TCP is absurdly strong. Almost fatally so. For once I don’t think I am exaggerating. Just the teensiest dot of this institutionalizing antiseptic British ointment dabbed on an infected cut / burn / abrasion – oh dear, should have been more careful with that roiling cinnamon and clove rooibos herb tea the other night – I have a bit of an eggs benedict developing on my left foot now as a result no sorry I am now actually exaggerating but that is some heat blister – just one application to the affected area, as directly suggested by the instructions on the back of the sturdy brown glass bottle, does lead to an entire houseful of ghastily potent disinfectant smell that would make the product totally unsellable in Japan.
We have just walked in -and I was immediately reminded of the first time I smelled all the strange medicinal ouds- clay like, sanctifying, odd, that I experienced at an Arab perfume shop in the China Town area of Kuala Lumpur many years ago and aeons before the Fake Oud Crisis – one of the many blights of our times, currently hovering around number 27 in the Charts Of Hell – but I digress. Because of the significant amounts of fairly decent agarwood Japanese incense that I was burning earlier today in the house, the TCP’d sock from last night left unceremoniously somewhere- d has just done his frantic earwig tarantelle of housework irritation on returning to the abode after the launderette and an Indian ; I say’TCP sock’ which sounds like typical Chapmanian saturation (ugh ! the herb tea I am now drinking is TCP’d on the rim – how? why ?! Who designed this stuff ?!!!) when it was actually just a what I thought was carefully minimalized tissue to skin gentle putting – – but the sum undeniable fact is that the whole house is totally permeated with it – I did take said foot up to bed with me last night so I supposed it has suffused the bedding space to boot.
For those of you that know it, what are your thoughts on TCP? Should the smell not be diluted by at least 97%? Does it make you feel nostalgic for the electro shock treatment of your youth, that time you spent in the asylum with Jessica Lange ? Does it bring back memories of the miserable carbolic soap of PE classes in the comprehensive school winter? That ache of bare bones and bare trees and unsaintly labour? The death grin of Jimmy Saville?
For me, TCP is the very epitome of olfactory ambivalence. Part of me hates the way it deeply infects every other scent around it – for those who hate even a whiff of hospital this will be your ultimate bete noire – honestly you should smell our house right now – Sultan of Agar boards an ambulance to Great Ormonde Street – but another part of me is positively plunged into memories : my great friend Owen – who never spoke to me again after I wrote about him in my piece on Armani Pour Homme where I accused him of plagiarizing my smell – even though he smelled so much better in it – if by any chance you are reading this do get back in touch and stop being such a f*+^ng stubborn ass to the wall Capricorn (I discovered to my amazement that I am also basically a Capricorn – moon and rising ! the other day – so perhaps that is why we spent so many years together going to record fairs and then listening to them in our bedrooms );
anyway – O’s house was basically a temple to TCP. It had got into everything : it smelled like a church. I loved it. In the right ratio – his Welsh mother off in her room using it for something or were the kids using it for skin things – all I know is that you could smell it from behind the doorbell. I remember while still in the closet a very beautiful young man who was the love interest of a female friend of mine at Trinity Hall giving off subtle – but not so subtle, actually – emanations of TCP. The smell of it was unmistakable. It tipped me into infatuation. It was the association. It is all about context.
I am afraid I do not like TCP! That smell does not want to die. No doubt my dislike might be huge cos my mother made us gargle with it when were ill ….. urgh. Can you imagine how that lingered and made everything we drank or ate taste of it?!
Your book has arrived! I haven’t managed to read any of it yet, but it is beautiful. The gilded pages are sumptuous. I am so happy to own it.
Oh good – you got one of the original gold paged numbers. Later stingier editions were white and less luxuriant.
Enjoy the descriptions – and not smelling of TCP
Well, as you asked – I didn’t grow up in the UK so TCP was new to me, but yes, it’s a monster. But I do love Pears soap, which I used to sometimes be given, and in fact bought some on Saturday for a warming retro wash. What I do remember clearly is Famel syrup. ever had that? That’s also a smell of note….maybe they have the same ingredients, must look it up.
Never had Famel but very much understand the nostalgic pull of Pear’s. TCP is in a whole industrial category of its own though !
Love the smell of TCP!
Completely and wholly? I think it is ABSURDLY over concentrated in smell but as this piece will tell you I do know what you mean
Yep completely! Smells of the polished wooden floors of old hospitals. Very evocative!
It’s meant to be diluted as far as I recall
But how ?
With water
!
That told me
lol!
As for antiseptic memories Germoline ointment
Beautiful, beautiful piece of writing!!!
I have exactly the same reaction to TCP that you do, btw. I love that it exists because it really feels (with the sting) like it eviscerates all germs and, obviously, it smells unsurvivable too.
I bought a bottle about six months ago and, if you can believe it, have been dabbing it behind my ear! with the tiniest of cotton buds, in the most minimal quantity imaginable, but it still sat on my shoulder like a little medicinal, childhood ghost all day. (I had a weird earlobe reaction to a cheap earring and thought it would sort it).
Diluting it with water had literally never occurred to me.
I also remember the smell of it at Owen’s house, competing with Peter’s pipe tobacco. But in my memory our bathroom also always had a whiff of it too, it just generally hung in the air in the 70s.
V glad we have a shared memory of O’s house and that you will know exactly what I am reminiscing over
– your own upstairs always smelled to me of the most divine apple shampoo – and sapphire black hair tints
I do remember TCP, but have no strong positive or negative associations with it. These days it’s menthol that I smell every weekend after my other half comes back from a bike ride with sore leg muscles! Can they make an odor-free formulation?
> Fake Oud Crisis
Please tell us more about this!
Irrelevant in the more pressing issues of our shite world obviously but in a perfume way, VERY pressing
the fact that – and you will have noticed this yourselves when passing through and hopefully avoiding the horrors of ‘Duty Free’ – that the extreme vast majority of contemporary fragrances are hideous and induce instant headaches – the culprits v often being fake agarwood chemicals, the actual natural oud of which can be very beautiful – that are as teeth extractingly strong as TCP