Although all pleasure, joy, and spontaneity has been drained out of the creative process by the new ugliness surrounding the screen as I attempt to put up this post using the imposed new techno-horror format on this ‘blog’, I will try this as a ‘test run’ just to say that I finally found a vintage parfum de toilette of Nahema.
Sorry, nope. ‘Start writing or type/ to choose a block’.
‘Start writing or type / to choose a block’.
All this is filling up the screen : ‘toggle to show a large initial letter’. What?
Calendly Eventbrite Checkout OpenTable. Markdown. SytaxHighlighterCode Paragraph Pullquote Table Verse.
HELL.
GOODBYE
The Black Narcissus 
And look how the picture has been positioned. No pleasure involved if it looks like that.
I HATE THAT FEELING OF HAVING THINGS CHANGED AND RUINED AND IMPOSSIBLE TO WORK WITH!!!!!!!!!!!
I hope you can sort it out. We can’t lose you. And you can’t lose this. And us.
Help me!
Also, congratulations on the vintage Nahema pdt. It’s splendid.
I got up ready to write two separate pieces today, and then was confronted with an incomprehensible jungle that just thwarts all desire to write anything. I can’t even get the picture to just be where it should be. That’s it for today, but I suppose I will just have to find some way around it. But life feels so awful right now in many ways with the world being the way it is, and this is / WAS my one gateway to freedom. It feels like it has been hideously revolutionised on the spot rendering the whole pleasure of the thing void.
D and I have just been having a big row about it. He rightly says that I just react like a toddler and become irrational and that I ‘just’ have to learn how to do it as I am a total luddite. He is correct. At the same time, I have very bad spatial awareness (except in an aesthetic sense, which has been destroyed by having parameters and spacing imposed on me) – we were tested at school, and I came in the bottom 10% in the country or something. It is one reason I don’t drive, a handicap, really. You should see me trying to put the kerosene container into the heater. It is an irregular shape, and it takes me several attempts to get it in the right way round. I get really overwhelmed by things extremely easily. I JUST WANT A BLANK PAGE LIKE A PIECE OF PAPER.
AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHH
The Pdt has turned slightly in the top notes, by the way, but the heart is DIVINE. I have been experimenting with spraying on the current formulation and then spraying two layers of the vintage over it – and have been vastly enjoying the results. Although it feels counterintuitive to wear a powdery rose in summertime (at least outside), inside it is so lovely – that hyacinth and peach/ passion flower……..so DREAMY.
And it was only 20 dollars!
The bottle isn’t the one pictured here, obviously. I couldn’t work out how to upload the picture of the one I actually have……..
I like that idea of layering vintage over current. I’ve tried it myself and it gets the job done. The heart is what matters, so the fact it’s divine is . . . divine!
I decided to join you in solidarity (I just melt down when things on the computer are that aggravating) and I wore Nahema to bed. It was warm and muggy last night with the windows open to the ocean and somehow that powdery rose was dry and airy, soothing, not too voluptuous. Thanks, dear Neil! I never would have thought, but you’re right about it in the summertime. So happy you got some and the price was right. Looking forward to reading about it once you’re back in the cyber saddle.
How am I going to be?
I hate it too! So much commercial clutter that should have stayed in the dashboard where it belonged. I struggled and it took me much longer to create a post, and the images wouldn’t always show up. The easiest thing I’ve found so far is to click on the plus sign and select the Classic Editor (the keyboard icon), and try to stay within it. However, it seems that images uploaded from within it can only be resized manually by dragging a corner. So for images, I would upload it from a new block (again via the plus sign) and then on the right, if you scroll down the list of settings, the default sizes are available to select.
Bah! We will figure it out.
You are obviously head starts ahead of me. You are speaking a foreign language.
But thanks. I am going to come back to this when my brain has hopefully become more clarified and work it out.
Glad to know I am not alone in my anathema.
OK, this way might be easier (this is the second option listed in the email WordPress sent about ways to access the classic editor): click on My Site > WP Admin. That opens a new window with your dashboard. Go down to Post, select Add New, and then the writing interface looks pretty close to the old one. (Make sure you’re on the Visual tab and not the Text tab.) I’m going to try this next time as well. Hope it helps!
I will try this, but does it keep saying ‘block block fuckety block’?
Nope, no blocks here. It’s safe.
You are giving me hope. It remains to be seen whether I have the intelligence to follow your instructions.
When I started working at ministry about a quarter of a century ago, we dictated all out dossiers into little dictaphones and they‘d arrive typed up a few days later, carried around by some old men from office to office. At the end of the line, registrars waited patiently in the registrars office. Then along came computers, out went secretaries as well as the old men, and we‘d type everthing into the computer outselves. Then the computer systems and the formats would change all the time. Then the registrars went out. Now, the paper dossiers are at the point of disappearing and we are bracing ourselves for the electronic dossier. Now we are learning the complicated new moves of e-dossiers, enraged, cynical, at the brink of tears. Secretaries gone, old men gone, registrars gone: we do everything ourselves and in the meantime—thanks to e-mail—the workload has more or less tripled. And everybody wonders why there is so much frustration in the western world…
An interesting way of approaching the topic ( I can’t tell if you are being ironic, here) – Progress is progress, but I do think that things get changed also purely for the sake of change, just to give the employees something to work on, even if the original format was perfect (at least for a lot of people).
The rage is real with this kind of thing. Almost insurmountable. I mean I can type out perfunctory perfume reviews with ‘correct’ spacing, and attach a picture that looks wrong, and that will be better than nothing, probably, but it won’t be how I want to do it and thus I won’t have the impetus to do it in the first place.
I am REALLY bad with ‘technology’ though, so might just have to buckle down and learn something. I act like a toddler on steroids and acid, ready to explode into a million pieces and rain down like chunks of quivering rainbow jelly.
No, absolutely no irony whatsoever! But admittedly there is something Kafkaesque about the situation I described. My point was that progress purports to be „for the better“. But it often means the opposite.
Hello Neil, I’ve been using the old format up until now. The new one sounds really bad.
I would imagine that you would be able to suss it out and get the hang of it. I just went into instant meltdown mode that has killed all desire to write. I need to get a grip! I LIKED the simplicity. I can’t tolerate change for change’s sake. For me this new ‘block’ bullshit is utterly incomprehensible, so if you get a hang of it, feel free to share some tips!
Will do, Neil.
Sorry this has turned so shitty on you, I loathe software updates. It’s like starting over from scratch for what feels like little to no improvement. But no one can leave well enough alone these days. When I retired from my executive secretary job I was so relieved to never have to learn a new version of Windows Office ever again. And I have no patience for technology, if it doesn’t work on the first try I just want to pitch it and forget about it.
Me too. But I need to write! I suppose I am just a horrific control freak and can’t stand the feeling of having my agency stripped away from me overnight with something so UGLY
So happy you found a vintage PdT of Nahema; the only version I truly love. Sad though that the top notes have gone off a bit, but it seems you remedied it.
I hate when things are changed, and not usually for the better, it just bothers me to no end. Hopefully you will be able to learn the new format and work with it. Progress, sometimes it is just a load of crap. I agree with you, just an excuse for people to do something at their jobs to feel worthwhile at times.
Take care.
Thanks for the understanding. I am TERRIBLE in this regard – when a smartphone is involuntarily ‘updated’ over night and then becomes unusable and so on. I react VERY badly.
I totally understand. Thank goodness hubby is a computer person and always helps me out with things.
I have D for that too, but he DOES sometimes get very frustrated with me!
‘YOU’RE USELESSS! USELESS !!!!!!!!!’
I wish I knew how to help you, losing this blog would be one of the worse events of 2020. If it’s really not workable, perhaps a move to Blogger? A new name? A fresh go of it?
I will have to find a solution. I think my desire to write will eventually make me overcome !
Hello. I’m commenting here only because I’m not sure where to ask this question. I’m not actually commenting on this particular thread, though I feel for you with tech difficulties!
My question: How do you decide whether to open and use a vintage perfume or whether to keep it sealed and pristine in its package? I have found a little vintage Ma Griffe for sale, still sealed from the ’50s. I very much want to buy it and smell it, because this would have been the scent my mom wore and loved around the time she married my dad. I’m so curious to smell it and to compare it to the current Ma Griffe. But… I’m also a vintage lover and adore the fact that it IS sealed, and feel so guilty about being the one to potentially open it. Any thoughts? I’m still newish to this blog, but thank you for such thought-provoking posts!
Hello truebluebaby. I hope you don’t mind if I offer a word of advice. Why not buy it and enjoy it? The joy of a sealed vintage fragrance is opening it and discovering an almost pristine, in many cases, example of a glorious treasure from the past. I have a huge, 500+ bottle, collection of vintage fragrances and I have opened and enjoyed all that were sealed when I purchased them. I know many people want to keep them intact, mostly bottle collectors, but the joy of a fragrance is…well, it’s the fragrance. Just think how nice it would be to share a scent your mum wore around the time she married your dad, in the version of what the scent was then.
I do agree. I also think that if you can find another bottle, THAT one you can keep sealed like a precious artefact, and then use the other one in daily life. I tried really hard the other day to resist wearing an incredibly crisp and animalic pristine Vol De Nuit extract I got the other day, but then surrendered (and smelled DIVINE all day)…
Opening a pristine bottle is one of life’s sublime pleasures. You must have smelt exquisite. VdN is such a sublime scent, one I truly adore.
Me too. Usually it is a little greener, mustier – this version ( I should put up a picture; a slightly wider mouthed bottle ) is more vivacious and vivid, somehow. I am going to treasure it! (but use it)
Oh, a picture would be most appreciated. Definitely a treasure.
There is nothing to say. You have encapsulated it. You either keep it intact, or you don’t. It simply depends on whether you want to smell it or not. I have sometimes regretted it, but in general, I have to say that perfume is to be worn!
This is one of my experiences.
https://theblacknarcissus.com/2015/01/09/an-almost-unsurpassable-elegance-moment-supreme-by-jean-patou/
There is nothing to say. You have encapsulated it. You either keep it intact, or you don’t. It simply depends on whether you want to smell it or not. I have sometimes regretted it, but in general, I have to say that perfume is to be worn!
Thank you to you both! I really appreciate your responses.
My pleasure! Good luck!