CHANEL AND A PIRANHA

I have made it a rule now to get into a routine. To cycle off down familiar routes – (and unfamiliar ones or those I haven’t been on for a long time : today I decided to go a bit further along the coast to Inamuragaseki park and gasped when Mt Fuji came resplendently into view )

Neighbouring town Zushi’s dilapidated recycle shop Kurukuru has become my go to on Tuesdays – though it was unaccountably closed yesterday. You can find all kinds of things in there, from really nice porcelain and bric a brac, furniture, jewellery, old random Indonesian masks, records, bizarre knock knacks – and even sometimes perfume (the divine Rochas Audace I wrote about recently was from the same place).

This time there had been some new offloads. A third-of-it left bottle of Annick Goutal L’Isle Au Thé- a very fresh, subtly spiced green tea I liked on D though was unsure about the Tommy Hilfigeresque lemony base; a full, boxed bottle of the original Bulgari Pour Femme – a Sophia Grosjman modern classic, all rosed up with violets and heliotrope and powder – and balsamic/green tea base (astounding to see that bottles of this now go for $400 on eBay but it is such a well crafted, sensual but still enigmatic nineties womanly all rounder that you can imagine there are those who find they can’t live without it) as well as a half full bottle of Chanel 22 extrait that I was delighted to find — such a lovely, fluffed up chinchilla cherryade of a perfume that is ideal for a post bath night wrist number when you need buoying ( my mum wears it, very convincingly , and I find it rather comforting).

There was also, if you look at the picture, what I thought was going to be a Find Of The Century on the spot perfume aneurysm – a 1930’s Chanel box which when I, holding my breath, reached out to open, I could see had the very flacon from that era – a used up No 22……….but not the Bois Des Isles, Cuir De Russie and Gardénia that would have been THRILLING to possess in my hands and hurry back home with. I bought it anyway.

Along with, about twenty pounds for the whole stash, a very nice art deco glass flower vase

Oh. And a piranha.

Which D has christened Clotilda.

I must confess that I am not especially into taxidermy, even if my most prized possession is our golden pangolin in the genkan

— which I do have to say I find extraordinarily beautiful.

In London a couple of weeks ago, walking through Holborn and after a pint in the exquisite Princess Louise pub, a gilded gem of Victoriana that was like a Klimtian mirrored palace, we strolled down to Lincoln Inn Fields, a square I had never been to before but which in springtime I found to be breathtakingly beautiful, with the aim of going to the architectural Soanes museum to spend a couple of hours before the next social engagement.

Unfortunately, it was not open.

Instead, we walked a bit further and chanced upon the Hunterian Museum – a place I had never heard of before – but which sounded intriguing (and it was free).

Wow.

It was far more macabre than I could have expected.

(warning : potentially disturbing images to follow):

(side profile of an orangutan’s head )

( the main draw of the museum is the meticulous specimen collection of the eighteenth century anatomist John Hunter)

— containing all forms of creatures from the animal kingdom (human included ) — preserved in formaldehyde and stored in glass jars.

It was disturbing — shocking actually ( I never liked the smell of the science labs in biology as a thirteen year old and refused to take part in the classroom dissections of sheep hearts and frogs as I just couldn’t hack it – there was always a deep creepiness to all the slow, cloaked emanations in that part of school, a dread-inducing, cold, medicinal quality —although this museum was odourless).

— an ostrich’s rectum

— prosthetic glasses for a woman who had lost her nose to syphilis – wow

A baby sloth ! (top)

Like all the other wide-eyed,whispering onlookers, we were both vaguely horrified by the ghoulishness of the place – these beings, entities, suspended in preservative liquids for centuries – but also scientifically, anatomically — and aesthetically – the displays were beautifully done with an economy missing from so many museums now— I do have to say, completely mesmerized.

We left, blinking in the sunshine of the white building glare of Lincoln Inn Fields; affected.

Beauty does, indeed come in many guises.