G Bellini X-Bolt: Lidl Scores Another Bullseye With A "Bosting" Dupe Of Hugo Boss Bottled For Men

I am sorry my posts have been so sparse of late - now that I have some work again, I sense it will be even trickier to juggle that and the ongoing house renovations. I am mindful that I still haven't written up the remainder of my Belgian sniffing trip, however I was sidetracked the other day by a phone call from my brother. He had just picked up a bottle of Lidl's latest perfume release, X-Bolt by G Bellini. He explained that it was allegedly a copy of the original Hugo Boss for men (the bottle alone is a bit of a giveaway), and was curious to know if I had tried it. I don't think my brother had actually sniffed it himself at that point, because I remember him saying that if it turned out to be awful, it could always be repurposed as bathroom freshener, the fate of Jasper Conran Mister a few years back.

Well, as someone who has tirelessly championed the incredible smell-alike coup which is Suddenly Madame Glamour (a convincing, if somewhat weaker and more watery imitation of Coco Mademoiselle), I had to see for myself without ado, so I picked up a bottle of X-Bolt in my local branch of Lidl yesterday. Then today I nipped into Boots to spray on some Hugo Boss Bottled (to give it its full name), so that I could conduct a side-by-side comparison, albeit on female skin. Which is another reason for posting this right away, while the Hugo Boss is still relatively fresh on.

Hey, I have to say that once again I am very impressed. I don't know exactly what notes I am smelling, other than a vague luminously woody ambery quality and a slightly herbal facet, but I do detect a marked resemblance. The main difference seems to be that when you first spray Hugo Boss, it is soft and refined from the off (as men's designer scents go), whereas the Lidl scent is a little brash at the outset, but quickly settles down.

As you get into the drydown, the Lidl scent has acquired a more elegant character while the Hugo Boss seems to have become slightly more loud. This curious phenomenon may in fact be nothing more than the fact that by dint of wearing off more quickly - or making a bolt for it - X-Bolt has less of that "chemically men's aftershave-y" aspect in its latter stages. It has less of anything to be perfectly blunt. And remains at all times (while it is there at all) vastly superior to any men's fragrance I have ever tried bearing the suffix "Sport". If Hugo Boss Bottled is a 10 I would give X-Bolt a solid 8. I would quite happily sniff a man wearing X-Bolt, despite its naffly butch and somewhat Lynx-esque name; I would think he had dropped some serious cash on this bottle, not the princely sum of £3.99 for 50ml.

So in case anyone is curious here are the notes of Hugo Boss Bottled from the website of The Perfume Shop:

"With fresh, fruity top notes of apple and citrus fruits; warm, floral middle notes of geranium, cinnamon and cloves and base notes of cedar wood, vetiver, olive wood, sandalwood amber and musk."

In the past, I had hell's delight wresting the notes of one of Lidl's first feminine releases, Suddenly d'Or, out of the company's technical department in Scotland (see full saga). I see that Lila Das Gupta, writing about the launch here for Basenotes, has managed to get hold of them - perhaps Lidl has softened its stance on such matters following the huge success of Suddenly Madame Glamour, conceding that public relations is a two way street.

Top - Fresh lemon and limes, the aniseed note of tarragon
Middle - Fresh Fruity apple with a flowery aspect
Base - Vanilla, woody notes and a dry balsamy character

Source: Basenotes

Hmm, comparing those two lists they do seem to be along broadly similar lines. I wonder if the perfumer for Suddenly Madame Glamour pulled off this one too? To get so close to replicating a designer scent of this calibre on a shoestring is a remarkable technical feat, even if it might seem to some like a cheeky manoeuvre.

And as was the case with Suddenly Madame Glamour, X-Bolt has also done a blinder in a blind test, this time involving 108 people. It was carried out in London in June - in Mayfair, I see - so if respondents anywhere in Britain were going to turn their noses up at a cheapo grocery store perfume, it would be there! (Well, assuming they weren't bussed in from other less affluent neighbourhoods, that is - and maybe they were, in the interests of a representative sample.)

Whoever the respondents may have been, they were anything but sniffy...according to this article by PR Newswire consumers preferred Lidl's fragrance over David Beckham Homme (no surprises there...), Dior Homme, D&G The One, and Hugo Boss Bottled. I don't think it can just be coincidence that Hugo Boss featured in the test line up...

Has anyone else out there carried out a side-by-side comparison between the two? If so, let us know in the comments. But I for one am certainly struck by this new star in the grocery store galaxy, this "bossa nova", if you will - or do I mean "bosso novo", with it being for men...? ; - )



Photo of Hugo Boss Bottled from The Perfume Shop, photo of Lidl store from Wikimedia Commons via Clemensfranz, other photos my own

Ergonomic Joy And A Bonkers Interruptus Update

There is nothing like looking at an old “to do list” to fully realise how far you have come.

“Did I pay for train ticket twice?” (what train ticket?)

“Diagnose squeak”

“Another microfibre duvet?”

"Hilary crates"

“Ask fire station re contaminated diesel”

“Say Ryan said wld give me a few pallets”

“If people don’t know whether GCSEs count, shld we tell them?”

There’s even an idea for a blog post in here:

“Eating food with your fingers”, but it may take me a while to recall the exact angle I had in mind with that.

So yes, things have moved on a lot since I wrote those lists, but as regular readers will have noticed, I am still not managing to post very much myself – or read most of my usual set of favourite perfume blogs. This is partly because I am busy addressing the hidden flaws this lovely old house keeps yielding up, and partly because I have been receiving a number of supportive emails back channel with which I am gradually catching up.

But though I am behind on so many fronts, I have a proper desk now, which is a giant leap forward, to come over all Neil Armstrong for a moment. It is technically a table, not a desk, and belonged to a friend’s grandmother – it even boasts an actual indentation shaped like an iron where she used to rest hers face down (which, as a born again lover of antique furniture, I would not recommend). If you look closely at the photo above, you can make out the mark, just down from the succulent. As you might expect, the table also features a robust work surface to – strange but true! – actually PUT MY LEGS UNDER and THINGS ON. Yes indeedy. The sense of wellbeing that descended last weekend when I first pulled up a chair AT the desk was hard to put into words, and was topped off by a rather fine sunset, to which this side of the house is pleasantly prone. Okay, so there are still a few vestigial pink splodges in one corner of the carpet where the radiator valve seeped iron oxide-pigmented sludge the other day, but in the grand scheme of things progress has been made...

So there will be more posts along in due course, including at least one other one from my recent Belgian trip – but for now I will sign off with photos of my new (freshly ironed!) Flittersniffer scarf and the perfume fridges, finally in position in the spare room. (Obviously I pulled the curtains pretty sharpish after this shot was taken!).

Bonkers In Belgium - Part 1: Meeting Victoria Of Bois De Jasmin - Well Worth The Wegomlegging

Two weeks on from my last post, the new house continues to consume much of my energies, and I sense I may remain in "light crisis management mode" on an indefinite basis going forward. And just as they say we are all a mere three feet away from a rat, so it is that I am - as ever - within easy arm's reach of a Farrow & Ball colour chart and a tape measure. I did, however, manage to slip away last week on a trip to Belgium, leaving Charlie Bonkers (whose failing kidneys are rallying on a human diet of superior cold cuts), in the care of a friend.

Now I may have a special interest in perfume, but one of the most impassioned pieces of writing on Bonkers has to be this post on traffic congestion in Belgium - or, as Wordbird aptly dubbed it the other day on Facebook - Flem. On this latest trip the roads were relatively "fluide", however, my optimistically named TomTom Go (which mostly thinks in German if it thinks at all), was "totally over-demanded" by the current spate of roadworks throughout the country. I drove aimlessly for long stretches when my sat nav lost the signal, and even when it seemed to have found it again, it was sure to lead me up blind alleys or the wrong way down one-way streets. Yes, the drive to Brussels proved to be more of a wiggly wegomlegging - or detour - than I bargained for, but as noted in the title of this post, the end more than justified the meandering means...

My first stop on the Wednesday was a meeting with Victoria Frolova of Bois de Jasmin . I visited her in her rooftop apartment, which had dormer windows and panoramic views of the city. It wouldn't have surprised me to have seen Nicole Kidman perched on the terrace, straddling the glittering sickle moon of the Chanel logo. We ended up spending the day in Victoria's flat, sniffing things from each other's collection and pausing only to wolf down the delicious and nutritious meals my hostess knocked up in less time than it takes me to snap the top on a 2.5ml atomiser. Actually, that takes rather a long time, if I even manage it, indeed - so maybe make that a 1ml vial...

In the course of our conversation I was intrigued to learn that Victoria and I had a number of key things in common apart from a love of fragrance: for instance we both had all our wisdom teeth out at once - with complications!; we both fortify ourselves with By Kilian Sweet Redemption on challenging days, and for reasons primarily of pigmentation, neither of us would ever be seen dead in lemon yellow. Beyond that, the similarities are more tenuous, for while I do consider myself a bit of a linguist, Victoria speaks more languages than you can shake a stick/Stock/bâton/палочка/kij etc at, has the honed physique of a classically trained ballet dancer (that's because she is one!), the nuanced nose of an industry insider, and the wrist action of someone used to deploying a pestle and mortar in the supreme act of alchemy that is an impromptu vinaigrette.

So what did we smell?

I brought along a number of somewhat obscure, discontinued and/or vintage scents from my collection for Victoria to try, including my beloved Plus Que Jamais and the sandalwood-tastic Damian Bash Lucifer #3. Victoria was especially interested to sample my bottle of Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass from the 70s, pronouncing it to be in very good nick, and remarking on the expensive jasmine absolute used. Conversely, she confirmed the demise of my vintage Chloe and a couple of niche decants, so I entrusted those to her for humane disposal after I had gone.

For her part, Victoria had prepared samples of a couple of scents I was interested to try, namely Serge Lutens Santal Majuscule and Chanel Coco Noir (of which more in the next post). If Hermès Santal Massoia is a soprano, Santal Majuscule is definitely an alto. From its reddish browny colour, I feared it might smell like one of those Serges Abigail of I Smell Therefore I Am famously described as "icky stewed things", but while Santal Majuscule is sweet and gourmand, it is not too heavy. It reminded me of a sandalwood-forward version of L'Artisan's Vanille Absolument or Tom Ford's Tobacco Vanille, but I don't care for either of those the way I liked this (I am not keen on boozy scents, that's probably why). It was "Santal Absolument" for sure though, as the name Majuscule of course suggests - as in "Sandalwood Writ Large" or "Sandalwood With A Capital 'S'", type of thing.

Notes (from The Perfumed Court): sandalwood, honey, cocoa, spices and Arabian Attar rose.

Victoria also introduced me to a couple of Olfactive Studio perfumes, of which I was particularly taken with Lumière Blanche - more than taken in fact - smitten more like. It is a soft, milky and musky, sandalwoody wisp of a thing, and would make an excellent understated day scent. It was milkier and more rounded than Santal Massoia, which - much as I love it - does retain a slight "planky" bite to it, without ever lapsing into "trapped in a tea chest" territory (Tam Dao, I'm looking at you!).

Notes (from Now Smell This): cardamom, star anise, cinnamon, iris, almond milk, cashmere woods, cedarwood, sandalwood, tonka bean and white musks.

And as a souvenir of one of the key ingredients in Lumière Blanche, Victoria kindly gave me a couple of tonka beans encrusted with coumarin to take away, along with a pot of the wonderfully toffeefied speciality from Normandy, "confiture de lait", aka "milk jam".

In the course of our sniffing session, I also got to sample the duo of Amouage Interludes, which were not my thing at all - the men's version was too birch tarry, while the opening of the women's (which has notes of mown grass, apparently), was muddled and harsh and reminiscent of something in the solvent line that might well be the subject of one of my work projects...yes, it was not unlike paint stripper, to be brutally frank.

At five o'clock I headed home to my hotel, and it struck me that this enjoyable meeting with Victoria had nicely kickstarted my interest in perfume again. I have been so caught up in the aftermath of the move and its attendant setbacks that my hobby has had to take a back seat. In a comment on a recent post by Tara of Olfactoria's Travels about the stages of the "perfume journey", I aligned myself with those who felt they were on a "perfume plateau, admiring the view". To that I would now add that thanks to Victoria, my particular plateau appears not to be as flat as all that.

Photo of wegomlegging from brusselblogt.be, aerial view of Brussels park from karine*imagine via Wikimedia Commons, photo of Santal Majuscule from news-parfums.com, photo of Victoria Frolova from boisdejasmin.com, other photo my own

L’Artisan Parfumeur Séville A L’Aube Launch With Bertrand Duchaufour & Denyse Beaulieu: More Grey Matters - Or Lack Of Them…

You know another post must be overdue when you realise you have amassed no fewer than FIVE Farrow & Ball paint colour cards - all identical, but displaying varying degrees of dogearedness. A growing colony of F & B tester pots is another sure sign that you are losing touch with the real (as in the virtual) world. Another dead giveaway is the spammers who are all over your blog archives like a rash, sensing that your current posting hiatus means you are too preoccupied to notice their stealthy incursions.

Well, it’s true that I am somewhat preoccupied at the moment with more firefighting on the house front. Just this week, for example, the spectre of woodworm raised its myriad pinhole heads in the study, so the carpet laying there has had to be deferred for the second time (the first carpet arrived damaged!).

FIFTH COLOUR CARD NOT PICTURED

On the plus side, since my last post I have had a water meter installed, a sash window fixed and a floor levelled, and acquired a working fridge, a tumble dryer, microwave, pedal bin, broom, mop and toilet brush. Not forgetting the cutlery drainer. I have also erected a clothes line and a bird house in the garden, deep cleaned the kitchen cupboard doors and descaled the kettle. Oh, and the living room sofa is on order, the chimney sweep booked, and the finger of suspicion now points at a defective filling loop rather than a perished expansion vessel on the boiler. Which I am sure you are all as fascinated to learn as I was (not)… : - )

JOA'S WHITE AND LONDON STONE NOT PICTURED

So without further ado, I am trying to cast my mind back to the first week after the move, when I went down to London to attend the UK launch of L’Artisan Parfumeur’s Séville à l'aube. I was booked to attend the session with Bertrand Duchaufour and Denyse Beaulieu of Grain de Musc at 1pm on 25th July. The day dawned bright and relentlessly hot, and the back of my bargain Toast frock from T K Maxx was already drenched in sweat by the time I left the house just before 9am, so you can imagine what an unsavoury state I was in by the time I arrived at the Covent Garden store. Not least because I inadvertently went there via the corporate offices of L’Artisan in the city, owing to an unfortunate error involving my iPhone, my failing short sight and the London HQ address being in a VERY LARGE TYPEFACE right under the advert for the actual event. Instead of scrolling past the image to reach what I took to be the venue address, I should have ENLARGED the image itself to reveal the contact details of the Covent Garden store. Ah well, magnified hindsight is a wonderful thing... I might have known the day was doomed to go awry as soon as I got up and spent a good fifteen minutes hunting for a pair of shoes not firmly in the hiking boot family.

ARTILLERY LANE - NOT THE VENUE

So anyway, the staff at L'Artisan's HQ – who greeted my perspiring, breathless and baggage-encumbered figure with pained expressions of bemusement and concern – alerted their Covent Garden colleagues to my delayed arrival, and I finally turned up (even more bedraggled and sweaty, if you can possibly imagine that) at about 1.30pm - not so much fashionably late as "middle-aged confused".

When I entered the cavernous cellar in which the event was being held, Bertrand and Denyse were just wrapping up their talk?/Q & A session?/bit of both? (obviously I wouldn't know!), to a small group of half a dozen women. I didn’t recognise anyone, but I caught the name Katie Chutzpah, and inferred that the others may also have been drawn from the wider ranks of fashion and beauty writers rather than being perfume bloggers as such.

Because I was so spectacularly late, Justine, L’Artisan’s marketing exec, ushered me into a side room and presented the company’s upcoming releases, beginning with La Collection de Grasse, inspired by the "spiritual home of perfumery" - in particular the rugged hinterland behind Grasse itself, with its aromatic kaleidoscope of colour and scents.

The collection features an autumn and a winter candle, presented in chunky ceramic holders with a distressed metallic finish, which I learnt were made in a specific region in China - the only place in the world boasting that particular artisanal expertise. I am surprised I took in that little nugget of information, to be honest, because I still felt mortified about my address gaffe and was generally rather distracted.

Making up the trio of products in the Grasse range - and with a nod towards the town's tanning heritage - are some leather gloves impregnated with Mûre et Musc Extrême. These are part of a limited run of 100 pairs in sizes 6-8 (another surprise fact I retained – I never knew there were glove sizes till I encountered scented ones!)

The Grasse Collection is due for release in October, to be followed in November by L'Artisan's Christmas Collection, comprising boxed sets of candles and various permutations of his and her fragrances in handy 15ml sizes. The colourful stylised packaging takes its inspiration from the Cirque d’Hiver in Paris, and the boxes are also available as gift packaging for any scent in the L’Artisan range.

I scribbled a few notes during Justine’s mini presentation, but mostly I just kept saying: “Nice!” to everything she showed me, the strain of the journey having rendered me all but inarticulate.

It was not long before I heard sounds of the party next door starting to break up, so I returned there and loitered with intent until an opportunity arose to greet Bertrand Duchaufour, whom I had met at the 2009 launch of Penhaligon’s Amaranthine, and to introduce myself to Denyse. No sooner had I started to explain who I was to Bertrand Duchaufour, when one of the few remaining bloggers cut across me, thrust an iPad in Bertrand’s face, and began what appeared to be an impromptu video interview - which struck me as a little peremptory and rude.

Not long after, Denyse announced that she was popping out for a cigarette and invited me to join her for a chat. Half way up the stairs to street level, I caught a beautiful cloud of Séville à l’aube and was reminded of how much I liked the scent. Once outside in the street, Denyse lit up and we had a few minutes shooting the breeze about topics as various as her luxuriant and variegated hair (which Denyse jokingly referred to as being “fifty shades of grey”, a punning reference to her recent commission to translate the erotic blockbuster into French!), middle age, insomnia, and the boy she met in Seville all those years ago, whom she hopes will one day stumble across the book...

When we went back inside, the attendees of the earlier (as in “on time”) session had all dispersed; Bertrand invited me to sit down and we carried on briefly chatting in French. I explained how Séville à l'aube has a powerful resonance for me, because of my own holiday there the last time I split up with a partner, some 17 years ago. And now here I am back on my own, my single state coinciding once again with a Seville theme! Bertrand agreed that that was a bit of a neat coincidence, and asked me if I had a question for him. A question? Why, it was as much as I could do to have found the venue in the end, so I blurted out:

“No I don’t – I just wanted to get here in time to say hello!”

It felt like an honest, but rather lame response at the time – after all, I am an interviewer by profession. And maybe part of me wanted to make up for the woman who thrust the iPad in his face by just enjoying being in his presence and not asking him anything, but in truth it was more a case of my not having given the matter any thought. Yes, I really was just glad to have made it down before everyone had left!

Oh, and my klutzy behaviour didn’t end with the lateness... I knocked over a row of L’Artisan perfumes with my shoulder bag – fortunately the domino effect was mysteriously self-righting at about the fourth or fifth bottle mark. Then shortly after I emerged blinking into the sunlight from the store's subterranean depths, I wandered into a branch of Hobbs, the primly classic clothing chain, and attempted to buy a sandwich; I had momentarily mistaken it for Marks & Spencer, of which (in fairness) there happened to be a branch next door.

HOBBS - NOT A SANDWICH OUTLET

So yes, the inauspicious day turned out all right in the end, even if I did look like a dishrag and completely missed the whatever it was, asked no questions, took no photos and forgot to collect a goody bag (assuming my partial attendance and uninquiring mind had not disqualified me from eligibility to receive one, as it may well have done!) But I did receive a goodbye hug from Bertrand, who declared my French to be “magnifique”, which was more than generous of him… : - )

For a properly documented account of the Tuesday session, check out Tara’s account on Olfactorias Travels.

Meanwhile, my review of Denyse’s book, “The Perfume Lover”, is here, and here is my take on Séville à l'aube.


Photo of Artillery Lane from Stacey Harris via Wikimedia Commons, photo of Grasse from G CHP via Wikimedia Commons, photo of Denyse Beaulieu from basenotes.net, photo of Hobbs from streetsensation.co.uk, photos of L'Artisan invitation and Christmas Collection from L'Artisan Parfumeur, other photos my own

Fifty Shades Of Grey Rectangle And My Bonkers Moving Tips

Apologies for the rather longer hiatus between posts than intended. I am happily installed now in the new house, which I love to bits, but it is only fair to say that nearly two weeks on, facilities at Bonkers Towers II remain on the rudimentary side. To give you an idea, I am typing this atop a makeshift "desk" fashioned out of apple boxes - well, more of an island than a desk - two islands in fact, as you can see in the photo, with leg room in between. A small rope bridge might not go amiss. I note with interest that one box is labelled "perfume stuff and jewellery bedroom (any)". I had been wondering where my jewellery went as I got ready to go to London earlier this week.

Anyway, the move went pretty well on the whole, though it was not without incident. On gaining access to the house for the first time, it was obvious that the whole place needs redecorating: this is because the previous owner was a bit of an art collector, and when she took away all her paintings she left behind a forest of picture hooks at irregularly spaced intervals, exposing fifty shades of grey rectangle on the walls beneath.

It is an Edwardian house as I mentioned in an earlier post, and its wealth of period features include the original cast iron bath, together with a set of period household appliances. Okay, I am exaggerating shamelessly, but for example the fridge struggles to reach a cooler setting than 10 degrees; while this may be the optimum temperature for keeping perfumes cool, it is of course not recommended for the hygienic preservation of food.

Consequently, shortly after my arrival in the house my perfume collection was exiled to a downstairs shower cubicle curiously located in the utility room, while one of my perfume fridges was immediately pressed into service as emergency storage for the perishable stuff from the old house, Mr Bonkers having only been interested in securing custody of the milk, margarine and a couple of pizzas.

So that was one infrastructural setback I needed to deal with as soon as I moved in - and there were others involving cheeping smoke detectors, blown light bulbs, sluggish taps and a possibly perished expansion tank. So between the state of the house as I found it and the events of moving day itself, I have compiled a shortlist of my top tips / learning points from the move - which I hope might have some entertainment value even if they are not of imminent use to anyone reading.

Incorrect labelling is a surefire recipe for moving mayhem

The making of my bed was delayed 48 hours by the non-appearance of the mattress protector, only for it to surface in a box marked "kitchen", cosying up to the missing stash of Kettle Chips I had just fancied snacking on on my first night. In my defence, this was one of the boxes the removal men packed on the day, its comedy combination of contents doubtless prompted by haste rather than a sense of mischief.

Do the moving men mug maths

On the day of the move, the alarming realisation quickly dawned that I only had access to two mugs to be shared amongst three thirsty removal men. Consequently, more mental energy was expended on the organisation of an elaborate mug usage roster - "If Stewart and Tony just had a drink, it must be Vin's turn...so where is Tony's mug, then?" - than on almost any other aspect of this complex logistical exercise.

Get the measure of the place before you move in

By which I specifically mean the room measurements really, to enable you to gauge what furniture goes where. Sounds easy enough, but even with the best laid scribbled dimensions on a piece of file paper you can't quite put your hand on on the day (along with mugs 3 to 30), a couple of bulky upstairs items are bound to end up temporarily sidelined in a downstairs room. Here they await the moment when (with any luck) a sudden access of spatial awareness may strike you and their final resting place will become apparent.

Think of your computer as just a glorified colourful jigsaw

Okay, so this one didn't really wash with me, and the photo key didn't help much either.

Assume an indefinite procession of visitors with dirty feet

On moving day, after the removal men have effected the elaborate swaddling of your new house using giant rolls of sticky cling film in a bid to minimise the traipsing in and through of dirt, it becomes unthinkable that anyone visiting the house in future will ever be allowed to make direct contact between shoe and carpet again.

Pets will play on your conscience by holding out for premium food

Yes, since Charlie Bonkers was successfully transplanted to the new house, she has been on selective hunger strike, by refusing to eat her normal fare of IAMS crunchies. The unspoken message appears to be: "Look, I have been fairly adaptable through all of this disruption and upheaval, so if you don't give me top of the range foil pouches instead of this gravel stuff that hurts my five remaining teeth, I shall start chowing on down on this cheese plant, poisonous or not."

Discourage your pet from tombstoning from an upper landing

Yes, a cat that is reckless enough to chew on the leaves of a cheese plant in a fit of pique is capable of launching itself off the landing through one of the generous gaps in the banisters, much like the generations of thrill-seeking babies that went (head first) before it.

And finally, although I didn't capture the cheese plant-eating incident on camera, I did witness Charlie Bonkers' close encounter with a bed of cat nip during her first supervised outing in the garden. At least I assume it was cat nip, though I am not very hot on plants as we have established.

Fahrenheit 1901: Fragrant Anachronisms From My Furniture Forays

It may come as some surprise to readers to learn that I haven't actually moved yet: I should have been installed by now, but the vendor of my new house deferred for a week, so the big day is now next Wednesday. I have, however, been largely off the blogosphere radar in the past fortnight due to a rush work project - my first paid work this year! - which of course I grabbed with both hands even though its timing could have been more opportune.

In any spare moments I have carried on with the decluttering and packing process, as well as stalking Ebay and making forays to local antique stores in the hunt for essential items of furniture such as a dining room table and chairs. Some of my Facebook friends may have clocked the recent table coup - I posted a photo of it on my wall - but the quest for chairs is still ongoing.

I have been so consumed with work and house stuff lately, that not only is my perfume hobby firmly relegated to the back seat - I wonder what type of seat, and whether it would work with the table? - but some days I am still forgetting to wear perfume. Therefore you may imagine my surprise this morning when these two worlds of furniture shopping and fragrance unexpectedly collided during a routine sortie to inspect some French Edwardian chapel chairs in Cannock.

For there atop an Edwardian dressing table was the following incongruous collection of perfume bottles:

Armani Code Luna
Prada Infusion d'Iris
Armani Diamonds

And perched on an upper shelf, to which its adventurous spirit had doubtless prompted it to clamber, was Davidoff Adventure.

I was just chuckling to myself about these fragrant anachronisms - where, pray tell, are the vintage Guerlains and Carons?! - when I spied another arrangement on a Victorian dresser against the far wall, comprising:

Daisy Eau So Fresh (x 2!)
An empty cut glass stoppered bottle

And on the opposite side on its own:

Dior Fahrenheit

Now in recent weeks I must have visited upwards of 10 different antique shops, but this is the first time that I have found any items of bedroom furniture "accessorised" - or is the word for it perhaps "staged"? - with perfume bottles, never mind such comically modern ones. A tortoiseshell or silver-backed hairbrush or one of those lace doiley things might have been more in keeping.

What were the owners of the store trying to tell their customers, I wondered? Interestingly, no other ornaments were used on any other items of furniture to suggest possible usage. There were no fruit bowls on the dining tables, no hats on the hat stand, no monks on the monks bench, for example.

Maybe it was a message from on high to me not to completely forget my love of perfume in all the hurly burly and chaos of the move. The very incongruity of Diamonds and Daisy etc may have been deliberately intended to provoke a shock reaction, which it surely did.

So here I am, marooned in a sea of cardboard boxes, but wearing perfume again and blogging about it!

Meanwhile, the little French chapel chairs didn't quite cut the mustard (they are lighter and more variegated than they appear in this photo).

However, I have my eye on these ones from Lincolnshire instead...

Photo of Gainsborough chapel chair from churchantiques.com, other photos my own

Cuvée Coincidence: A Vintage Bottle Of Corbières With An Unexpected Bouquet...

In the run up to the move, ongoing chaos continues to reign at the outgoing Bonkers Towers. Anyone who thinks I am exaggerating and that I most probably have everything under control should take a look at my desk. But I did say I would try to maintain a skeletal blogging schedule in the coming weeks, so here is my latest tenuously perfume-themed post...

People say that pet owners end up looking like their animals, or perhaps they already did to start with. This is particularly true of my friend Clare, who sports an identical corkscrew fringe to her cocker spaniel Meg. To be honest, I don't think I bear much of a physical resemblance to my cat, other than a few random brown splodges on my cheeks or a bit of a rheumy eye from time to time. Charlie Bonkers wears integral kohl eyeliner for instance, which is a look I can only work in a very dark place, ideally after a few drinks. Ditto, any of those False Lash-Volumising-Million Perkily Kinked Spider Leg-type mascaras.

Now Charlie Bonkers is additionally profoundly deaf, with a collapsed ear (unrelated to her deafness), five teeth, a sparse showing of whiskers - all but two of which are on one side of her face - and a bald and "floating" chin, so-called because there is a disconcerting amount of "travel" in the skin around her jaw. So yes, I would venture to say that I have a fair way to go yet before I resemble my own (admittedly rather elderly and decrepit) cat.

But if you also find you don't bear a marked similarity to your pet, don't be dismayed. For starters, in some category of household goods or clothing or other there is bound to be at least one, if not numerous products named after you. Yes, only the other day I encountered one such piece of furniture - why, the comprehensively labelled "Vanessa Traditional Solid Mahogany Large Extendable Oval Dining Table" in question even sported authentic stumpy legs! Then there is a Spanish make up range called Vanessa (or used to be in 1983 when I spotted it), and a pair of patchwork leather bendy mules bearing my name, made by an Austrian bendy mule and clog company I once interviewed.

And if I didn't feel sufficiently commemorated and immortalised by these Vanessa-themed consumer items (there were others, but I'll spare you), until the other week I was the proud owner of a vintage bottle of Corbières called Vanessa (a happy find by my brother and his wife on holiday in France). I say "until the other week" because Clare and I have since gone and drunk it, toasting the fact that I had sealed the deal on the new house.

Anyway, it was only on the day we downed the wine that I noticed on the label on the back of the bottle the following lyrical - and for a fumehead rather fitting! - description of the wine. Here it is in French along with my rendering in English:

"Un charactère certain
Non dénué de charme
Un goût de femme
Au délicieux parfum"

"A certain character
Not devoid of charm
The taste of a woman
Wearing a delicious perfume"

So yes, in more ways than I could have imagined, this celebratory bottle and its synaesthetic bouquet really did have my name on it... If turning into a bottle of wine makes me a LUSH, bring it on, I say! Plus there may be another Al Pacino film in there somewhere.

Oh, and I really did mean that about my desk...

Photo of Clare and Meg by Clare Chick via Flickr, other photos my own