Confunded Friday

I can hear the rain piddling outside, which given there was a frost last night might mean a very slippery trip to school this AM.

I am distracted by things, so this is something of a mashed up post. I baked a lot of chocolate chip cookies for the school bake sale to raise money for Haiti. And I do mean a lot.

There are bits and pieces that claim a dogged focus. I'll return to posts based around single coherent concepts next week.

So.

A number of the perfume blogs are doing their winter top ten, which I thought you might enjoy (see www.nstperfume.com, www.perfumesmellinthings.blogspot.com, among others). You know I love lists, but for seasonal perfume lists I leave the making to others. Have a look and enjoy.

I have been hankering after a Chanel nailpolish called Trapeze (I blogged about it a while ago), which is such an odd, unusual and beautiful colour I can't describe it properly. Recently, I saw its dollar price (between $26 and $30 depending on the site). Even though I've been here for over ten years, I still need a dollar price to calculate value. So, that cleared my head big time. I'm not a big polish girl, though I love to get my nails done every once in a while as a treat. Although I have dropped serious dosh on perfume and not had a second thought nailpolish is another thing altogether. Maybe GOSH or Maybelline offers a similar colour...

In recent months the blogs have noted a number of discontinuations of perfumes: a Guerlain a month or so ago and now, on Perfume Shrine, a number of Serge Lutens. I guess this is viewed as house cleaning, getting rid of less well-performing fragrances to make room for new entries while keeping a line reasonably concise. It still seems a bit unfair and has perfumistas scrambling to get backup bottles. (Case in point: Guerlain discontinued Djedi ages ago, which was described as a supremely dry and pongy rose-based perfume that for some reason I ache to try. It was noted among what Roja Dove of Harrod's Haute Parfumerie calls 'dark woman scents'. More on that next week.)

Finally, I have started doing yoga. It's from tape, so the purists out there will poo poo my efforts. But, I am finding it a bit tortuous and thoroughly fascinating. I feel wondrously relaxed after a half hour session (I'm building up slowly). But a few hours later, I feel slightly toxic, as if my body now has to process whatever nasties the concerted stretching and strange positions have released. I'm planning to add walking/running next week.

That's enough of a mish-mash. The child has awoken, the rest of the day calls.

Sillage ... and a small hurrah

Sillage, or the fragrant 'reach' of a scent beyond the wearer, is high on my list of factors I look for in a perfume.

I know there are people out there who seek clean, soft, close-to-the-skin comfort scents. I am not one of them.

I gravitate towards the lush, the pongy, the animalic, the slightly unusual (or even strange) -- things that other people are likely to be able to smell on me. I spray wrists, back of neck, backs of knees and clothes. I love the shift during the day and smelling once again what I put on in the morning as it develops. I love to experience how it changes on my chemistry as it heats up and dries down.

My loves of the past few years don't seem to have fallen into one particular fragrance family. There is a big, animalic floral. There is a classic chypre, with a pong all its own. There is a deceptive musk: refined on top, dirty on the bottom. There is a gorgeous otherworldly resinous fragrance. There is the discontinued wonderfully strange animalic rooty iris which I am hoarding.

The one aspect common to each of these is strength of sillage. They are all-day lasting scents that are strong enough to provide serious waft. This means I get asked what I'm wearing with some frequency -- and because they are all unusual smells, the askers sometimes scrunch up their noses in distaste or perplexedness.

I have to say here that I have never gotten the attraction of 'clean' fragrances -- use soap and water and don't bother dropping your dosh on perfume, which to my mind is meant to be so very 'there'.

So today, I've got an appointment and I'm wafting the beauty of incense-creosote resin. We'll see what sort of response I get.

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I just have to share a small victory against the elements. Until yesterday, the edges of my bathroom taps had a hard covering of limescale that would not be budged. I tried everything: chemical removers, vinegar soakes, half-lemons tied to the taps for hours. No change. I was getting seriously frustrated. Then, it occurred to me to try using a flat-edged screwdriver to 'pop' the stuff off. Success! Beautiful limescale free shiny taps. I love ingenuity.

Changing with the seasons

In the course of discussing his preferences in leather fragrances, which I posted about yesterday, Richard commented about how he's noticed certain things he wears aren't winter-appropriate, including Frederic Malle's Vetiver Extraordinaire. This got him thinking about wearing different things in different seasons.

I thought it interesting that he said he doesn't look to Vetiver Extraordinaire in winter. Vetivers can be good and heavy, but really most that I know of aren't. They are cool, rooty, fresh, woody, mysterious, etc -- and, when you think about it, much more appropriate to the three other seasons.

This set me off thinking about changing one's perfumes with the seasons.

I know from reading the blogs and boards that lots of people do this: heavier scents in the winter, lighter ones in spring and summer. And, they rotate these groups like they do their wardrobes, putting bottles away when the seasons change.

When I used to have one holy grail I wore said perfume year-round. But, when I think back to the HGs, all worked in any season (L'Artisan Mure et Musc, Santa Maria Novella Patchouli, among others).

Of the fragrances I have in rotation currently (which number under ten, I counted) only Dior Hypnotic Poisin, heavy almond-vanilla and almost syrupy (in a wonderful way), is only worn in deep autumn and winter. It's just too much for the rest of the year. In winter, however, it is exceptionally pleasing, wafting off of skin and burrowed into a wooly scarf. It's a fragrance you trail around, both outdoors in the cold air and then in the warmth, when you peel off the layers: a perfume with truly great sillage.

I have an adored rose fragrance that is full and animalic, but I have worn it in deep summer (well, as deep as you get here) with full comfort. The heat of the perfume going well with the heat of a summer evening.

The one musk I wear can go year-round, as it spiced and floral and a bit powdery -- quite refined on top of its pongy base.

I think people talk more about layering fragrance in the colder months, playing with putting together gourmands and incenses and woods to make something heavy, lingering and comforting to put off the cold.

This thought on smokiness as winter-appropriate reminds of another perfume I know Rich wears that he didn't mention in his musings on seasons.

Tabac Blond, by Caron, is a gorgeous, golden tobacco fragrance that, like the leathers I have smelled on him, really really works with Rich's chemistry. Is that in the winter rotation? Now that I've thought of the smell, with its hay-like aspect, I really truly need to know.

Leather

My friend Richard made a flying visit to London recently. Among other things, we talked perfumes: specifically, leather perfumes, as Richard loves them and they tend to be great on him. He says, "They were the jump from nothing to something, the fragrances that introduced me to the idea that male smells didn't have to be vulgar".

His thoughts (and some comments from me) on some perfumes based around leather.

"Creed Cuir de Russie was an odd combination of a beginning of very strong birch tar then drying to an almost 'cooked' unpleasantness, yet at the same time smelling (as is the case with a lot of theirs, he comments) thin, lacking in complexity" (I share Rich's impression of Creeds). "Compared to other leathers, it's a crude (as in not complex) fragrance". 

I had given him a sample of Chanel Cuir de Russie several years ago, which I recall he enjoyed. The leather tinged with florals was appreciated. However, he's never mentioned it again, so I don't think the impression was very strong. In addition, CdR in eau de toilette isn't that tenacious, which could account for a memorable fragrance being not memorable.

Recently, I introduced him to Tauer Perfumes' Lonestar Memories. He had a very positive response to this gorgeous, resinous creature. A partial notes list gives an idea of what it might be: geranium, leather, birch tar, jasmine, tonka, myrrh, vetiver and sandalwood. The point I'm trying to get at is that this is both smooth and rough at the same time, which is profoundly attractive and attracting.

Knize Ten. Now beloved -- of holy grail status, I believe -- this was the first leather Richard sampled, at an early visit to Les Senteurs in London. It's a very strong fragrance. Very strong and very animalic. Rich once commented, and I wrote about this in an early blog post, that it has the effect on him of creating boundaries, but specifically when men smell it on him. They have a tendency to take a step back -- not because they find the smell unpleasant but more in that they are respecting Rich's personal space. It is an interesting thought.

But that is a digression from how it smells on him, which is wonderful. As I said, this is one strong fragrance -- and a little around the neck and on wrists is enough. It is also soooo smooth and (forgive me) rich on Rich, smelling the way really good leather does. You want to return to the fragrance again and again.

To me Chanel CdR smells of Parisian decadence; Lonestar of wide open spaces and what I would imagine is the scent of jobbing cowboys (ones who smell of clean sweat); and Knize of a somewhat darker decadence (vs the Chanel) -- slightly less controlled or refined, a bit wilder.

While I've yet to find a leather I can wear comfortably, I appreciate them in the bottle, as compositions and on other people -- in particular, on Richard.

Stop-gap

I'm playing around with about three different posts on various things. However, I've not finished any of these.

So, a bit of a stop-gap today.

I made garlic bread to go with dinner last night. I like garlic bread: I like eating the bits of garlic that my son asks me to brush off his pieces.

The smell of sauteed garlic frequently makes its way onto lists of favourite smells -- and making the garlic butter got me thinking of fave smells lists. That's my stop-gap for today: five things that I'm loving the smell of at the moment (mind: my lists are very fluid, which is why making them is so much fun).

So, here goes:

1) Wood smoke. Every evening at the moment, when I step out to toss something into the recycling bins, someone has a fire going indoors. The scent on the breeze is awesome: rough, aromatic, a bit caustic.

2) Vanilla. I stick the essence in banana bread, brownies -- almost anything I bake at the moment. The sweet, but not cloying smell wafts through the house. It's warming, comforting. Gorgeous at this time of year.

3) Clementines. We eat loads of clementines this time of year. Because the heating is one a good measure of time, the sweet-but-not-too-sweet citrus fragrance stays in the house. We eat a couple in the morning and the smell is still strong when I return from the school run or shopping or the post office, lingering almost to lunchtime.

4) Cardamon. I have cardamon oil I use in a burner. It's perfect for this time of year: deep, slightly sweet and very spicy, lush and delicious. It combines particularly well with the clementine fragrance.

5) Fennel seeds. I drink a lot of herbal tea during the day to keep warm from the inside. One of my favourites is fennel, with its soft licorice fragrance. It actually tastes good and is the sort of smell that clears the head without being too astringent or strong. Lovely and soothing.

Oh, that tang

For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, my son and I got on the topic of grapefruit recently. Perhaps we were talking about his good eating habits (he likes sushi -- pretty good for an eight year old). In any case, he commented that he had never tried grapefruit (which I think is untrue -- he just doesn't remember it) and this should be remedied.

Grapefruit isn't a fruit I think of eating every day (unlike clementines, apples, bananas, etc). However, I recall several periods of grapefruit gorging when I returned to the family home for visits from university. I remember peeling grapefruit several times a day, pulling back the thin skin on the sections and eating the juicy parts. My mother commented that I appeared to be vitamin C deficient, which seems unsurprising in a college student.

I bought a grapefruit so my son could have a go at it. We peeled it and broke apart the sections. He took one and bit in. "I don't like this very much. It's too sour". So, I had most of a grapefruit to eat. Good thing I like grapefruit.

Once I started to eat it I had trouble stopping. Maybe I'm once again deficient in vitamin C.

Also on the topic of grapefruit, a friend gave me a Jo Malone grapefruit candle as a Christmas gift. I've tried a few Jo Malone fragrances which have mostly not been up my alley. This, however, is quite another matter. It's a very strongly scented candle with great throw. It smells gorgeous: true strong tangy-almost-sour citrus. Not only a good fragrance but great for clearing the air in a stuffy house in which the windows haven't been opened in a good long while.

I recall there is a grapefruit-scented Kiehls shower wash that I remember as having quite a true fragrance. A lovely scent to wake up to.

Finally, my mother used to start each dinner with fruit, a practice I now realise is sort of unusual. She tended to alternate between slices types of melon and half a grapefruit. I read recently that doing this, starting a meal in particular with grapefruit, is supposed to aid digestion. I just remember it being a pleasant way to get stuck in. My mother always was innovative.

Cereal in perfume?

I made porridge the other morning, with milk and a bit of creme de marron. It was wonderful -- and kept me full all morning. This is meant to begin a pattern. You see, I crave bready things in the morning (years ago, colleagues at the first investment bank in which I worked teased me endlessly about my morning bagel habit). However, when I eat bagels (unless they contain smoked salmon), bread, english muffins, what have you, I am hungry 20 minutes later. So, an attempt to wean myself off these things, except as treats, and on to a more appropriate breakfast.

So far as I know, Lostmarc'h, the Breton perfumer, is the only house to produce a fragrance that features something remotely akin to porridge, which is buckwheat flour. This is the main note in Lann-Ael, a sweet, foody and rather unusual perfume. I happen to enjoy Lann-Ael -- the buckwheat, vanilla, milk and apple notes appeal to me because they are out of the ordinary.

I acknowledge this is quite sweet initially. However, the apple adds a tinge of tartness and the buckwheat has a rough aspect that keeps this on the edge of toothache-inducing and jarring. Rather, it is truly comforting, but with a kick.

At scent gatherings there has been a fair bit of perplexedness around this one. Reactions are usually strong and the first smell has had most people drawing back with their foreheads creased in confusion. Another sniff and the faces relax a little ... but only a little. I remind participants that there is a whole big world of fragrance out there, full of idiosyncratic and, for many people, foreign things coming under the label 'perfume'. It's a wonderful world and worth exploring: there is more to it than just Chanel No 5, Dior's Poison series, and Paris Hilton.

I also remind people that you don't know how something will dry down, how it will smell after a half hour, an hour, ten hours (if it lasts that long). It is entirely possible to love something that you were initially unsure of because it develops in a wholly different way.

I am still rather gobsmacked by people saying they buy perfume after smelling it (ie, the bottle, a blotter) at the airport in duty free. How on earth can you know if something really 'works' on your chemistry from that?

Some very beautiful and truly interesting perfumes start off as very off-putting: camphorous, rooty, cold, loud, whathaveyou, openings that evolve and dry down to something heavenly. But you have to keep an open mind, have patience, live with the fragrance (maybe even try it several times) in many cases before knowing if it really works for you.

So, back to Lann-Ael and its strange conglomeration of notes, yes. It implies a girlishness, but that is completely deceptive: it is not cute. Instead, it's just different, which is interesting and attractive in itself. Very initially, it is sweet pastry. After several hours, it is less sweet, more burnt caramel with some acidity from the apple. It is very inviting, very come-hither.

I find it a pleasure to wear -- a true nose-to-wrist scent that calls you back repeatedly.

It is a wonderful autumn/winter fragrance: an interesting, warm gourmand for those darker, drawn-in days.

Small pleasures

I am still obsessed by the cold. I know. I promised I would stop when it stopped -- and it has (for the time being). But, in truth, I don't think I'll be able to get it out of my head (and joints) until we've had above 5 degree weather for a full week.

So, a rather lazy post today. Five things I am appreciating at the moment:

1) Warmer weather (you didn't see that coming). OK, well, that the buds are coming up on the plants, meaning the grey will be cut with colour soon. I noticed the Philadelphus, which hasn't enjoyed the freeze, notonebit, has pushed out a few new leaves. Ohhhhh, the smell of (mock) orange flower: such an antidote to winter.

2) Jay Rayner's book The Man Who Ate the World because it is well written; amusing and serious; and has the vibe that perfumistas appreciate, obsession, regarding food. He takes such care in describing things that taste good -- and things that taste really bad. And, it's keeping me occupied while I wait (until May) for the next Sookie Stackhouse book and decide if I really want to read the Wallender series.

3) Really good decaffeinated coffee because it smells great right out of the pouch and tastes wonderful mid-morning. And, it doesn't make me twitchy. If you ask someone for a list of their 10 favourite non-perfume smells, coffee is reasonably likely to make it on to the list -- it just smells so nice.

4) The cinnamon cakes shower cream from Waitrose (ie, a cheap treat). Again, it smells great, cosy and not too sweet, and it's rather moisturising, which is nice. Cinnamon is supposed to warm you up when eaten and it certainly smells warm to me.

5) Shu Uemura Premium A/I cleansing oil because it feels completely luxurious, takes off any-and-all I put on my face (or that London air puts on it), and my skin feel soooo comfortable after using it. As an Xmas gift a friend gave me Lucia van der Post's book, which is one of those guides to style and grooming suggesting mostly things I can't afford. But, Lucia too loves Shu oil, so I think of it as my little corner of chic.

The sweetness of apricots

It did it again yesterday -- that unmentionable white stuff falling. It looked beautiful in the morning, but by the time we set off for school it was getting slippery under foot and starting to go slushy.

On the way home from the morning school run I passed the local fruit stand and noticed they had big, round yellow-touched-with-pink apricots. I wondered where in the world they had come from and promptly bought three, eating two as soon as I got home with my morning coffee.

They tasted sweet -- of the sun, heat and summer. For a few moments, I was taken completely out of the snow, cold and yetch of a London winter. I saved the other for afternoon.

I've written about fruit notes in fragrances and how much I enjoy them, in particular the peach in Guerlain's Mitsouko. I also love the dried fruit in Ginestet Botrytis, the melon in Frederic Malle Le Parfum de Therese, and the plum of Rochas Femme. I have been told a number of times that there is a Kenzo fragrance I need to try which has plum, I believe it's called Elephant (I may be very wrong on that), which I've yet to find. The fruit note adds a wonderful lushness to the fragrances I mentioned above, which keeps all of them from being too austere or heavy-hearted.  

The smell of certain fruit is mind-bendingly beautiful: a ripe mango, just picked strawberries or raspberries, just cut melon.

While I don't buy these sorts of fruit often in winter -- sticking to apples, pears, bananas and clementines (but, ohhhh, the smell of a just peeled clementine) -- every once in a bit I give in and get a ripe Charentais melon, a basket of ludicrously priced strawberries or a just soft mango.

Each of these brings along the feel of summer which is incredibly helpful in the dark and dreariness of winter.

Another thing about all these more summer-time fruit is the musky but not overly heavy aspect of each of their fragrances. Just gorgeous. And a reminder of pleasures to come -- that in time we won't be covered head-to-foot in woolens, puffa jackets, mittens and hats, that sundresses, floaty skirts and straw sunhats aren't just part of our imagination.

So, we'll see how I manage on my usual fruit diet over the next couple of months, and how often I find it necessary to succomb to the attractions of the melon, strawberry or mango -- or, then again, apricot.

The smell of delphinium

I'm still obsessing about the cold, but the various weather reports I follow promise it should get better here soon. Please, because I just answered the door wearing one of my son's rather-sweet-but-inappropriate-on-an-adult-woman hats and the postman looked at me funny. But I promised a different subject this week, so here we go.

Years ago, I was having the awful flocked wallpaper in the hallway of the flat we lived in pulled off and the walls papered and painted. I had a very specific colour in mind, and gave the decorator a picture of a blue delphinium so he would understand the exact shade I wanted. He looked at me as if I was mad, but went off with the pic to have it colour-matched. I ended up with a paint reasonably close to what I wanted.

I think about this every once in a while because 1) I smile when recalling the look on the guy's face when I gave him the picture and 2) I wonder if delphinium has a smell (because I just do). I can't remember. I googled the phrase 'the smell of delphinium' and didn't come up with anything useful. I can't think of a perfume with delphinium listed as a note (I think there was a delphinium essential oil in the google search list). Maybe it doesn't have a smell at all. But, I set myself to thinking about what the flower might smell like from what it looks like.

Now, flowers can be deceptive (think tuberose, which looks sort of delicate and thus might smell innocent, but obviously it is lush, creamy, buttery and heavy).

Delphinium also looks pretty sweet and innocent. But in this case, I think its fragrance would match that image. I have an idea of something similar to stock or like the smell you get in flower stores of cool, merged soft floral scent -- ie, something attractive but not cloying; light but insistent.

I don't buy flowers much these days -- a basket or pot of bulbs around this time (I wrote about this year's hyancinth recently) -- in order to have some colour and scent that lasts for a bit during the gloom and a bunch of something every once in a while to treat myself. I don't recall ever having purchased a bunch of delphinium -- maybe it was within a mixed bunch, but I truly don't recall. But now that I've thought more about what they might smell like, maybe I'll have to give in and get some when it next comes over me to buy flowers.

We have a winner...

for the bottle of Tauer Perfumes' L'Air du Desert Marocain competition posted in December on the Basenotes site.

Robert Ashton is the lucky person.  Congrats to you and I'll be in touch.

To a fragrant January -- and keep warm!

The fourth meditation on cold

This is the fourth meditation on cold: I was hoping that would be enough to see the back of this awful weather. No dice. We're likely to see another week of it. But I'm going to move away from this topic come Monday anyway.

Long long ago, and very far away indeed, I lived in the West Mount Airy neighbourhood of Philadelphia (in the state of Pennsylvania).

My family was there for four years. The winters were cold and snowy; the summers very warm.

We went sledding every winter on our Flexible Flyer with the wooden slats over bright red runners.

One of the places I remember sledding had an ominous name that I can't now recall. It was a trail in a wood that meandered downhill over bumps, through twists and down angles. It was absolutely the best place to sled-ride ever.

None of this straight down a hill you see on telly here. This place took skill. You had to negotiate the bends, cling on during the bumps and remember when to start breaking or you'd end up hitting a tree. It was fun, it was exhilirating, it was a learning curve (how often I ended up stopping just in time from a skid and ending up with snow all over my face and in my mouth).

The forest was pine. So, this period of my winter life smelled of metal and pine -- smells that are strangely quite close in feel. Cold clean air smelling of pine.

This makes me think back to sampling a recent addition to Serge Lutens' exclusive Bell Jar fragrances Fourreau Noir, which I recall being a combination of lavender and smoke. I looked back at my post and was reminded of the cold, camphorous opening, lavender and smoke -- and, interestingly, a very animal aspect.

Sometimes lavender can be warm: many years ago I spent a holiday on a Greek island and recall the smell, coming up over a hill in a old local bus, of lavender, rosemary and thyme mixed together with the heat of the middle of the day. A truly hot smell.

But lavender can be very cold too, depending on what it is combined with, and even with the animal aspect I think of Fourreau Noir as cold. It is a very good fragrance, but I was surprised to like it so much because of that cold opening and sort of odd notes combo. But I do.

Another SL released around the same time as FN, Fille en Aiguilles, has pine listed among the notes (actually, pine needles, incense, vetiver, fruits and spices per Serge Lutens Nearly All the Facts). I haven't yet managed to sample this, so that needs to be remedied. I'm not sure if it has made it into the coterie of SLs that are stocked at the two Brent Cross department stores. I'll find out, though, at some point next week when a food shop becomes necessary (ah, the excuses one needs to sample perfume).

In any case, perhaps by the time I get to test it, the weather will have turned to something ever so slightly more reasonable and I won't be so focussed on cold. I live in hope.

The third meditation on cold

School closed again. Actually makes sense today, as it's very slippery, gooey and icy out there. My son and his friend made a great snowman on the pavement yesterday. Several hours later, I went out to find two people constructing a friend for the first snowbeing. So then there were two. We took the boys to visit them when number 2 was completed.

More on cold, then.

I worked in New York skyscrapers for years, from my first jobs after graduating from university. I can recall only one building in which the windows opened: on Madison Avenue in the high 20s (in Manhattan, after you leave Greenwich Village, the streets are numbered).

I worked there in the mid-1980s, and I remember during one summer there was both a heat wave and water rationing, which meant the air-conditioning was turned on at 10 in the morning and turned off at 4 in the afternoon. By 4:30, the place smelled like an indoor swimming pool and the people who inhabited the offices (ie, ranged round the windows, with the rest of us in interior bullpens -- see, they existed even back in the early 1980s) opened their windows.

The indoor swimming pool smell (the chemicals in the carpets, the cigarette smoke (people could still smoke indoors then) and a remaining chlorine smell from the air-con dissipated slowly. A terrible combination of smells that was stifling. The memory of the awful mushroom soup-like air stayed with me long after I left that job.

In all other buildings in which I worked the windows didn't open and there was constant air-conditioning in the summer. You stepped from the swelter of a New York summer into refrigerators. I always remembered to keep a sweater at work.

The smell of the air in air-conditioned buildings is cold and metallic. All such buildings work by recycling the air and in the winter you get a sense of recycled germs. In the summer, the sense was of killed germs because of the cold. Neither was a particularly nice sensation. And, you couldn't predict where the vents would be located (or, it seems, the planners didn't really care where they placed them vs where a desk -- and thus a person -- might be located), meaning if you were unlucky enough to sit beneath a vent you got constantly blasted with cold air. Strangely for places where the presence of evil viruses was constantly in the back of the mind, these offices (I worked in four different ones after the Madison Ave place) smelled decidedly sterile, with the smell of 'sterile' being cold and ever so slightly rooty.

In the current weather cycle, I look outdoors and think that at least all the mites and nasty plant parasites will be irradicated (mind you, around a week ago I'd noticed the jasmine was in bud -- I guess all that will be gone now, and maybe the bulbs will be delayed in their growth). It looks totally pristine and glorious, but it's also something of a trap because hardly anyone grits (even the local council doesn't bother much). I've got a leftover bag of sand in the shed which I'll haul out later.

The longer this goes on, the more I am drawn in by hot smells, both in perfume and in general, and the more I've started to categorise in my mind what is 'hot' and what is 'cold'. It is an interesting exercise. For the moment, the 'cold' list contains iris in many forms, pine, some lavender, some vetiver, licorice/anise, melon, violet, to name but a few.

Another meditation on cold

Well, school is closed the second day back, with only a few inches of snow on the ground. Something about more snow expected at noontime. Just makes me shake my head.

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Anyway, back on to today's cold-weather post.

I've written about the January snowstorm that occurred my last winter living in New York. This was a wonderful winter memory along with yesterday's 'winter camps'.

It led me to thinking about the cold smells of New York, some of which aren't necessarily linked with cold weather.

I've come up with three things.

1. The smell of the subway. To me, the subway always smelled metallic and cold, even during sweltering summer days. You'd descend into a station, many of which were hellaciously hot, but even in the heat the smell was there. I recall going into West Fourth Street with the fans going great guns and that smell: metal girders holding up the station, stone floors, tile walls, metal subway cars. Even hot metal smells of cold.

I had an acquaintance who I had introduced to the 'dark side' (ie, the perfume obsession), who happened to live in Paris. We once discussed his favourite non-perfume smells. The first on his list was the Paris Metro and its (to his mind) gorgeous metallic fragrance. So, I'm not alone on this one.

2. The smell of the pavement. In summer, early on hot, wet mornings, the pavement smells of what it is -- granite or, in parts of the five boroughs, those beautiful, great slabs of slate called blue stone. The wet smell wafting up as the dew or rain evaporates is pure blue cold. You can almost see the blue in the air.

3. The smell of summer thunderstorms. This is really a summer smell: the electric, metallic fragrance of the air right before and after a reasonably violent storm. To me, this is an August memory: above 90 degree heat and insane humidity (I love humidity) whispering that a storm is just round the corner. Miraculous things happen around these storms: you can get a 10-20 degree drop in temperature right after a vicious rain and then an equal-sized rise 10 minutes later as the weather pattern passes. But, oh, the smell of the air: the metallic scent of crackling electricity. Strange -- and a bit unnerving.

Some meditations on cold

The weather forecasters have communicated that we should experience at least four more days of this freezing weather. I really hate this. Really. Seriously. ReallyReallyReally.

So, I've decided one of the ways I will deal with it is by blogging about it through the end of the week.

Today, I reach into my memory of two separate weeks I spent during two of my teenage years participating in a 'winter camp' in the US state of Maine. The 'camps' took place at the location of a summer camp where I spent either two or three summers (I can't recall which now -- US school hols are twice as long as in the UK, so there are lots of camp choices available).

It was located near the town of Bingham (you can google that), in a truly idealic location. We lived in tents anchored on raised wooden platforms (in the summer, that is -- in the winter, we stayed in the wooden cabins built by the people who ran the camp).

In the summer, we hiked a lot, swam in a nearby grotto (freezing natural spring) and did other various and vague things that teenagers do.

In the winter, it was thigh-high snow to cross-country ski and snow-shoe in. It was very cold, but I was a teenager and better able to manage it. It was also extraordinarily beautiful. Wonderful experiences.

In the summer, the placed smelled of greenery and woodsmoke -- a fragrance I found as an adult in Andy Tauer's L'Air du Desert Marocain, and, in fact, in any of his Taurade fragrances (Incense Extreme, Incense Rose, Lonestar Memories).

In the winter, it smelled of cold and woodsmoke.

To me, cold just smells metallic, unless it's modified by woodsmoke or something equally as strong and insistent. Perhaps my nose is so shocked it can't manage to discern between different scents.

It was the visuals that were the focus in the cold weather.

I deeply enjoyed those winter visits to Maine. I have wonderful memories of the daily outings and the intimate evenings spent round the woodstove. I even recall the stinky sleeping bags with affection. But most of all, I recall the spare beauty, the silence, the otherworldliness of the landscape.

A sweet and fragrant start to the new year

Happy 2010. Or should that be welcome to 2010? It continues to be very cold here. If you've read back in the blog you'll know I don't like this -- one.little.bit.

So, some sweet and fragrant thoughts to start the new year and distract from the yuck of the weather.

First of all, my holiday hyacinth has been working overtime. The flower stalks (three of them in the basket) have shot up and the flowers themselves opened. My whole little house smells gloriously of hyacinth. It's a wonderful distraction, a reminder of springtime, of the potential for warmer days.

And not only does it smell heavenly, it looks really pretty too. I've got a deep blue one, which brightens up the kitchen.

On the 2nd of January, we had friends round to visit for lunch. I made them the dessert we had on Christmas day: chocolate fondue (with 'dippers' of clementine sections, cut up pear, marshmallows and banana slices. The recipe is very simple:

600 ml of double cream
400 g chocolate (under 60% cocoa solids), chopped up
50 g butter, cut into small pieces
3 tablespoons golden syrup

First, gently heat the cream in a pan large enough to take all the ingredients. It should simmer, but not boil. When it has little bubbles around the sides, turn off heat and add chocolate bits, butter bits and golden syrup. Stir the mixture until all incorporated.

Serve in warmed bowl with 'dippers'

(Note: If you don't finish it, cover bowl with cling film and refrigerate. You'll have a wonderful, dense chocolate mousse in a few hours.)

The fondue perfumes the air with a lovely, soft chocolate smell.

So, on Saturday, in the late afternoon, the house smelled of hyacinth and chocolate. This is a great combination and I think it would make a wonderful perfume over a musky base. The two main notes compliment each other nicely (the chocolate cuts the sweetness of the hyacinth). I don't recall there being a fragrance using this combination (let me know if you are aware of one).