Simon sniffs: a pioneering perfume protégé is doused down under in a fragrant Fitzroy foray

Fraser Island by David Stanley (Nanaimo, Canada) via Wikimedia Commons 

It's been over a month since my last post, though there has been the Christmas runaround to contend with, plus it took me several weeks at least to come up with that title. The wags amongst you might say I should have taken longer. 

Regular readers may remember my friend Simon, whose growing interest in niche fragrance I have been privileged to help fuel: his perfume collection is featured on the blog - kept in the tiny fridge on his narrow boat, despite space being at an absolute premium! - and I have also covered his various brand epiphanies, namely those of the unexpectedly exclamatory Fragrance Republic, Creed, and the unexpectedly capitalised BEX London. He has now been interested in perfume long enough to be upset by the discontinuation of favourite scents - nay, whole brands - in the case of FR!. (That may well be its own exclamation mark.)

In late November Simon travelled to Australia to spend time with his daughter, who had been working on a nine month contract out there. During his trip, covering Melbourne, Canberra, Sydney, The Blue Mountains and The Gold Coast, he sent me a running photo reportage, which included the amusing leitmotiv of "Australians telling it like it is". (All the following photos are by him.)

None of this "tall" or "grande" nonsense...and be careful what you do with the cup afterwards!

Scissors - it needed saying, I guess, as there is of course the alternative of clippers.

Simon's favourite spot of his whole itinerary was the upmarket Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy. He is a bit of a "cafe lizard" and coffee aficionado, and I sense he was well served there in its sybaritic watering holes. 

I don't care for coffee myself, but could totally see the appeal of the squishy sofas, vibrant art works, and architectural pot plants placed at strategic intervals. Those are just the sort of comfy cafés where "doing a bit on work on your laptop" could all too easily segue into full time squatting.

The gorgeous photos of Fitzroy kept coming...

And it's not just hats the Aussies hang corks on!

One morning, Simon popped into a perfumery in Fitzroy called Lore, on Brunswick Street. It makes me happy that someone I nudged down the rabbit hole should choose to visit a perfume shop 17,000 km away with no prompting from me - I was actually asleep at the time. ;) For Simon is a fully fledged fumehead, sniffing stuff I have never heard of, such as the Australian brand, Goldfield & Banks. Not only that, but he made a purchase of a scent from the line, Wood Infusion. 

Notes: Australian Exotic Woods, Sweet Orange, Orris Italy, Agarwood, Lavender Australia, Patchouli Indonesia, Musk, Amber

(Origin Woods: Fraser Island - Queensland)

The creative director for Goldfield & Banks is Dimitri Weber, and the perfumer is German/Iranian nose, Hamid Merati-Kashani, whose other credits include several perfumes for Amouage, Marly, and Piguet. 

Helping him home in on a perfume he would love, Simon was under the expert guidance of Clea, one of the store's sales assistants, who mentioned that she knew and admired Dimitri Weber. She explained his artistic vision and how his fragrances reflect the region in terms of their choice of ingredients and/or general vibe. Simon even showed Clea my blog(!), a promotional manoeuvre that was entirely spontaneous on his part, I swear.

I see that the Lore Perfumery website also "tells it like it is", with the headline: "We Love Perfume", and the injunction to "Stalk Us". There's a Q & A with Clea on there in which she mentions that her favourite scent - if she absolutely had to pick one, which we all know is a deeply disturbing concept - is Nasomatto's Blamage, "Not only for the fragrance, but what it stands for." Now that intriguing statement had me immediately diving into Google to find out what she meant, and the result is very interesting - sounds like the sort of stunt Geza Schoen would pull! This quote is from Sydney fashion retailer, Sorrythanksiloveyou:

The creator wants us to know: “From our mistakes, can come something beautiful”. Legend has it that Gualtieri blindfolded himself and picked several ingredients at random, determined to create something from the chaos. The result is Blamage (the German word for ‘Disgrace’), a metallic, woody, and floral affair. 

Now though I had not heard of Goldfield & Banks, I immediately thought of someone who would have, namely Portia, the doyenne of antipodean perfume writing. He is doubtless familiar with Lore Perfumery, along with readers of his late great blog, Australian Perfume Junkies. And sure enough, I found a review of Wood Infusion and other scents he owns from the line over on Perfume Posse, and told Simon that he was in distinguished company with his choice.

And of course, if he is a perfumista worth his salt, Simon will want to go back to Australia one day and check out the inspiration for Wood Infusion, Fraser Island (or K'gari, the traditional name by which it is now known again)...

The end of a second summer...

NB I do not wish to suggest by my use of the word "doused" in the title that my friend was in any sense spritzed to excess during his visit - he may have been sampling things on blotters, or trying a discreet spray on a single wrist, or sniffing nozzles of testers, I don't know. I deployed the word purely - and shamelessly - for its alliterative value. For an instance of my being literally doused in perfume in a shop in Paris, see here.

PS There wasn't an obvious place to insert this earlier, but my mother is from Australia! She was born in a suburb of Perth, but also lived in Sydney and Broome, finally leaving for England in 1928, at the age of eight. I have been myself, in 1993, and would love to go back one day, having long since forgotten about the pesky flies. ;)

Batch point: the surprising guises of Creed Virgin Island Water

Source: rusticescentuals.com

I meant to publish this post to coincide with Wimbledon. So that went well then, I hear you say. But there again regular readers of Bonkers will know that I am no stranger to chronological inexactitude, being also prone to celebrating my blog anniversary days or even weeks off its actual date. I am probably not too far out this year to do it now in fact, but have other things to cover for the moment.

Down the years I have done quite a bit of informal perfume 'consultancy' for friends, some of which I have documented on the blog. I use the term 'consultancy' most advisedly, for we are talking a session of 'guided sampling' here, not anything akin to the work of McKinsey or KPMG. Especially as I wouldn't dream of charging my friends £1500 a day for the privilege of my olfactory insights, such as they are.

One of these friends is Simon, the chap who lives on a boat, and on my instructions dutifully keeps his perfumes in a fridge - despite living on a boat, where space is at a premium! - and to whom I introduced two of what proved to be big hits with him: BEX Londoner SE1, inspired by the spice wharves of that post code (review here), and Fragrance Republic's FR! 01/03, a scent built around the elements of a Cuban mojito. It is no longer in production, indeed I think the whole company went bump, possibly dogged by the twin shackles of excessive serial numbers and exclamation marks, but this is mere speculation on my part.

Source: Wikimedia Commons (via Vodopivez)

Top notes: mint, lemon
Heart notes: rum pure jungle essence (excuse me??)
Base notes: Gurjum balsam

So having drained his bottle of FR1! 01/03 - of which there is none to be had through the usual channels of eBay and Facebook groups - I got together a little bag of samples for him to try in a bid to find my friend another zesty and spirit-themed scent.

And perhaps unsurprisingly - though I thought Penhaligon's Juniper Sling might have been a contender - Simon was drawn to Creed Virgin Island Water, of which I had a little splash pot from many years ago, procured in a swap on MUA (two mentions in as many posts!), but which to my nose was still in pretty good nick.

So Simon drained that with alacrity and I set about procuring some more for him via the UK Sales/Swap/Split site on Facebook. I soon found a 10ml decant, which he applied liberally and again quickly drained. I thought I would seek out a bigger quantity next time, and found a chap on the same site hosting a split that involved a humongous bottle - a veritable Jeroboam of the scent world - divided nine or ten ways, I can't quite remember the exact proportions, but it certainly made 50ml a very affordable £50 or thereabouts, compared with a much higher price were you to buy a 50ml bottle in store. At least three times that much, if not more.

Source: Fragrantica

So the 50ml decant bottle arrived, and Simon carried on spraying with abandon - if anything, with even more abandon that usual, as he had so much perfume to play with. However, he quickly noticed that this lot of Virgin Island Water did not smell like the smaller 10ml decant OR the original tiny splash pot. It was less coconutty to his nose and had a monster fruity opening, which we concluded must be lime. That said, the drydowns were nigh on identical, so it was a fairly fleeting, if startling difference.

So on the Interwebs I jumped in a bid to solve this puzzle, and it was the work of a few minutes to stumble upon a forum thread on Basenotes where mostly male fumeheads from all over the world were discussing different variants of Virgin Island Water, or VIW as it is typically abbreviated, in which not only the coconut vs the lime-forward versions are discussed, but people are lamenting changes in the colour of the cap, or even the juice,

"Does anyone with a 16a01 batch experience the big lime? Should I return this? I read from other threads that they got a perfect balance on this batch.... But I get straight up lime?? What should I do?? (sorry if I sound like I'm going nuts but this smells like lime juice on the opening)"

"For those looking for a nice coconut note who either can't find the right VIW batch and don't have the patience to fool around with batches in the first place, I'll suggest Diptyque Philosykos."

"I ended up paying full retail (15% off actually for Christmas) at the Creed Boutique for their last 2 super-large 17 oz. flacons of VIW from the year 2013. The juice is clear white, and the coconut is dominant. I could have saved hundreds online; however, I love the coconut in VIW and can't stand the lime-intensive versions....I would be thrilled if Creed introduced a new fragrance called Creed Coconut."

Source: Wikimedia Commons (unknown author)

What also struck me was the matter-of-fact way in which members were bandying around batch numbers to back up their observations. In my ten years down the rabbit hole, I have never once looked for, never mind referenced, a batch number of a perfume in current production, though I may have peered at the bottoms of flacons of vintage scents for any kind of numerical steers. But the very idea of going into Boots, picking up a bottle of Coco Mademoiselle (not that I would, given Lidl's perfectly adequate dupe for a sixteenth of the money), and checking it had the batch number I was after is a completely alien concept.

But I had learnt loud and clear that with Creed perfumes, or with VIW specifically at least, batch numbers are very much a thing. I did wonder if the coconut-forward variant is simply an older formulation whereas the lime-intensive one is the latest incarnation, but from all my reading it seems that there is more to it than that. But if anyone has the definitive line on this I would be interested to know!

So given that Simon was not as smitten with this 'lime whoosh' version, I wondered if I could track down a different one for him. Maybe even send this decant back. But if there were different, equally bona fide versions of this scent, that might not be an option. At  least, I thought to myself, I could prove that the lime whoosh variant he has is kosher. That seemed a good starting point. So he gave me back his decant for now, and I studied the homemade label the seller had put on it with forensic interest. Sure enough, there was a long batch number in small type in the bottom corner of the label. Hurrah! I had something to follow up...

I jumped right back on the Net and did a trawl of sampling sites, seeing if any of the ones selling VIW actually stated the batch their sample was from. I struck lucky with a company whose name escapes me in Bangor, Co Down, a seaside resort where I spent much of my childhood summer holidays wasting my pennies on slot machines on the prom (though I resisted the urge to add that as a note with my order). The sample cost £5, plus £2.50 or so postage, but I figured that was well worth paying to prove that what Simon had was 'proper', even if it was not to his taste as much as the coconutty variant. And when the sample came, supposedly from the very same batch as our decant, it was absolutely clear that they were identical, so assuming this was a kosher sampling site, which I did assume, I could tell Simon that he had good - if rather limey - gear.

Barry's Amusements ~ Source: geograph.org.uk

Having established that we had no come back from the Facebook seller because he was simply hosting a split of VIW, not a batch-specific one, Simon got on with using the one he had in the spirit of that Stephen Stills song: 'Love the one you are with'. And now he has finished that too, all 50ml of it!

Another big split came up on the same site recently - involving another gigantic bottle but a different seller - however that fell through unfortunately, when the online retailer suddenly realised it was out of stock. We all got our £50 back and I am currently on the waiting list (on my friend's behalf) for another bottle to appear. It sounds a bit like waiting for a kidney to become available, and certainly Simon is very attached to this scent, even if it is not entirely essential to life. So much so, that he is now completely comfortable in the knowledge that finding a cheap source of Virgin Island Water is already good going: the coconut or lime inflection may have to remain in the lap of the gods.

Have you ever come across this phenomenon of batch variations? Is it a Creed thing or more general?

Beyond Hate: By Kilian Beyond Love, Prohibited, and my Love and Tears Janus moment!

Source: Hayley Armagost on Pinterest

Hate...it's a strong word. There are very few people in the world, if any, whom I would say I have ever hated. Oh, maybe the former colleague who slammed the door in my face after I had pulled an all-nighter at the office. I'd been editing a report that was chock full of someone else's typos, for which I took the rap, even though the person in question was knocking on thirty at the time and perfectly capable of proofing his own work. So yes, I probably wouldn't rush to meet her again.

As for my reaction to the By Kilian line, every blogger who has ever posted about their perfumes has probably had a comment from yours truly bemoaning the headache-inducing 'house fug acccord' that killed this range for me. Liaisons Dangereuses - which I would liken to Poison for the Noughties - was the worst offender, but I remember having 'fug issues' during my brief encounters with Love, Beyond Love and one or two others. Interestingly, I have experienced no such problem with later releases, such as Love and Tears or Sweet Redemption, to name but two, so I can only assume it is a stylistic hallmark of the early years. By a similar token, the early Mona di Orios were all kinds of wrong on  me - I still shudder at the memory of my Nuit Noire 'necklacing' incident - but I went on to love several of the Nombres d'Or collection.

The other slightly annoying thing about this brand - apart from the price and the preposterous promo shots of a snake-draped Kilian Hennessey - is the opaque packaging. Very unhelpful for anyone attempting to sell a partial bottle at a later date. Though props to the brand for its tassles. Yet overall I have largely tuned out to By Kilian, and though I was recently in Augsburg, where the niche perfumery Naegele has a whole wall devoted to the line, I didn't make any effort to go there this time - and didn't even point it out to Val, though we passed close by. 'Friends before perfume'...? Well, before By Kilian perfume, for sure.

NO, IT ISN'T!!!!

But two things happened recently to prompt me to revisit this brand. Firstly, not so long ago, Tara was sending me some bits and bobs, and enclosed a packet of my own By Kilian samples which I vaguely remembered having given to someone. Not to Tara, as it transpired, but to Holly Cranmer at the time of her visit in August, and now she was giving them back, having presumably also had a poor hit rate with the line. So for a while the little bag of vials, with their distinctive calligraphic script, sat on my desk, awaiting transferral to long term storage / purgatory. But before I got round to doing that, a chance reference to the tuberose note in Carnal Flower during the German tour - which was greeted by a chorus of 'Oh, tuberose, that's a nice scent' - made me think to tentatively retry the (to me, still) very scary tuberose perfume in the By Kilian stable, Beyond Love, Prohibited.

Source: havenessence.com

And guess what? It wasn't scary. There was no discernable fug. No headache ensued. But rather, I fell hard for this heady, coconut-tinged, almost gourmand tuberose soliflore, which Luca Turin dubbed 'tuberose tuberose' in Perfumes The Guide, citing it as the greatest example of the note.

"Calice Becker has composed a straight-up tuberose using the best absolute from India, with touches of other notes (magnolia iris) used only to narrow the gap between the extract and the fresh flower. The result is the best tuberose soliflore on earth."

Notes: coconut accord, Egyptian jasmine absolute, tuberose concrete, tuberose absolute, green tuberose, tuberose petals accord, ambergris, tonkin musk.

Um...would you like a side of tuberose with that? ;)

Source: vroma.org

Yes, it was creamy, in an oozing patisserie kind of a way. I pictured a cream slice, but with white custard. To my mind's eye, this is a very white, yet warm and enveloping scent. Evocative of a tropical beach holiday, so arguably not the best fit for a rainswept night in Bristol, which is where I decided to give my sample its first ever public outing.

Then I remembered that Caryne had asked me to wear Love and Tears, its jasmine-foward counterpart, at a gig some time, so she could gauge whether that was the intensity of jasmine she was looking for on her own, vegan jasmine perfume quest. (Ongoing, and a bit of a tall order it seems.) So anyway, Janus-like, I decided to wear Love and Tears on the back of my neck, and Beyond Love everywhere else. I sense that there may be a piquant psychological metaphor in the near juxtaposition of these two scents, but I can't quite put my finger on it. It certainly made for some comedy moments in the pre-gig milling as I proffered both the front and nape of my neck for interested parties to sniff. Both perfumes got the thumbs up, with Beyond Love deemed more suitable for evening wear.

Mazzie and Simon

I resniffed the same fans who had attended one of the Berlin gigs wearing Chanel pour Monsieur and Aromatics Elixir respectively. This time Simon was in Clinique Chemistry - which I thought was a wind up, but it turns out to be its real name! - while Mazzie was in a peppery poppy perfume from the Body Shop, which smelt delightful on her. Caryne herself was wearing a sample of a patchouli scent from L'Erbolario, purchased at the same time as my bottle of Méharées.

The next day, on a whim, I morphed into a reverse Janus, wearing Beyond Love on the back of my neck and Love and Tears everywhere else. ;) Oh, after further reading on the Interwebs I have just realised that these two are part a collection of love themed perfumes, which comprises: Prelude to Love, Invitation, Love, Don't be shy, Beyond Love, Prohibited, and Love and Tears, Surrender. Me being me, I appear to have skipped the preamble and jumped into this series just as it gets interesting...;)

So yes, beyond hate lay a surprise love for this tuberose beauty. I don't anticipate that there will be a 'beyond Beyond Love' phase, but I will soon have finished my sample at this rate, so - given the prices and general hoo-hah surrounding this brand - there will imminently be a 'Beyond Wearing' phase.  And possibly a few tears about that...

Source: fragrantica

Bonus tassle pic specially for Tara!

'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

Bengals, birthdays, and blotters galore: another visit with Liz Moores of Papillon Artisan Perfumes

It was my birthday last weekend. Since hitting 50, I have been hopelessly in denial about getting older. If you ask me, your 50s are not the new 40s - they are very much the 'How come nobody ever thought to tell me about (insert debilitating physical or mental malfunction)!' decade. And I just turned 57. Now I am quite sure of this, because I counted the rings on my neck. ;) No really, it's not just trees you can date in this way. Worryingly, turkey necks may turn out to be for life, not just for Christmas, but such gloomy thoughts didn't stop me moisturising that general 'neck of the woods' - or 'woods of the neck', even - for the very first time ever this week.

Speaking of woods, that is also where I was headed on my birthday, to visit Liz Moores in her forest hideaway again, along with my dear friend and fellow blogger Tara of A Bottled Rose. The run up to the big day was full of excitement, though sadly not of the pleasant anticipatory kind.  I stupidly locked myself out of my house the night before(!), but managed to break back in using only a screwdriver and an armpit-swivelling yoga posture I didn't even know I knew. My relief at this cat burgling coup - and yes, the cat flap was also involved! - was shortlived, however, for I spent a near sleepless night thanks to an unholy rumpus next door, the least said about which the better.

So anyway, the plan was that I would pick up Tara from Salisbury station, so we could travel down down to Liz's together. I was just half an hour into the journey, swigging water and munching on flapjack in a bid to offset that dastardly duo of sleep and glucose deficits, when the warnings of tailbacks on the M5 prompted a Gordian knot-type manoeuvre at Spaghetti Junction, and a radical rethink of my chosen route. This was a good call, as I made it to the station with twenty minutes to spare, even though this was not quite time enough to change, buy a compact to powder my nose (the obligatory forgotten item of the trip!) - or to take a photo of the sign for Nether Wallop.

On arrival at Liz's, there was a comprehensive exchange of presents, which would have made for an intriguing and densely plotted graph if you were to draw lines from donor to recipient: there were early birthday presents for Liz, late birthday presents for son Rowan, who turned 10 this week, and presents for Daisy for no particular reason other than that she is the baby, and impossibly cute. Then there were presents for me because it was my birthday that day, and presents for Liz in her capacity as hostess, plus a few extra random items I offered up to anyone who wanted them, including a set of lavender guest soaps and a jar containing what Tara confirmed to be an Indian condiment.

Lemon verbena soap in  a Papillon-themed box!

After I had changed into one of the several outfits I had hastily grabbed on the way out that morning, the three of us repaired to the patio with drinks; Richard E Grant-style, I demanded tea in the biggest mug Liz owned, as I set about addressing my caffeine shortfall - yes, make that a tricky triumvirate, not a dastardly duo of dietary and other deficits.

I should also mention that because of the immense floor plan of Papillon HQ, even though we stayed home the whole time, we hung out in three distinct zones over that time: patio, kitchen, and perfume studio, which felt almost like going to three different addresses. This periodic decamping to other parts of the house created the sense of an 'episodic' day - or of a 'sodding epic' day, as ex-Mr Bonkers was waggishly wont to transpose the term.

And epic it was! Our conversational topics lurched seamlessly(!) from hangover cures to genetic legacies, to the wonders of M & S and the mindset of artists - and everything in between. At one point Liz demonstrated the relative mobility of each of her arms, following her shoulder surgery earlier this year. On the plus side she is now able to rub sun cream into that awkward spot between the shoulder blades that eludes some of the most able-armed amongst us, myself included, however, anything around head height or higher remains a challenge. So no overhead jerks with dumb bells or pinning of fascinators on elaborate top knots any time soon.

The middle phase of our visit took place in Liz's humongously big kitchen - any bigger and we would have needed to have communicated via Messenger. I was delighted to see my friend Gillie's 'big jugs' gracing the long dining room table. It was here that Tara and I installed ourselves, as Liz went about making lunch, deftly navigating her way round the combined no-go lists of ingredients that Tara and I had submitted (of which more anon...).

Son Rowan sat at one end, and in an admirable display of diplomacy, got stuck into assembling Tara's present of a Lego Ninja figure, while simultaneously 'building a burger' out of the jelly sweets I had given him (one of several items of whimsically interactive confectionery that caught his attention).

'Burgers someone built earlier' ~ Source: emmalemmadingdong

In a matter of minutes the Ninja figure was finished, complete with retractable helmet and multilateral weaponry, and before you could say: 'That chap who played Cato Fong in The Pink Panther has just died', Tara and I were being showered with a hail of minute plastic pellets, which we dutifully retrieved from the interstices of our laps and handbags - not least to ensure they didn't stray into the burgers.

My newly Ninja-ed handbag

Apart from the sporadic pellet gathering, Tara and I were by no means idling all this while. No, we had been assigned the important job of testing Liz's pretty much finished mod of White Moth, together with a still 'potentially to be tweaked' one of a new chypre fragrance. Over the course of an hour or two, we would continually resniff our own and each other's wrists and report back to Liz about what the perfumes were doing at that point in their development, and how we felt about them at every stage.

So White Moth is a pretty summery floral, with a bouquet of frangipani and tiare and a tangy, sherbety accord (involving some kind of fruit of which I am sure Tara will have made a note) - the whole thing laid over a gauzy vanilla base. Or so it seemed to me!

Then the chypre has three distinct phases: a bright opening of a very unusual orange that presents as grapefruit(!), which segues into a spicy heart with cinnamon and clove, which Liz may well beef up with narcissus, followed by the most deliciously sweet and sultry musk, the like of which I have never smelt before.

And while all this was going on, family members and friends would turn up in dribs and drabs, starting with Liz's partner Simon and Daisy, zonked from her first swimming lesson, and followed at intervals by the three older daughters and their boyfriends. This drip feeding of arrivals smacked of those cumulative nursery rhymes-cum-memory tests that get progressively longer as they go on - the likes of 'Old Macdonald had a Farm' or do I mean 'The Farmer's in His Den'? So Liz and Ro, and Simon and Daisy, and Lily and C, and Jaz and...Poppy and T...and have I forgotten anyone? - and E.I.Adio, we all pat the bone! ;)

Speaking of farms, in my review of Angelique I have already reported on the eclectic menagerie that also lives at Papillon HQ: the horses and dogs, the Bengal cats (twice as many as before!), the snakes, owl(s) and cockatiels. Turns out I completely missed the tortoises, but Tara spotted them in a terrarium by the fridge as Liz was contemplating what to give us as a takeaway snack for the road (or rail).

Blotter monitor

After a hearty lunch of asparagus risotto (completely free of anchovies, offal, squid, gherkins, onion, sweetcorn and Tiramisu!), followed by birthday cake for me with one(!) tactful candle, we adjourned to our final destination, Liz's perfume studio. I covered Liz's business generally - and the wonders of her studio at every turn! - in more detail in my earlier post, but there were still new things to sniff and see this time around. For example, I was interested to know how Liz handled the alcohol side of her perfume business, not least from a H & S point of view, and she showed me the plastic jerrycans she buys the alcohol in, which reminded me of oversized packs of screenwash, though mercifully not blue.

Alcohol to the right, blotters just about everywhere! ;)

I spied a couple more of those comically named materials on Liz's shelves this time round - there was one that looked like 'Aggression' and another that I read quickly as 'Frank Sinatra'. I think it was in fact something ending in 'Serrata' - a type of frankincense, perchance? ;)

Under Liz's expert guidance, Tara and I sniffed a ton of fragrance materials, from fruity notes like apricot, plum, rhubarb and pear, to florals such as jonquil, narcissus, lilac and tiare, to vanillas and musks of every stripe, as well as black tea, jade, a markedly clean patchouli, and the specific orange used in the new chypre.

At one point we also stared out an unsettling lump of ambergris floating in a murky liquid in a see-through tub. At another, Liz warmed a canister of hyraceum - and one of a Persian rose material - between her thighs(!). Tara captured this 'money shot' on camera and I look forward to seeing it on her post. ;) And as she had done for me, Liz scooped out a generous spoonful of orris concrete for Tara to take home - you get a quality goody bag at Papillon, I can tell you! None of your lame Sherbet Dip-and-balloon combos, oh no.

And all too soon it was time to take Tara back to Salisbury, and drive on to the pub where I had booked in for the night. Many thanks are due to Liz and Tara for giving me a fun- and family- and fragrance-filled birthday to remember!

And I simply can't wait for White Moth and the chypre to see the light of day - I am sure they will be winners. For to reprise the names of Lego figures for a moment, Liz Moores may not be the Ninja of the perfume world exactly - she doesn't have the range of movement in her arm to do all that abseiling business, for one thing - but she most certainly is its Aroma Transformer...

Dogs In Heats: Please Help Meg, The Perfumista Pin-up Pooch, In Her Canine Calendar Comeback!

The Internet - and Perfumeland is no exception - is awash with gratuitous photographs of cute looking dogs and cats. One of ChickenFreak's obsessions is with quirky cat pictures, as I am sure she would readily admit. Sometimes, however, the animal in question is firmly linked to a particular cause, as with Ari's recent quest to raise enough money to buy her kitten a Roomba. I totally understand where she is coming from - every cat needs a whimsical mode of motorised transport.

And if anyone was reading Bonkers about a year ago, they may recall my debut post on Ça Fleure Bon, featuring Meg, the perfumista pin-up pooch, and her bid to win the coveted spot of Ms November in the MetLife canine calendar competition.

Well, sufficient time has passed for Meg to have got over her acute disappointment at losing on that occasion, and she is back with a vengeance, supported by her equally photogenic daughter Flossie, and running in the March heats.

If you like dogs - or even if you don't, but can appreciate the fact that these two are very fetching specimens of their breed WHO ALSO WEAR NICHE FRAGRANCE!! - please take a moment to click on the link and vote for Meg and Flossie under the March section. There is no need to register or leave your email address or anything tricky like that - you just vote "Yes" when you get to their photo. (Assuming it works the same way in different countries.)

MetLife Calendar Competition - Vote Here!

And here is an update on the dogs' perfume preferences from Clare, their owner:

"Special occasions only for the Fleur d'Oranger. Meg is quite partial to Mitsouko because she's a traditional kinda gal. Flossie prefers essence of sheep poo but please don't let that stop you voting for her."

If further encouragement were needed, note that Flossie's official name registered at the Kennel Club features perfumery ingredients and was chosen by yours truly: LILY PETITGRAIN.

NB Clare tells me Meg and Flossie are currently losing to a boxer, a breed not known for its elfin beauty or alluring sillage.

"The Boxer's ahead again, by a short-and-stubby nose. For heaven's sake, it hasn't even got its eyes open. The plucky spaniels not only have their eyes open, they are actually SMILING for the camera. I can only assume the boxer is owned by Simon Cowell."

So please help Meg and Flossie "march" to victory, and may the most fragrant dog(s) win!!

Kitchen sink cologne and over-egged coleslaw - and how, as with slaw, less is more

When I was very young, I asked my brother (who is six years my senior) why there was no white crayon in the crayon tin. Being older, he was at that stage in physics where you learn about light, so extrapolating from the process whereby white light is created, he assured me that if I used ALL my crayons on top of each other, I would get a white colour. He was only teasing, as was his wont, but I followed his instructions to the letter and was crestfallen to end up instead with a decidedly muddy and unappealing shade of brown. Which taught me the valuable life lesson that using everything in your armoury at once - 'everything but the kitchen sink'-style - isn't always a good idea. It is still apparently true of light, mind...well, if you mix the primary colours of red, blue and green at least.

Fast forward to the mid-1980s. Of my 700+ friends on Facebook, there is only one, a Simon Staddon, who probably won't be reading this - unless I tag him, haha - who worked for the same company as me back then and can vouch for the fact that I was once a coleslaw mogul. No, really. In the marketing sense I mean - it wasn't all mine as such. God forbid, with a three week shelf life or whatever it is. But yes, for a year or two I presided over an empire of £11m worth of the creamy cabbage condiment, give or take a few tubs of potato salad and beetroot in jelly round the margins. And even more briefly, some whelks, cockles and rollmop herrings. Because for a short spell the empire almost doubled, when the powers-that-be bought out one of our main coleslaw competitors (with a side of shellfish) in a hostile takeover. They were dragged kicking and screaming into our corporate fold, and were so fiercely opposed to the merger that the factory staff took the law into their own hands and began to sabotage the production lines down which our products now flowed. You have heard the expression 'p***ing in a pot'? Well, that is exactly what happened. Police were called, and later swarms of management consultants descended on the factory in full-on crisis mode. I could see the writing on the wall for my year-in-the-planning summer launch of a new range, so I jumped ship and applied for a job in Staffordshire. The rest is history, but my friends up here are amused to this day when I say we wouldn't know each other were it not for someone in Essex p***ing on coleslaw.

Contrary to what you might think, that incident hasn't put me off coleslaw as such, even though the fact I had to eat 36 different competitor products first thing every Friday morning so easily could have done, even with the interspersal of Jacob's cream crackers to clear the palate. I still buy the stuff from time to time and can always tell in the first mouthful whether they have used 'aged cabbage', that has been overwintered in a huge hanger in Ely. Then the other day I spied a variety in Lidl that was completely off my radar, and which showed what light years - would they be coloured?/white? - the market had come in 30+ years:

Coconut, butternut squash and broccoli coleslaw

"Finely shredded cabbage, coconut and butternut squash, in a rich creme fraiche and free range egg mayonnaise dressing with dried cranberries."

Are you thinking what I am thinking? This is none other than a blatant case of 'superfood bingo', in which the manufacturers devise an upmarket concoction featuring all the buzzword ingredients they can possibly think of that might appeal to the health-conscious gastrosnobs of Middle England. I am actually quite surprised there are no chia seeds in there. To be fair, I didn't even spot the cranberries, so it would probably have been a waste. For my overriding impression was of a creamy, sickly, very coconut-forward goo, in which the cabbage was evidently too finely shredded to put up much of a fight in terms of bite. Because a tangy bite is the sine qua non of traditional coleslaw, which in this case had been sacrificed on the altar of rich and bland 'creme fraiche and free range egg mayonnaise dressing'. I would rather it had erred on the side of sharp and vinegary, as some of the low-cal coleslaw versions can be, than this inoffensively offensive coconut slime.

Something has gone radically wrong when marketers think that bunging a load of 'in vogue' ingredients into its recipes is going to sell a product. Though I cannot deny that it worked a treat with me!! Fizzy water with a hint of blueberry and pomegranate? I'm there! It may have worked once though, but never again. This was nothing like coleslaw as I know it. It didn't even resemble other offerings on the market that veer towards the creamier, more luxuriant mayonnaise end of the spectrum. This was merely a hot creamy mess. In a chilled food kind of a way, obviously.

Which major disappointment - it is rare for me to throw away food, but in the bin this had to go - got me thinking about whether there are any perfumes I have encountered of this 'kitchen sink variety', with lots of the good stuff thrown in, just too many ingredients altogether to work in harmony, leading to the olfactory equivalent of our white crayon fiasco.

I have given the matter some thought, but my recall is fuzzy, and I would be glad to call upon readers for some suggestions in this vein. Off the bat I would say that Amouage Ubar may be a possible contender:

Top notes: tangerine, orange, litsea cubeba, violet leaf
Heart notes: jasmine, orange blossom, ylang ylang, tuberose, freesia, lily of the valley, rosewood
Base notes; sandalwood, patchouli, vetiver, copahu balm, vanilla, animal amber

And also Parfums de Nicolai Sacrebleu, though it has even fewer notes, and Ubar turns out not to have anywhere near as many as I was expecting:

Top notes: mandarin orange, red berries
Heart notes: carnation, tuberose, cinnamon, jasmine
Base notes: frankincense, vanilla, peru balm, sandalwood, tonka bean, patchouli

I am not happy with those examples - they do smell over the top to my nose, but only Ubar arguably has too many different things going on in it. I tried googling 'perfumes with lots of notes' but there is absolutely nothing out there on the topic! Or not in the first couple of pages of Google, certainly. So please help me out if you can think of perfumes with such a surfeit of notes as to create a nose-thwacking scent overload.

Source: incrediblethings.com

I know, I will look up a few of the older, historical recreations from Grossmith...yes, the effect is broadly what I am after, even though the note lists aren't unduly long again. You know, Shem-el-Nessim and Phul-Nana - that style of heavy, powdery scent from a bygone era.

Hmm, if I can't google perfumes with loads of notes - or remember any! - I am a bit stumped really. Though you see at least where I am trying to go with this. I think the more vintage scents may lean this way, perhaps the odd Guerlain, even. I feel sure there is a culprit in the Penhaligon stable, but don't ask me which. Or another Amouage that would knock your block off with the length of its note lists if not an overpowering composition as such. Or conceivably both.

Finally, my parting advice to manufacturers of coleslaw would be: 'If it ain't broke, don't fix it' and - most importantly - 'Don't skimp on the carrot!'