be met by Val at Ebensee station after she had dropped the band off at their digs. (And after she had sussed out that - most remarkably for such a small place - there were in fact TWO stations in Ebensee, and that we were at the other one. Cue another comedy moment... ;) Next Val drove Caryne and Dave to their guesthouse on the edges of town, before going back up the mountain to collect the band and drop them off at the venue. Then she picked up Caryne and Dave and took them to the venue to set up their merchandise table, before backtracking to my guesthouse by the train station - are you keeping up? I would quite understand if not, as the pace of Val's ferrying people and their assorted stuff around between the hours of 5 and 8 pm that day was positively dizzying! And I may have got the exact sequence of lifts wrong even so, hehe. So then Val was at last free to bring me to her village for a lightning pitstop: I saw the bike shop, the kitchen(!), and Val's flat. I laid eyes on her perfume collection! I communed with Meep-Meep on the balcony and she nibbled my fringe!

Meep-Meep playing peek-a-boo

And in a blink of an eye it was time to go back - with Val's husband Chris now at the wheel - to Ebensee and to the gig, which was great, albeit sadly cut short, as The Monochrome Set were uncharacteristically not headlining that night. Because of this there was no encore and the band had to get the gear off stage sharpish. Which meant that at one point Val was adorned with Bid the singer's guitar, and told (tongue in cheek, obviously) to 'make herself useful' and take it backstage, with me following on behind carrying a music stand and a bottle of water that had been similarly thrust into my hands.

Kino Ebensee

And after grabbing a bite to eat at my guesthouse, Val and her husband drove everyone home to their respective accommodation, up hill and down dale all over again, only to repeat the same set of journeys early the next morning in reverse - I think in reverse, but my brain is addled with it all! - so as to deposit the seven of us at the train station for the homeward leg to Vienna airport. Oh, on the final morning Val and I did manage breakfast together at my guesthouse before all of that last flurry of 'Fahrerei' / driving around - the very obliging owner was happy to set a place for a 'plus one'.

So looking back, the Ebensee leg of the tour was fraught with stress, yet full of fun and a general sense of what I can best term 'exhilarating enormity', as we tried to overcome each obstacle that presented itself. And Val herself is that rare intersection of the Venn diagram, combining my perfume and music interests in one energetic, capable, super-organised, funny, upbeat, warm and generous person. The plaudits for her help with the logistics that day are still coming in from the band.

"I would be very grateful if you could pass on my thanks to Val for giving up so much of her time to help us. It would have been very, very difficult to manage without her in Ebensee."

And there was praise too for her brownies, individual rations of which were issued on our departure, including vegan variants for Caryne and Dave.

"Please thank her too for the Monochrome brownies, which were very delicious."

"Val's brownies are better than anything in the UK."

Realistically, the gig may not ever come to Val again, but I look forward to the next time Val can come to a gig - most likely in the UK now in 2016. Which will be here before you know it...Unlike trains to Austria, which may not be here any time soon...

The ne plus ultra of brownies

Games with frontiers: The Monochrome Set's 'bun fight' tour of Germany and Austria - Part 1: Karlsruhe and Ravensburg

Messing about on boats, Karlsruhe

Six months on from the last tour, I have just got back from a trip to Germany and Austria with The Monochrome Set. It was only three gigs and four days away, but we agreed that it felt like at least a week, on account of the early starts and late finishes and the legion logistical problems that confounded us at every turn. But we kept the show on the road - or on the trains when they were running! - and it all came good in the end. Special thanks go out to Val the Cookie Queen from APJ for her epic amounts of roadie-ing on the final leg of the tour, of which more later...

Missing things

I wasn't joking when I said 'early starts', for on Day 1 I was up at 4.20am in my B & B in Tottenham. This pre-dawn hour was so unnatural to my constitution that I managed to leave behind my £400 custom-made gum shield in the communal bathroom, which led to much fretting and gnashing of teeth while I was away - for it is of course gnashing of teeth that it is designed to prevent. In addition to the abandoned mouth guard in London, I had already forgotten several things as soon as I left the house, to wit my brow and eyeliner pencils, a notebook to use as a tour diary, and toothpaste. Arguably, only the lack of toothpaste was key, but I did also pick up a Rimmel kohl pencil and an über-cheapy eyebrow gel mascara by budget brand Essence. Called Make Me Brow, it is a blatant knock-off of Benefit's Gimme Brow but with a better shade of brown ('Browny Brows') for my particular hair colour. I got it in Germany for about three euros, but I see it is available in Wilko's in the UK. Make Me Brow absolutely does the same job and it seems the beauty bloggers who have tumbled to it also agree.

Oh, I never did get a notebook, but just kept nicking those little bedside pads in hotels, as you do. And the odd pen with that, as you also do. But unexpectedly I did have to buy some cleanser, as I couldn't tell if the travel-sized bottle into which I had decanted a transparent liquid some time ago was micellar water or acid peel toner. I mean, better to wake up like a panda than inadvertently rub the latter into your eyes.

This 'missing things' syndrome escalated in unexpected ways later in the trip: once when the entire carriage in which we had reserved seats turned out not to exist, and once when the driver of our moving train was conspicuously absent. The wonky instrument display and missing gearstick which you may just be able to make out in this photo did not escape our notice either. Then the missing carriage - which meant that a tetchy diaspora of 100 plus extra passengers had to be accommodated somehow - almost led to a punch up on the train, as people hotly contested whether the carriage after 268 (which had been assigned the number 266), was logically really 267 (where we had seats booked) in feeble disguise.

This near descent into violence prompted Steve the drummer to coin the phrase 'bun fight' to indicate a train journey for which we were unable to secure advance seat reservations. Each morning he would confirm that day's itinerary with me (as the Gruppenfuehrerin with the Gruppentickets): 'Okay, so it's three trains - bun fight, reserved, bun fight?' Then as our travel arrangements progressively degenerated into chaos, it became apparent that our journeys were simply going to be one long, hot, cross, bun fight. But I will save the ultimate example of missing things syndrome - um...not a carriage, but a whole missing train to Austria - for later.

'Three men in two seats' ~ Photo courtesy of Caryne Pearce

Perfume bottles on walls, and taxing taps

My initial stress about the forgotten items soon dissipated on the Eurostar train bound for Paris, where the toilets were lined with 'trompe l'oeil' subway tiles incorporating a perfume bottle! My joy at this sight eclipsed my complete inability to find the foot pump that operated the water for the sink. As in to even think to look for one in the first place. Instead, I spent several minutes foolishly waving my hands in the general vicinity of the basin in search of one of those new-fangled sensor jobbies, before slapping and twisting the tap in a vain bid to shock it into action. When I got to Austria, I actually had a tap that was activated by being slapped on one side or the other, and hey, I was ready for it. There was no soap, mind, but you can't have everything.

Oddly, seeing perfume bottles on walls that aren't there has been a bit of a theme of late, for I spotted this example at the old Spode pottery factory last week, where I had gone to see the British Ceramics Biennial.

In-train brain games

Despite the Deutsche Bahn's best attempts to thwart us, we still managed to spend a lot of time on trains, and quickly developed a series of mental pursuits to while away the long journeys. (I also had my knitting with me: a green, speculative scarf in moss stitch for which I signally failed to find a taker.) We did crosswords - I embarrassed myself by correctly deciphering one answer as 'thong' - guessed the age of famous people with birthdays (who knew Jimmy Carter was 91?), but the puzzle to end all puzzles has to be the one set by Andy, the bass player: 'Name a tube station in London that doesn't include any of the letters in "mackerel"'. (Answer at the end of this post - sorry I can't make it upside down.)

Incipient second pillows

By mid-afternoon we had arrived in Karlsruhe, our first stopover. Regular readers may recall my banging on about the futility of German pillows, which are typically big square floppy things you have to wrangle, origami-style, into peaks substantial enough to lay your head on. Here - and in my guest house in Austria - I noticed a new phenomenon of an incipient second pillow. These are what I believe are known back home as 'boudoir cushions' in the likes of Dunelm Mill, and I am hoping that by the time of my next visit, they will have grown into full-size pillows with a bit more fight in them than the conventional variety.

Check out the farfalle bedspread!

Tantalising toilet paper

The gig in Karlsruhe was literally round the corner - or at least it was for me and the merch team - while the rest of our party had been relocated at the last minute to what the promoter referred to as 'a much nicer and better hotel', for which  read 'with riotously colourful and busy decor - and no en suite'.

Then the actual room where the gig was held was incredibly cold, due to an over-efficient air con system. Our discomfort was somewhat offset by the system's integration into an amusing 'trompe l'oeil' robot. Then in the single, unisex toilet that served the whole club, I was reassured to read a note on the wall stating that in the event of the loo roll running out - as must surely happen every half hour with this level of traffic - there were ample stocks conveniently perched across bits of pipework by the ceiling.

'Paper view' from the throne

Giant tea bags

Tea bags have been getting bigger for a while on the continent - at least the ones you get in the fancier type of cafe - you know, those silky fabric pyramids on a string, or the long rectangular sachets attached to a bit of cardboard that you have to drape awkwardly over your mug to allow the bag bit to infuse. At the station in Karlsruhe where we had breakfast before catching our train, I noticed that even the conventional paper tea bags had been quietly getting longer - and wider. This disproportionate size of bag to mug or glass is not necessarily a trend to be welcomed, however, for with its sheer size comes added strength, and those who favour a weak to medium brew need to be pretty darn quick off the mark with their bag removal.

The gum shield hunt

Our next stop was Ravensburg, a heartstoppingly picturesque town not far from the Bodensee, bristling with towers on every corner. I had no time to do the tourist trail, sadly, being focused on the important task of scoring a temporary gum shield. For I was struggling to sleep without one, and my teeth felt hot and sore in the morning, suggesting that what little sleep I had managed was spent in grinding mode. After a scurry round the town, I found a chemist with a solution to be going on with, though not before they had offered me a box of cloth face masks of the kind favoured by Japanese people concerned about catching flu or 'worries over micro particulate matter following the earthquake and nuclear accident of 2011'. In the end I bought a whitening kit, on the strict understanding that before retiring I would thoroughly rinse out the gel that had been pre-applied to the mouth guards. I could of course spend 20 minutes actually whitening my teeth beforehand if I wanted to, but on this tour there was never a spare 20 minutes for anything...

Photo courtesy of Caryne Pearce

The Zehntscheuer

The gig in Ravensburg was held in a converted tithe barn (or 'Zehntscheuer' in German), which is odd, as that is the name of my road! It had the most wood of any venue I have ever been to, and it wouldn't have surprised me if the entire backline had been hewn out of oak, though luckily for the band it wasn't. Our good friends Kenji and Ronny had come down from Augsburg for the gig, which was enthusiastically received by a mixture of fans and people who were there to enjoy a meal and whatever music happened to be on offer. Though one person walked out when the singer made a quip about the parlous state of Bob Dylan's toilet, a story which I see has been covered (though happily not in the Biblical sense) by a member of our perfume community - Avery Gilbert of First Nerve!

Photo courtesy of Caryne Pearce

Coming up in Part 2 - border-related train shenanigans and Val the Cookie Queen's heroic feats of ferrying!

Tube station teaser answer - St Johns Wood (no, I didn't get it either).

Lily of The Hidden Valley (aka 'the drink not taken'): Decennial Lys du Desert review

Source: Tripadvisor

So the perfume sale has come and gone, and I have managed to move on a few things - most of which have yet to reach their destinations, so I am inevitably in a state of nail-biting limbo until they do. Crucially, I managed to shift the Bag of Hell / Indifference, which was going for free and went in the end to Samantha of I Scent You A Day, for whom it was a Bag of Possibility / Promise, which was great. She kindly sent me a handful of samples in return, having taken care to check my preferences in advance, so as not to end up accidentally giving me the starting material for the next 'Bag of Oh No, The Samples I'm Not Wild About Are Mounting Up Again'! ;)

Now the scent that really knocked me for six - in a good way - was Decennial Lys du Desert, which notwithstanding its Gallic character appears to have lost its accent somewhere over the Atlantic. For Lys du Desert is one of a quartet of scents launched by the iconic US perfume e-tailer/store, Luckyscent/Scent Bar, to mark its tenth anniversary. The nose is none other than Andy Tauer, while the other three fragrances were created by Jerome Epinette (who has at least one accent in his name, but a combination of inertia on my part and the interests of brand congruence forbid me from adding it). I have historically had a mixed hit rate with Tauer Perfumes, even though my only full bottle purchase last year was PHI Rose de Kandahar, and I have also taken a belated shine to Une Rose Vermeille. For years I was something of a Tauer refusenik - or Tauer 'reluctantnik', if you will - and found his early work too fuzzy and smoky and generally heavyhanded on the old Tauerade. The other perfume with 'desert' in its name - L'Air du Désert Marocain', henceforth abbreviated to LADDM, as is the convention in perfume circles - was the glorious exception that proved the rule, albeit it was also quite strong, and I had to be in the wood for it - I mean 'mood'(!), but that may be a cedar-y Freudian slip.

Source: basenotes.net

Before accepting Samantha's generous offer to let me have the remains of her sample, I googled the reviews of Lys du Desert and lit upon one by The Non-Blonde in which Gaia notes the kinship between Lys du Desert and LADDM, and reckons people may find this scent more wearable. I see that Jtd of Scenthurdle (writing on Parfumo.net) considers Lys du Desert a stylistic bridge between Orange Star and Noontide Petals. Well, I am retesting both of those (albeit my sample of Orange Star may have gone off on the QT), but I can't say I 'get' that connection myself. For me the obvious comparison is hands down with LADDM. Props to Jtd though for consistently adding the accent. ;)

The amusing genesis of Lys du Desert is narrated on Andy Tauer's blog, where he explains that over a breakfast of pancakes with Franco and Adam of Luckyscent, he agreed to compose a perfume for their commemorative Decennial line, which would be based on his own happy experiences of camping and hiking in the Joshua Tree National Park. He refers to this as not so much a formal commission as a 'pancakission'. A man after my own heart. Specifically, it was the scent of the fleshy, creamy Desert Lily itself that was the cornerstone of Tauer's inspiration.

Source: calflora.net

As the blurb on the Luckyscent explains:

'The Desert Lily was in full bloom in the Pinto Basin - a rare occurrence only a few weeks out of the year. It's white lily scent was intoxicating, with hints of green freshness that reminded him (Tauer) of the oasis at Cottonwood Springs, a site with lush green vegetation at the north entryway. His ode to what spawned LA - the rugged yet delicate, unforgiving yet captivating desert - is captured in Lys du Desert.'

Notes: bergamot, rose, green lily, dry cistrose, iris root, ambergris, dry cedar

On first spraying, I get the characteristic warm, muzzy tingle that is Tauerade, but to my nose in the softest and most gentle register yet. The end is already in the beginning, and I have no problem with that. And the lily is not immediately apparent on my skin - I can just about pick up on what may be powdery iris and dry cistrose but it is hard to know, as they are swooningly melded into the arid, woody-amber base. I really don't mind if the lily is playing hide-and-seek though, as the overall impression is so gentle and dreamy - I'd even go so far as to say 'spiritual' if I was that way inclined. Yes, I think Lys du Desert could give Etro's Messe de Minuit a run for its money in the religiosity department, though it is completely free of that dank, ecclesiastical flagstone vibe. And if LADDM conjures up a bed in a hotel room directly overlooking a souk in Morocco, Lys du Desert makes me think of this room at the Desert Lily B & B in the Joshua Tree National Park.

Source: Tripadvisor

So... I have only just twigged that part of the Mojave Desert is one of two ecozones in this park.

Long time readers may recall my travelogues from California, but the despatches specifically from the Mojave Desert may bear repetition here - for although I was a ways to the North West between Mojave and Tehachapi, intent on winkling out Nissen huts that were home to maintenance engineers on the ginormous wind farm there, I cannot fail to have noticed umpteen examples of the tree in question, for the landscape is fairly homogeneous in that regard.

For your convenience, I have combined extracts from two relevant posts in one handy mash up. ;) If you remember them, jump to below the wavy line of tildes...!

The Mojave desert itself

'Finally, no catalogue of road surfaces would be complete without a description of my intrepid trip up a mountain (taller than Ben Nevis!) in the Mojave Desert. I had an appointment with an executive at a wind farm operating company, and his prefabricated office was conveniently located on the summit. When we arranged the meeting, he strongly recommended that I rent a 4 x 4, warning me of the dangers that could befall the hapless motorist if it had recently rained. The 5 mile dirt track to his office would have been transformed in a matter of hours into a river of mud, and a regular compact car risked becoming mired in the sludge, wheels spinning uselessly, if they spun at all.

I mulled over my respondent's advice long and hard, but in the end my phobia of large clumpy vehicles far outweighed my fear of mudslides, and I rented the sub-compact Chevy mentioned in my previous post. I decided that if it did rain the night before my meeting, there was nothing for it but to get up in the small hours, borrow a Miner's headlamp and a pair of Wellingtons - from where I hadn't quite figured out - and attempt the climb on foot.

As luck would have it, the day dawned bright and sunny - and windy. The 5000 turbines on this, the second largest collection of wind generators in the world, were earning their keep that day, like demented, oversized daisies. I made steady progress up the mountainside in second gear - or what I imagined would have been second gear if I wasn't driving an automatic. 40 minutes later I reached the summit, and when I got out of the car the wind nearly blew the door off! As for my hair...well, suffice to say that a single 80mph gust instantly transformed my slightly blowsy style into the most convincing faux-Puckrik ever! On balance, a blob of gloop probably remains a more practical everyday option.'

Now are those wind turbines or Joshua trees?

Followed by my brief desert encounter...

'But my finest stunt in a Denny's restaurant was picking up a 20-something airforce mechanic in a remote village in the desert. No, I will rephrase that - I did nothing of the sort - he merely struck up conversation with me from the next booth, and after we had both finished our meals, cordially invited me to accompany him to find a bar (this was a dry Denny's, to go with the local terrain).

Reader, I declined, pleading paperwork, but thinking that that would be too much excitement on a school night, while my inner Health & Safety Representative said I shouldn't be getting into any strange men's cars whom I had only known long enough for them to eat a customised French Toast grand slam. My heart, on the other hand, said he was a perfectly decent young man and a credit to his country, and the innocent invitation had been prompted by the inevitable loneliness that comes with chronic solo dining.

My hotel in Mojave - called Desert Winds! ~ Source: Tripadvisor

When I told Mr Bonkers about this encounter, he seemed quite proud of me for showing that I can still pull someone young enough to be my son. A feat even more impressive when you factor in the American Eagle Outfitters cable knit sweater and 9 yr old boot leg jeans - an ensemble strictly confined to in-home comfort wear (which of course Denny's had more or less become by that point : - ) ). And the non-deterrent effect of the outfit reminds me in turn of the time I was mistaken for a hooker down by the Hudson River while wearing a full length camel coat and aran bobble hat.'

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And the association of my time in the desert with Denny's brings us neatly back to pancakes - or almost certainly would have done, had it been morning. The flower whose tender sensuality is subtly and elusively woven through this composition I shall hereby dub 'Lily of The Hidden Valley'. As with the bag of samples I gave to Samantha, Lys du Desert is the scent of possibility that is blowing in the warm, soothing wind. It's the scent of throwing caution - and accents! - TO the winds, even. And it is the road - and the drink - not taken, my 'lily-livered' reaction to a chance invitation from an all-American boy...

But I am not sorry I said no. I did have work the next day. And frankly I felt empowered enough by my navigational exploits up hill and down dale tracking down these wind farm mechanics. In terms of logistical feats in my line of work, it may well have been my finest hour. So just as Lys du Desert is the scent of Andy Tauer's hiking holidays, for me it will forever signify the exhilaration of having my work take me to this remote and majestic spot. Take me there and get me safely out again, with the job in the bag.

Hidden Valley, Joshua National Park ~ Source: Tripadvisor

Kitten impossible: A new ****** Bonkers is coming soon! (Plus a naming poll - of sorts!)

The Bonkers kitten is at the top!

I watched an interesting TV programme last night, in which the producers deprived three teenage girls of their smartphones for 48 hours to see if they would cope. The trio were using them anything from 3 to 5+ hours a day. I mention this because for the past three weeks, I have been surfing kittens on the Internet - yes, in our technologically advanced era of online dating and the like, surfing kittens is also a 'thing'! - for a good few hours a day at a guess. For nearly three years on from the demise of Charlie Bonkers, I was on a mission to find another furry companion to fill the cat-shaped hole in my life - of which, over time, I was becoming more acutely aware - however my very specific criteria were rendering the search quite tricky.

You see, owing to some upcoming travel plans, there were only two possible windows for the receipt of said kitten. Then it needed to be based within a drivable distance for the pick up and to be aged between 8-10 weeks at that point (I was reluctant to miss too much of the short uber-cuteness window!). It also needed to have been well cared for in the early weeks of life, not to have long hair (two of my friends had impressed upon me the high maintenance nature of extra fluffy cats), and not to be too expensive. For there is usually a cost involved, even when rehoming a cat from a rescue centre. And reading between the lines, the vast majority of '£0 cats' in the classified ads came with baggage - and I am not just talking about their own basket and scratching post. So some cost was actually a kind of reassurance, while too much stood out as flagrant monetising. (Unless you are talking a pedigree, who are obviously in a different price league.) Additionally I didn't want the cat to be 'too pointy' or hairless - that ruled out the admittedly rather small category of Sphynx cats! - and I wanted the kitten to be the perfect mix of outgoing and friendly, but not so exuberant as to be likely to rip the furniture to shreds. And not too highly strung or moody. Oh, and not too vocal. Not that such personality traits can necessarily be determined in advance. ;).

The late Charlie Bonkers snoozing in the sun

And most importantly of all - and arguably most shallowly of me, you could say! - I had very specific criteria in terms of the animal's markings...partly based on general aesthetics and partly on my cat owning history ie I didn't want to adopt a kitten who looked similar to one I had had in the past. This narrowed the field to tabby and white or orange/ginger and white, and that was about it! In my capacity as market researcher I would observe that about half the cats in Britain appear to be black or black and white. I already feed a black cat belonging to a friend, and in my street you are never more than six foot away from a black and white cat, most of whom I pet in passing if they will let me, so the monochrome box is well and truly ticked already. This undoubtedly made the search heaps more difficult than it would have been if my colour preferences had been more flexible.

Charlie and Miro - 1995

Now it is 20 years ago since I last rehomed a pair of kittens, and back then you would get word of a litter through friends of friends of friends, postcards in shop windows, the vet's, or ads in local papers. There have of course always been rescue centres as another route, but what has changed in the intervening time is the explosion of online ad sites such as Gumtree and Preloved and many more. I did put my name down with several rescue centres, who promised to get in touch - in the first instance to vet my house and street for their suitability, however, with one exception they didn't get back to me. This was doubtless for very good reasons ie that they were busy rescuing bags of kittens from dustbins or what have you, but it meant that I felt quite passive in the process, and there was a chance that they might never contact me - or have a kitten answering my draconian description! - in my critical window for taking one home. So I dived back into the private sector, to have more control of my options - and more choice to start with.

And in the course of my exhaustive - and exhausting! - googling of kittens I quickly realised that as with estate agent speak, there is also a kind of jargon at work here...

'Stunning! gorgeous!' - unremarkable with one rheumy eye
'Last one remaining!' - as above
'Looking for its forever home' - as above, with possible added behavioural difficulties
'Playful' - will bite your hand off
'Will hopefully soon be litter trained' - behavioural difficulties already apparent
'URGENT - must go asap!' - the landlord is throwing us out
'Comes with scratching post and carrying basket' - it's a complete psycho and I never want to own a cat again.
'Has been socialised around children' - the poor creature is traumatised from having fingers constantly poked in its ears.

The photographs in the ads were of very mixed quality too. The ones where the kitten was very small and distant or completely absent were of particular concern. They should perhaps have had the caption 'Stunning! Very mobile!' In other cases the kitten pictured was at the peak of its cute phase, but a closer correlation of birth and current dates revealed that it was in fact a year and a half, and proving difficult to shift.

Then on Sunday I spotted a picture which caught my eye of three very new kittens curled up together. Posting an image of a kitten that new is quite high risk, as they can resemble furry slugs/stoats/sausage-shaped draught excluders, but this litter was so pretty that extreme youth was no barrier to their appeal. I booked a slot to view them on Monday, with a pale tabby particularly in mind, and the face-to-face encounter with this tiny, fragile, cheeping creature clinched the deal.

So for the next seven weeks I will be known as 'Vanessa White Tabby' in the contacts of a lady in Leicester's phone. The pictures show the kitten's mum Nala, and I also met its granny, Daisy. Oh yes...the little thing is only 8 days old but already has that reassuring 'M' for 'Musson' on her head. ;) And a bonus white tummy.

Mum Nala, working the black eyeliner!

So the next job is of course to choose a name for the new ****** Bonkers. I have a few favourite contenders, but thought I would share the (still rather long!) shortlist with readers in case you could tip me one way or another with your own leanings - or indeed think of something completely new.

Truffle - combines confectionery with a 'riffling through fur' kind of term. A friend also pointed out that it would work well 'shouted in anger'.

Salome - ancestral name (see earlier post)

Shimna - a favourite river in Northern Ireland, in which I would like my ashes scattered one day.

Floozy - suggested by Tara, and makes me smile every time I say it. Could easily be shouted in anger, say if the kitten persists in having her legs in the air (scroll down...!).

Crumpet / Trollop - variants of Floozy ;)

Moth - I just like the delicate flutteriness of this one, plus there will hopefully be a future launch by Papillon called 'White Moth'.

Tilde - kitten has wiggly lines on the side of her head. Also sounds reminiscent of Tilda Swinton, who is no bad role model. Here is my rather whimsical review of Like This!

Sable - the epitome of furry luxury

Cinta - Indonesian for love, and a shortened form of the Spanish Jacinta, meaning hyacinth. It is also a variant of the Spanish for Cynthia (and the kitten looks like a bit of a madam all right!). Finally, there is a cute tiger cub in London Zoo of this name. Pronounced 'Ceenta'.

Pernod - the kitten's fur is currently the same sort of milky/cloudy colour, plus the name contains a homonym of 'purr'.

Latte - as above, and sounds like 'catty'.

What is she like?!?!

Mizzle / Wevet / Dimpse - it's a Farrow & Ball thing...;)

Marble - her markings looks a bit like one?

Shale - evokes the idea of geological striations, but with unfortunate connotations of fracking!

Tilly / Viola / Ruby / Fleur / Plum / Bronte / Prudence - pretty retro names

Cognac - her mum and granny have quite rich brown tabby markings, so with this one am aiming off for how her fur might develop.

Polenta - companion name to Lady Jane Grey's Couscous!

Baroness Chipolata von Currywurst(!) - suggested by a rather waggish friend, with a possible shortened form of 'Chippy'.

Hendricks  / Sapphire / Tonic - gin related names - say no more!

Castell - Spanish name of a lady in Stafford who runs up curtains (as kittens are wont to do, though I very much hope this one won't).

Allegra - Milton, anyone? (Slightly adapted, admittedly.)

Poubelle - French for bin. A friend in France observed: 'Cats are rubbish!'

Nougat, Praline, Topic, Flake, Wispa - more confectionery names that I mostly like for no particular reason.


Do any of those names appeal to you? Any other ideas? I would love your input!

You will look after her, won't you?

UPDATE: Couldn't resist checking the original ad where I found the kitten, and not surprisingly, her boldly striped littermate has also found an owner! ;)

NB Proper perfume posts will resume next time!