{"id":773,"date":"2013-07-04T16:14:24","date_gmt":"2013-07-04T15:14:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jordantheheadcase.wordpress.com\/?p=773"},"modified":"2024-06-01T11:08:56","modified_gmt":"2024-06-01T11:08:56","slug":"sniffing-out-a-good-un-or-my-perfume-obsession","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jordantheheadcase.com\/index.php\/2013\/07\/04\/sniffing-out-a-good-un-or-my-perfume-obsession\/","title":{"rendered":"Sniffing Out A Good-‘Un (or ‘My Perfume Obsession’)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I didn’t intend to include anything in this blog which isn’t either on my F-List<\/a> or which isn’t to do with hydrocephalus<\/a>.\u00a0 But actually it’s quite nice to have something to write about which a) doesn’t have an October 24th deadline hanging over it, as items in my F-List do and b) which isn’t about medical issues, sickness and surgery.\u00a0 And hey, it’s my blog.\u00a0 I can write whatever I like!
\nI do believe that everyone needs a little indulgence in their life.\u00a0 It doesn’t have to mean spending loads of money, but it does mean having something you enjoy that feels special, a treat – something that generally doesn’t have any purpose other than making you feel good and relaxed.<\/p>\n

\"New<\/a>
To me, this is the ultimate in self-indulgence.\u00a0 Wine and a new bottle of perfume.\u00a0 Naugh-ty!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s so easy to worry about money (especially at the moment – and with very good cause) and I do feel that as a nation we’re very good at working hard but feeling guilty about indulging ourselves, whether it’s going on a holiday, buying a new pair of shoes, getting the latest iphone, buying a bottle of wine or even a slice of cake – whatever floats your boat.\u00a0 We can extol the virtues of the free joys in life\u00a0 – spending time with family and friends; watching a beautiful sunset; swimming in the sea – until the cows come home but when it comes to a treat which involves parting with money, I think we tend to feel a bit sheepish about admitting to doing it.\u00a0 Obviously, I’m not talking about buying expensive treats all the time and running up debts on credit cards; I’m talking about keeping them as little highlights to look forward to and to pick you up when things are feeling a bit glum.\u00a0 As I can only work part-time due to the hydrocephalus, my income is – ahem – ‘modest’ to say the least.\u00a0 As a result I tend to be careful with money.\u00a0 Not stingy – just careful.\u00a0 There is no use running up debt to my mind because my circumstances don’t exactly allow me to be able to pay it off!\u00a0 When I was ten, I formed a club with my friend Daisy, who lives in London.\u00a0 We called it the ‘Secret Savers’.\u00a0 Just why we thought it was ‘secret’, I’ve no idea; everyone knew about it and we made little paper badges with ‘SECRET SAVERS’ emblazoned across them in neon pink felt-tip pen.\u00a0 Hardly hush-hush.\u00a0 But when you’re ten, most things have to have the prefix of ‘secret’ before them.\u00a0 We would save our pocket money for months until a planned day when we’d be staying with each other – usually during school holidays – and use the money to spend on a big treat together.\u00a0 It was pretty good actually; we saved for and bought two tickets to go and see ’42nd Street’ at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane when I was staying with Daisy during the school Summer holidays.\u00a0 I think they were about \u00a326 back then but they were fantastic seats.\u00a0 We went by ourselves, feeling very grown-up and important.\u00a0 The next ‘meet’, when it was Daisy’s turn to stay with me, we saved for a shopping spree in Brighton.\u00a0 We had lunch, bought some clothes in Tammy Girl, went on the Palace Pier and had a generally fantastic day, feeling very grown up.\u00a0 Unfortunately, when Daisy and her family had returned that evening to London, I was violently ill from the posh fresh cream chocolates we had bought from a chocolatiers in town; they may have been posh but the ‘fresh’ cream had been anything but that.\u00a0 We managed to save like this for a few years; needless to say, our parents actively encouraged it!\u00a0 When I eventually started earning my own money (at a small gift shop which sold specialist paperweights in The Laines), I instinctively put some away each week.\u00a0 I didn’t need to think about it; I had simply been doing it from the age of nine.\u00a0 I didn’t have a separate bank account for this; I just had a pot hidden at home where I’d stash extra money until I could pay for whatever it was I’d been saving towards.\u00a0 Once I had enough for whatever (Bros concert tickets were one of the ‘goals’ – cringe!) I’d pay for that ‘goal’, empty the pot and start all over again with a new one.\u00a0 This way, even when I didn’t really have any spare money at any one time to afford luxuries or treats, I knew that in a few months, I would be able to get those new shoes\/go to that gig\/go for the weekend to Paris with Kate.\u00a0 It was something to look forward to.\u00a0 And I still do it to this day. Only now I don’t stick it in a pot at home; I do<\/em> have a separate bank account!
\nFor the past year, my saving fund has been for the one thing I could<\/em> spend an absolute fortune on, were I lucky enough to earn loads of money: perfume.\u00a0 Perfume is a part-hobby\/part-obsession for me.\u00a0 I’ve always loved it.\u00a0 I think partly because I truly have a massive nose; having one this size would be a bit daft if I didn’t like smelling things.\u00a0 May as well put the thing to good use.\u00a0 The first perfume I wore as a teenager, around the age of fourteen to sixteen, was Mum’s\u00a0 L’heure Bleue by Guerlain.\u00a0 I would beg a spritz before going to Oriana’s Nightclub on the beach (fake ID in tow) and that smell always reminds me of her and – more trashily – those sweaty, loud but fun nights at Oriana’s.\u00a0 I think this is why I love perfume as a concept in itself; the thoughts, feelings and memories that scent can produce.\u00a0 I know that sounds a little bit poncey and in no way do I want to become one of the many perfume reviewers on various perfume blogs and sites who, instead of stating whether they like the fragrance, how they find the longevity and sillage (how it wafts around you so others can also pick up on it) and what perfume notes they can detect, choose to write some weird story instead, as in this recent review I read for Caron’s ‘Tabac Blond’:\u00a0 ”The nights at the ‘bar-tabac-bierre blondes’ are long, and though perhaps not what they should be or once were, in a world turned upside down, on a weather-beaten winter’s night, they are without doubt the best show in town. For their part, the women ranged against the creme Anglaise coloured walls, dresses polka dotted pinks, blues and violets smell sweetly of last summer’s improvised flower water, iris and a little citrus blossom, and of the musk of their profession, the oldest.” – gaaaaah!\u00a0 STOP IT!\u00a0 Each to their own and maybe I should embrace their creativity a little more but in truth it makes me want to hide my head behind a cushion instead of continue reading.\u00a0 And it certainly doesn’t make me want to smell the perfume.
\nWhen I was fifteen, I also discovered LouLou by Cacherel; I was seduced mainly by the television advert showing for it at the time – the one where the girl looks up from her dressing table, doe eyes gazing at the camera and says, in a melted-chocolat French accent, ‘oui? C’est moi’ in response to the faceless but oh-so-sexily-voiced male purring out ‘Loulou’ repeatedly (solely for the purpose of reducing female viewers to a melted heap on the carpet).<\/p>\n

\""Oui?<\/a>
“Oui? C’est moi”…unfortunately that is not moi. I just wished that it had been.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It is a strong scent; it is based around the scent of the Tiare flower, which is a very sweet Tahitan symbol of welcome.\u00a0 It also has plum, blackcurrant, orange blossom, vanilla – all very foody (or ‘gourmand’ as perfumistas like to call them) notes.\u00a0 It is rather a ‘Marmite’ scent; people do seem to either love it or hate it.\u00a0 I loved it.\u00a0 And it suited my perfume-drinking skin.\u00a0 I absorb perfume like blotting paper.\u00a0 It’s seriously annoying.\u00a0 Within an hour- sometimes as little as half an hour –\u00a0 perfumes can vanish from my skin completely.\u00a0 I have tried all the suggested tricks; making sure my skin is moisturised and not dehydrated, spraying perfume onto my clothes to make the scent linger for a longer time (this sort of works depending on the perfume; some just smell musty once sprayed onto fabrics), spraying it into my hair, hair being another apparently good perfume-retainer.\u00a0 It has been tempting to give it up but I love perfume too much.\u00a0 When I was nineteen, I bought a bottle of Cabotine De Gres by Caborchard.\u00a0 Released in 1990, I had been smelling it on a couple of friends for some time and always wondered what that wonderful smell was.\u00a0 That Summer, I went to the Czech Republic with my parents to visit my brother, Luke, who had gone out there to teach English at a little school in Brno.<\/p>\n

\"Very<\/a>
Very green, light and lovely. Pretty bottle too.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It was an odd trip; we went by coach and boat (it took about thirty hours but it felt like a month) and I was by far the youngest one on the trip.\u00a0 It was a sticky, hot two weeks and this being before the days of GHD’s, my naturally curly hair simply couldn’t handle the humidity and grew in size day by day until it was almost afro-like; I looked like a human microphone.\u00a0 I had bought a bottle of Cabotine on the ferry in the Duty Free and it was lovely in the sticky, claustrophobic heat.\u00a0 It’s a crisp, green fragrance and I still really like it.\u00a0 I can’t smell it now without being transported back to Brno, sticky and hot, frizzy hair almost knocking people over as I pass them.\u00a0 It’s cheap-as-chips now but I still consider it a really good perfume and I always got comments when I wore it (complimentary ones!).\u00a0 The other perfumes of my teens and twenties were:<\/p>\n