Perfume, pubs, people-watching, all of that.

So in the pub the other night - people-watching, like one does. At the table next to us, a couple. We decided (after they'd gone, we're not animals, for God's sake) that they were either a long-married couple on the verge of meltdown ("You bastard, Adrian, I told you not to gamble away the solar panel subsidy!!!") OR on a first date where they had both been grossly misrepresented, either by mutual friends ("They said you looked like Brad Pitt!" "Well they said you looked like someone off Strictly Come Dancing, but they didn't mention it was Anne Widdecombe!") or themselves ("Fun-loving curvy blond/e... loads of personality... my mum says I'm handsome..." fill in gap).
At some point during the starter I turned to my brother-in-law, who takes us out to dinner regularly to thank us for allowing him to occasionally sleep on the cardboard placemat we like to call a spare bed (for work purposes only - he has a very nice family up North). I said "Are you covered in Vicks?". In my defence, he hadn't been feeling well. He was slightly taken aback, and said no, so I remained mildly confused. Until the angry couple left, after having spent most of the evening (while they weren't glaring at each other) texting other people. And I realised it was her perfume, namely (and I will name names) "Pomegranate Noir" by Jo Malone.
Don't get me wrong, I like it, especially on my friend Nix, but it is boldly heavy on what it claims to be opoponax (??? answers on a postcard), pepper, and patchouli. These are its claims, but I say there's a truckload of eucalyptus in there too. In large and over-optimistic first-date splash-it-all-over amounts, it smells of Vicks Vaporub. Or a koala, startled in the act of shoplifting some Vicks Vaporub and a pomegranate. And why not, if I was Jo Malone I'd use some high-flown word like "opoponax" rather than "Vicks".
At this moment I wondered whether their burgeoning relationship could have been salvaged if he hadn't got all the wrong olfactory signals, and either thought she had flu or was perhaps an aggressive man.

YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT. LOOK AT HER. ALL WOMAN.

Gong-Tastic

It's awards season again and the marvellous Tania Kindersley of Backwards In High Heels has very kindly passed on a gong to this blog. The award exists to be passed on (as they all should) so below are the rules:

1. You have to pass it on to 5 other fabulous blogs in a post.

2. You have to list 5 of your fabulous addictions in the post.

3. You must copy and paste the rules and the instructions below in the post.

Instructions: On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them. When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well. To add the award to your post, simply right-click, save image, then “add image” it in your post as a picture so your winners can save it as well. To add it to your sidebar, add the “picture” widget. Also, don’t forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by emailing them or leaving a comment on their blog.

Alors – the 5 fabulous blogs.

If you have been left out, it’s only because there are so many of you whose blogs I enjoy and want to spread around.

1) The lovely Rol at Sunset Over Slawit. Rol is an astonishing fount of knowledge on music, (especially if it's Morrissey), and ways to cope with being unable to scratch your arm when it's in a cast. He also writes (novel on the way), and nobody seems able to explain how he fits a day job in.

2) The excellently red-haired Laura at The Poet Laura-eate. She is fab. The Wendy Cope of Blogger. Poetry, Oxford current affairs, and a lovely fleur-de-lis backdrop. Plus she knows how to do those Flickr slideshows.

3) The genius that is JRSM at Caustic Cover Critic, a blog whose raison d'etre is to celebrate (or, where necessary, ridicule) the art of the book jacket. An invaluable guide to the beautiful, the unimaginative, the unusual and the derivative. Just lovely, and always funny.

4) Usedbuyer2.0, at the blog of the same name. A bookseller of many years' standing, his blogs are a delight to read; in the last few alone I found references to Cavafy, Edward Lear, Auden, AND quotes, AND room for wonderful digressions on bookshop life in all its strange and peculiar splendour. Also many, many, wonderful clerihews, an artform that is unjustly neglected at the moment.

5) Last but not least, Jonathan at Bookseller Crow. What more can I say than - there is no intentional bias towards the booksellerish in my choices, but Jonathan always makes me laugh.

My Five Fabulous addictions:
It's not like I'm particularly secretive about my addictions, so you probably know all this already, but here are a few of the more socially acceptable ones (the Gitanes and their ilk will be glossed over).

1) Obviously books! Unable to leave a bookshop with fewer than three, usually more. My job and subsequent perks/discount mean I very rarely buy anywhere else, especially since I get free proof copies of many many things, and am on good enough terms with most of the publishers' reps that I can ask them for freebies; under most other circumstances (old, out of print, etc) I recommend Abebooks - worlds superior to Amazon and a bigger range - plus more of your money actually goes to the bookdealer than on Amazon.
2) Perfume. Sorry, I know I'm a bit nerdy on this point but I consider it as important as clothing - ie wearing different ones to suit your mood, the weather, the time of year etc. As a result I have rather a lot. I have nothing against people who have a "signature scent" - in fact I admire their tenacity. But I like the fact that the larger your range, the more you can make olfactory jokes with yourself (nobody else is likely to get it) - like wearing "Rain" by Marc Jacobs when it's raining, or "Rousse" by Serge Lutens because you have red hair. My absolute Mecca for this (apart from, in The Real World, Liberty's) is The Perfumed Court, who will sell you tiny tester-sized bottles of pretty much any perfume so you can try before you commit. Invaluable.
3) COFFEE. Enough said. In an ideal world espresso all the time, but sadly I'm over 25 and can't sleep if I drink it after lunchtime.
4) My/our thick quilted mattress-topper (John Lewis). I have never slept so soundly.
5) If I have an alcoholic addiction here, please note that while I would find life very drab without alcohol, I am by no means an alcoholic. Apparently considering the number of boozehounds and manic-depressives on both sides of my family, this makes me quite unusual. But I do like a nice Calvados.

Perfume again

Just received in the morning post a REVIEW COPY, I'll say that again because I'm so delighted with it, A REVIEW COPY, which means FREE, FREE, FREE, AND I DIDN'T PAY FOR IT, of a book I have been wanting to get my hands on since I saw it reviewed in the paper last weekend: "Perfumes - the guide" by the patron saint of scents and potions Luca Turin. I just realised that I'm so excited that that was all one sentence, so here is another full stop for you. Breathe deeply, my lovelies.
The book itself is a collection of reviews of over 1500 perfumes, from the sublime to the ridiculous, and while it's handy for a little pat on the back (Mitsouko, one of my lifelong favourites, gets five stars and "the best fragrance ever"), it is also completely unputdownable for the all-round brilliance of the bad reviews. A perfume I won't name (people have been sued for less) gets this : "A chemical white floral so disastrously vile words nearly desert me. If this were a shampoo offered with your first shower after sleeping rough for two months in Nouakchott, you'd opt to keep the lice." Another, more concise: "Teensy-weensy cutesy-pie floral of the worst vintage" and, finally, pithy and to the point: "Death by jasmine".
It also poses the big questions that keep us all awake at night, such as "What is chypre without oakmoss?" and "Since the restriction of benzyl salicylates, have floral perfumes been the same?". I honestly don't know how I've lived without this book for so long. I apologise to all non-scentophiles for the single note of this post and will post on a more general note next time. I leave you with the masterful review for Coty Miss Sixty : "Ideal if you intend to be a Miss at sixty".







Herewith Mitsouko. A treasure.

Room Lovely (with apologies to Stephen Fry)

Watching a very old repeat of "Room 101" last night - most of the time the things the guests choose strike a chord (thongs, lateness, lads' mags, Anne Robinson etc), but of course Stephen Fry went one better, picking "Room 101" itself as one of his choices. His argument (or one of them) was that there is something fundamentally depressing about sitting around discussing what you hate (I personally can't get enough of it, but I am a lesser mortal). Another point he made was that there is nothing more destructive to the human spirit than looking at the, in the main, grotesque mess we have made of the world and realising we are part of a species that makes things ugly wherever it goes - although I think he made that point in connection with the Limited Edition Collectable Plates to be found in Sunday colour supplements ("White Wolf's Spirit Brother", "Adela's First Ball", "Waiting For Santa" etc etc). Aaaaaaaaaanyway - he suggested a TV programme called "Room Lovely", although I would recommend fancying up the name a bit, in which guests talk about what they find wonderful and indispensible about the world. I attach above a little collage of things that make me happy. Sadly I won't be including a picture of Mr Fishwife as he is in fact either a hugely famous film star or a high-profile wanted criminal, take your pick - can't remember which excuse he'd prefer, although what it boils down to is that he's read too many articles about identity fraud and is convinced it will happen to him. Tchuh, Virgos.

Those of you who read this by subscription (you know who you are, Ma) will have to look at this actual page to see the pictures...!

Perfume - the story of a murderous overdraft

I have to admit to being completely obsessed with perfume. In excess, it is a ruinously expensive habit but since I don't have an addiction to (illegal) drugs or (expensive) shoes, I can just about support it. Books don't count as an addiction, more as a necessity, and since I'm lucky enough to work in a place where they are at best free and at worst subsidised, I don't even include them as an expense. I have a wardrobe at home and at last count two of its shelves and one of its drawers were full of perfume bottles, meaning that the less important stuff (clothes) ends up crammed into a separate drawer and permanently in need of an iron. They subdivide into: summer and winter, daytime and nighttime, work and weekend, serious and tarty, and the immensely important Perfume That Makes You Feel Good/Clean/Fresh When Hungover*. I completely understand people who have one perfume and always wear the same thing, because it's the whole Proustian madeleine syndrome of "Ah yes a fugitive waft of L'Air Du Temps will always remind me of Kate" etc etc - and it fixes people in your olfactory memory. I can't do it, though, as I all too frequently find myself getting bored with whatever I'm wearing and have to wear something else. Usually other peoples' perfume is out of bounds, and I have had bouts of terrible guilt about this, i.e. the time I "stole" Mitsouko off my friend Catherine (not the actual bottle, just the wearing of it) - is it a sin on a par with actually stealing something real? Or wearing the same dress to a party? Which may be why I end up wearing more and more obscure perfumes**. My favourite pilgrimage, and I can't use this word too strongly, is every couple of weeks to the perfume hall at Liberty's. Selfridge's is too vast and has too much unnecessary tat (celebrity perfumes for those who want to smell like Paris Hilton - which is what exactly? Spilt booze and some bloke's aftershave with a base-note of grubby $100 bills??) - and Harrod's is a no-no as I won't willingly put a penny into the Phony Pharoah's pocket. Liberty's is my Mecca, my Garden of Eden, my Narnia. They have scents and potions you will, trust me, never even have heard of. I may have mentioned that I'm a smoker, and in a way this may be a blessing, as my sense of smell is already as keen as a bloodhound's, and if I hadn't dulled it to an acceptable level I would probably pass out in a swooning ecstasy on crossing the threshold.


*Clarins' "Eau Dynamisante", Penhaligon's "Bluebell", Philosophy's "Pure Grace", Annick Goutal's "Eau Du Sud"


** Ineke's "Evening Edged In Gold", Comme Des Garcons's "Rhubarb", Saira Schwarz's "Lucid Agony", Demeter's "Lavender Martini"

Yes, there really is a perfume called Lucid Agony.