Ichor -- by way of coffee and sewing machine oil

A couple of days ago Deirdre and I were doing the mid-morning coffee thing. In this house, the coffee gets ground fresh in a small wooden contraption with a turn handle and a small drawer into which the ground-up coffee drops. Once finished with the grinding (my job while half the house was away) you take the drawer out and dump its contents into the caffetiere.

It looks like this:

I can't tell you how good the ground coffee smells. I like the fragrance of ground coffee from a bag or tin, but this just beats that completely. The wonderful oily fragrance is amplified (and the coffee tastes better).

As I was grinding the coffee, D was oiling the sewing machine she'd unearthed (we were both gainfully employed) -- on which I am going to learn to sew. I have plans. I see culottes, curtains and shift dresses in my future.

Anyway, when I'd finished doing the coffee, she stuck her fingers covered with the sewing machine oil under my nose. What a familiar (maddeningly so, as I couldn't work out the specific thing) and interesting fragrance. It was slightly citrus, but not something usual, like lemon. Apparently sewing machine oil is quite thin in consistency, as otherwise it would gum the works, and I wonder if it is scented as a precaution or a pleasure.

Somehow these two disparate strands, coffee and sewing machine oil, led us to ichor. Perhaps there was a third strand deriving from it being a ridiculously rainy day -- I mean heavy rain, all day long. In Devon, because of the amount of rain, the scent of wet earth hangs in the air as something of a constancy.

Yes, I think that was it: the fact that we were definitely stuck indoors doing indoor things somehow got us to the fact that because it rains so much here the air just generally smells constantly vaguely damp and fresh. Only during real droughts does that change. This somehow led D to start talking about having read something about how the smell of air changes drastically in the Middle East (no clue where exactly) after a big rain because of the sudden big organo-chemical shift -- and somehow this tied into ichor.

So, I just had to look up ichor on Google.

Turns out there's nothing to do with the Middle East -- and maybe D dreamed the connection or extrapolated from something in the article. The fruits of a good imagination.

What I got is that ichor, per Wikipedia, is the "ethereal" fluid that made up the Greek gods' blood, "sometimes said to have been present in ambrosia or nectar".

Again according to Wiki, it was supposed to have been golden in colour, so that would fit with my imaginings.

Poets, apparently since the Victorian period, have used the word ichor as a metaphor for divine drink (frequently wine).

So, finally, the question of what this might have smelled like. I imagine it could have been thinly oily in consistency (like the sewing machine oil) and smelled divine (given it being of divine creatures), perhaps, floral but like orange blossom, which has both soft citrus and animalic aspects, and maybe a wiff of danger as well.

But the most interesting thing was that it popped up as a concept in a wholly unrelated conversation and became fertilizer for thought. Always a positive thing.

Musk and mint?

It rained cats, dogs and rabbits yesterday. So far, we've got sun today.

As to House of Fraser: small and not really choice on the fragrance front. It is the kind of department that I find enervating: because the stock isn't overly exciting I lose momentum as I wander through and (in many instances of this type) I end up drifting out of the store without having tried anything. Here, however, I did manage Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely, which I've been meaning to have a stab at for a long time.  More on that below.

The man-cub had an ace time at Pokemon club. This is a drop-off thing in the light, big back room of a small local gaming (not toy) store. The parents come in with their heads down and eyes averted and return at almost six on the dot to try and pull their charges out the door. It takes a bit of effort, as they're all deep into it. Pokemon makes me itchy...

I also discovered there is a smallish Debenhams. So, I'll have a go with that perfume floor next Wednesday (more Pokemon enabling).

Now, Sarah Jessica Parker Lovely.

My original interest in this was sparked by the rumours about what SJP wore perfume-wise herself. Apparently she made a soup consisting of one of the Comme des Garcons Incense Series (maybe Avignon) plus Bonnie Bell Skin Musk and an oil she bought from a street seller in lower Manhattan (in New York City, where she lives). Now, that sounded like some serious interesting. And she had been quoted as liking skank and pong.

Then, Chandler Burr's book about the development of Lovely came out, in which he follows the development of her fragrance.  

Apparently she had started out wanting to do something similar to what she wore. The end product is completely mainstream, however. But ... at least it's not a fruity-floral.

What Lovely is on me is verrrry tenacious.

It is not to my tastes and now having tested it I don't feel it's something I'll ever have to revisit.

Having said that, it isn't bad and if you were looking for a fragrance gift for someone and had no idea what they liked I don't think this would go amiss unless they were a serious perfumista.

On me, Lovely is a fresh musk, which seems  a contradiction in terms. The musk is light and soft and there is a touch of something green, almost minty. 'Fresh' really is the guiding term here.

I think I tried EdP and the juice lasted a good eight hours after spraying.

I noticed the bottle has a sort of Agent Provocateur vibe, though only in shape.

So. There you have it.

Tomorrow, it's back to smells. I'll be investigating something called Ichor. Have a look on Google.

Pokemon enables

Perfume enabling comes in the strangest forms. Stay with me, now.

The man-cub is way into Pokemon and while doing some research about Exeter for him, we discovered that a Pokemon group meets late on Wednesday afternoons in the city (which means he can do this on a regular basis after school).

The participants 'battle', swap cards and generally bond for a couple of hours. No parents necessary. You drop off and then pick up later.

So, today, after drop off, I'm planning to check out the House of Fraser perfume floor. I'm not expecting much, but would like to sample Womanity and a couple of other new mainstream things just ... because.

And maybe I'll have some more pics to post as well.

Big sky and a melange of smells

Pretty settled and reasonably close to sorted. Some tweaks still required on the site, which will probably be addressed by the start of September. I am very aware that the opening pic holds the previous Tauer bottles. This will change fairly soon.

The section of Devon where we have landed is right near an estuary and very close to the sea. The air smell is a melange of damp green (a good amount of rain); the flat-sweet of cow manure (the farmland nearby); and salted air from the salt water. I had been thinking about vetiver regarding the move here, but it's not that sort of smell at all.

Here's what it looks like (from the titchy train station for the village):

The area across the water contains a village called Starcross plus Dawlish, which pops up in the Harry Potter books as a long-time witch and wizard settlement.

And this shows the bike path that runs from Exton to Exmouth. You can get off at Lympstone, where the man-cub will be attending school in a couple of weeks.

It is very rural, which I am very happy about, but a 20 minute train journey into Exeter, which is truly a proper city (university, cathedral, and a House of Fraser, meaning a place to do mainstream sampling). So truly the best of both.

In any case, more over the coming couple of weeks and I am working on some things which I will blog more about come September (these are fragrance things, so stay tuned).

Salt air and a winner

OK, we're here. That means Devon. Mostly settled in but no internet access yet (no access on my computer -- currently using Rich's). Hoping for Monday.

Will post some pics soon.

The winner of last week's give-away of Tauer Incense Extreme is Sarah Evans (I'll be in touch by mid-week to get address for posting). As ever, the winner was chosen at random by the man-cub (ie, I asked him to pick a number between 1 and what ever the number of entrants, which he did).

Posting likely to be patchy this week (a lot to do). Having ridden my new bike to Lympstone twice now (we'll have a pic of that too), salt air (meaning vetiver and the Lostmarc'h fragrances) is on my mind. So, you're likely to see a focus on that once I've managed to get back into the posting groove.

Also, I have access to some vintage Lanvin Arpege, so I'll definitely be talking about that at some point in the next few weeks.

Moving week give-away

This is it! This is move week. To mark the event -- and because I've decided it's easier not to post -- it's give-away time again.

So, from today (8 August) through midnight on Friday (the 13th) you can enter the give-away for a bottle of Tauer Perfumes Incense Extreme.

Please leave a comment saying you'd like to be entered in the give-away -- and if you feel like it add something about incense.

The give-away is only open to UK addresses. I will post the winner over the weekend of 14/15 August.

Finally, a note on site orders over this week: all orders made from 11 to 15 August will ship on Monday, 16 August. This note will appear on the site as well.

Have a good week.

Hallucinatory sea side ... but soon the real thing

The weather has cooled down a bit here, but for several weeks it was hothothot. And as I made my way around London I realised after a while that I was smelling sea sides smells even in the centre of the city. I started to concentrate more on this, as I adore the ocean and the beach and everything associated (I don't even mind sandy skin).

It was, more acurately, the things the smells made me think of than the specific smells themselves.

The illusion of salty air along Cricklewood Broadway (who knows what that derived from); the feel of sandy soil along the parched terraces where I currently live; the smells of fried food along a small cut-through near Oxford Street in central London.

The first got me thinking of trips taken in my later teenage years to friends' house in the Long Island colony of Hampton Bays. Sitting on the outside 'porch' of the Long Island Railroad train once we travelled long enough to pass Quogue and Patchogue the air was salt-satured and the anticipation immense.

The clapboard house had been owned by an artist and passed to his child and his family. It merged easily with the weather-beaten landscape and I recall evening meal smells of farm-stand corn cooking.

The house was a short walk from various beaches: ocean side or cove side. Hot sand, cool water. Sometimes horseshoe crab shells and beach glass.

The sandy soil conjures trips to the beach during college summers. My parents lived near part of the 30-mile stretch of Atlantic coast in the New England state of New Hampshire. The water was freezing. A terrific contrast to the ohsohot sand of the beach. I recall shuffling down to the surf, taking a deep breath and launching into the water. 5-10 minutes was it before I was close to turning blue.

Finally, sometimes after an afternoon of alternating cold and hot (my mother was a serious sun-worshipper, who turned a wonderful brown -- she would take one or two very quick dips in the sea, but her real purpose was dozing in the sun) we'd stroll along the boardwalk, with all its deep-fried smells to the little stall with the hands-down best onion rings in the universe.

Made while you waited, the rings of big local-farm-grown onions were dipped in some kinds of wonderful goo and quick-fried golden brown. Beautiful big rings fragrant of onion, goo, oil and sea side, satisfaction for all the senses.

The hot city smells of fried food don't come anywhere close, but the halluciations they dredge up are oh so evocative and more the precious for that.

And it suddenly occurs to me -- slow and preoccupied as I am -- that after over 10 years in various parts of suburban London I am now moving to the Devon coast, meaning I will be near my beloved sea side, with its sand, salt, creatures and smells. As with those long-ago trips to the Long Island sea side, the anticipation is immense.

Ah, it's the caffeine

I was up early this morning (in spring and summer I automatically rise fairly soon after the sun, with pleasure) listening to the baby next door screech. This is the second set of neighbours with screeching babies. The man-cub was once a screeching baby (though he wasn't as ongoing as these various babies). Soon, a family with young childen will move into this house and there will be a morning symphony of screeching babies.

Anyway. I had noticed over the past month that on rising the front of my face, around the nasal sinuses was consistently achy (nothing to do with the screeching babies). I assumed pollen was the cause, as we've actually had a proper summer this year.

But, this morning, as I listened to next-door-baby yowl, I realised it went away as soon as I drank that first cup of tea. A ha! Silly me. Caffeine. I now need caffeine in the AM. I had been careful for years regarding this particular addiction. But I think with the move imminent I just haven't been focused on it. Will have to be rectified soon.

Along with drinking my tea I was reading March's post on Perfume Posse about her experience on holiday in the US state of New Mexico. In it, she talks about the fragrances of where she was staying and it struck me, as it strikes me from visits to the few far-flung places I've managed, that some locations just smell glorious and have very specific associated fragrances.

One smell that sticks in my head is coffee -- in Paris and also the Hawaiian island of Kauai, where you get extraordinary rich perfumy Kona coffee.  

Frequently, when you ask a perfumista for a fave smells list (of non-perfume smells) you'll see coffee beans or ground coffee included.

And when you visit a specialist perfume shop for sniffing, the staff will generally offer you a bowl of coffee beans to sniff in order to sort of clear the nasal palate, so to speak, between fragrances (I don't find this helpful, actually, as it just adds another fragrance to the soup roaming around my nose and head).

The thing about coffee is that it manages, sometimes, to smell both smooth and astringent/slightly bitter. Quite an interesting dichotomy.

In perfumery Hilde Soliani has paired it well with tobacco in Bell'Antonio. Maybe there is a bit in Parfumerie Generale's dense, slightly gamey Aomassai.

Fragrances I haven't tried based around coffee include Jo Malone's Black Vetyver Cafe, Bond No 9 New Haarlem and one by the American perfumer, Dawn Spencer Hurwitz, Coffee Absolut.

It took me quite a long time as a young adult to actually try coffee and get to like it. I enjoyed the smell for a long time before I actually could get myself to drink it, ages after many of my peers.

Now, I do consider it a treat, sometimes warming the milk to go with it mid-morning. It's not something I like very much in the instant form. So, the making of it is a bit of a process and enjoyable ritual. Maybe that aspect has rolled over into how I perceive it with regard to perfume: that it isn't a 'regular' sort of ingredient or note.

Finally, coffee is a food smell that isn't gourmand or sweet: it feels quite sophisticated, a rare aspect in perfumery when so much of what comes out these days is sweetsweetsweet. And that certainly further lifts its attractiveness.

I'm definitely going to have to wean myself off of the caffeine requirement in the morning. But, I remind myself that I can still smell it and seek it out in perfume.

Not really deconstruction -- only a bit

I was going to discuss the parallels between Ikea furniture and perfume today, but decided against that. In the process of deconstructing an Ikea wardrobe and the man-cub's Ikea platform bed my mind kept straying to thoughts of how noses put perfumes together, wondering if they return over and over again to the same set of basic aromachemicals and naturals to build new scents, ie the same set of basic building blocks (I had a eureka moment during the deconstruction of realising why Ikea is so successful, with their 3-4 simple tools for constructing loads of different types of furniture).

But the parallels I was coming up with were tortured -- and I don't believe this is a valid comparative. Rather, the musings of a mind tortured by having to concentrate on carefully taking apart a couple of very uninteresting constructs.

And, it took me an hour and a half early on Monday morning to move the fruits of my labours from the back garden to the neighbourhood skip. (I have to grumble here about the numerous times I passed by the local wood yard -- at the end of my road -- with its associated builders standing around drinking tea and smoking fags: no one offered to help me carry the four heavy doors and side panels of the wardrobe down to the skip. I expect I would have gotten some help if I'd worn a mini skirt and high heels... Schmucks.)

This whole rigamaroll had been on my mind for a bit over a week and I'm pleased to have it out of the way.

Now, to finish packing boxes and find a couple of bottles for some decants. I expect Muji will be the destination for that. I need to put these together as a thank-you to a US-based friend who has done me a grand favour.

She's getting Serge Lutens Rose de Nuit and Theo Fennell Scent (no secret to her, I so can talk on this). Now, 'C' is another skank-loving girl (we once split a bottle of Serge Lutens Muscs Kublai Khan) and these two perfumes are definitely in pong territory, though in rather different ways.

This whole idea of splits of perfumes is great, in my opinion. You can partake of something: you love but is very expensive; you like but don't love and not shell out for a whole bottle; or get a bit of something you're unsure about but want more than a sample of. If I've made you curious, get a profile on Makeup Alley, where people discuss this endlessly, and have a look at Wiki Splits (you can google the name). 

Once I get this done (probably end of this week) I'll post a pick of the decants so you know what I mean. It's somewhat difficult to find supplies for this in the UK if you're only looking to buy a small number of bottles. Muji is a good destination, but most of their stuff is plastic and so has a limited life span. There's a US site called Pilot Vials (www.pilotvials.com) which ships here, though. Very worth a look.