RUSHED DREAMS :: :::::: REVE D’OR by L.T PIVER (2026)

In Japan it is said that ‘O-kyakusama wa kamisama desu’ – ‘The customer is God.’ While The New Xenophobia has eroded some of that traditional deference – alongside the now widely recognized phenomenon of kasuhara –an abbreviation of kasutmaa harasumento – aggressive harassment by unreasonably irate customers of business and restaurant employees that has created a retreat into the shell of staff who were already on occasion a little coldly robotic – in general, politeness and good service do still prevail in Ye Nippon.

The service in England over the summer was also generally good : friendly; more laid back. Less anxious. You notice the striking cultural differences the second you get on the plane: We Brits place a lot of emphasis on humour, perhaps sometimes excessively: I was telling a surprised Japanese colleague yesterday that there is virtually no situation in which some wry, jesty aside is considered unacceptable in the UK- even court cases and funerals, nothing is off limits for a little joke to puncture the solemnity – when here, a far graver mien is generally considered more appropriate in a multitude of scenarios – a gravitas that for ho ho ho anglophones can get quite wearing. Flight safety videos on most Asian airlines will be more conservative in their approach – i.e just telling you what to do in the event of a crash, which is their main purpose – rather than the rip-roaring Bridgerton spoof on the British Airways long haul flight that had a couple of cheery Brummies nearrolling in the aisles ( I admit that I chuckled a couple of times on the way out from Tokyo, but the joke had worn thin by the return). The rolling bucolica of the pastoral classical music on the plane’s tannoy – Oh Green And Pleasant Land! – was also so ear-bleedingly loud I thought I might have an aneurysm even before take-off: they did turn it down when I asked, but it still wasn’t enough to curtail the sensation of galloping across the glen and about to go hurtling off a cliff.

Another difference I noticed straight away was the slovenliness. As a slovenly individual myself – a slob, a mendokusagariya who can’t be bothered – I say this as one who knows this state of being intimately even if living in Japan for so long has tidied me up to a significant extent, you could see the visible difference immediately in requirements for self-presentation. The staff looked fine; normal; not dressed to the nines and hair pulled back into painful, eye-splitting facelifts as they normally are, but it was unusual to be asked at the beginning of the flight not to take photos of the staff – I have never been asked that before. Asian flight attendants are, per the rule book, tip-top neat and immaculately presented – the airlines probably a bit fascistic as well in their beauty standards when hiring, so a part of me thus enjoyed the ‘let it all hang out’ attitude of the multi-sized/shaped, and very friendly crew who provided a good service during the mammoth flight – although when one of the staff was there huffing and puffing, almost stuck in the middle of the aisle serving drinks with his waistcoat off, trousers half down, shirt come loose and hanging down the rump, literally letting it all hang out, I did, I have to say, rather blush on his behalf and then understood the social media photograph edict. It wouldn’t be great for PR – and particularly not in Japan.

Arriving at Heathrow, I knew I was naive to expect the baggage reclaim to be up to Japanese standards; the usual explanations and excuses on the tannoy…‘this is because….’not alleviating the fact that we were just desperate to be out of there and on our way. Suddenly I smelled raspberries: realizing that that 80% of those waiting were now greedily licking down on some kind of summer iced swirly, presumably given out by the airport as a token of their apology: the air was sweet, I was whisked to the British seaside on a nostalgic raft through time, but it did all look rather odd I must say, as though the whole airport had suddenly been bewitched by Willy Wonka.

Once ‘reclaiming’ our suitcases, we hopped in a taxi and do what we always do now, rather than head into the headfuck of London after an endless flight and instead have a short respite in Windsor, only about 15 or 20 minutes away, whisking you into a more charming Englishness to begin your stay- always nice to wake up to the castled picturesqueness and the cries of gulls in a wispy blue sky………….if, that is – and this is a big if – the hotel you have booked is actually open.

Again, to the cultural comparisons – something I have been doing these last two weeks in my classes, as in fact I rarely talk that much about Britishness, there being plenty of other things we need to be getting on with in terms of vocabulary building and doing past entrance exam papers, but having just returned, and sensing their interest in my origins, a bit of a UK cultural run through does feel very relevant and apposite. I of course get to hear the oft repeated ‘fact’ that British food is terrible; a very strong cultural stereotype entrenched in the national psyche here to the extent that one of our school textbooks even features an entire reading comprehension passage, a rather snide one I must say, about how dreadful our ‘cuisine’ – ha ha ha! -really is; just boiled and slopped onto a plate: in Japan it is seen as the worst food in the world. I tell them that I love much of it personally, and that Brits don’t actually subsist purely on greasy fish and chips, and that we do in fact have a lot of delicious things to eat – try a Sunday roast dinner! – even if admittedly on the whole it doesn’t remotely rise to the elevated standards of the most exquisite washoku Japanese food (half of which I find repugnant, but that is just my personal stomach; I don’t do softly cooked fatty meat and seaweed or just sliced sea creatures with eyes still moving topped with a raw egg).

Moving from that hackneyed topic, which always brings out a curious nationalistic fervour in them – they are obsessed with their food – I tell them about how nice it is over there to have so much greenery as a natural fixture in and between towns and cities – whole swathes of country!- rather than the one vast urban conurbation all the way from Chiba through Tokyo, Kawasaki and Yokohama – the megalopolis of 36 million people in which I personally reside, just at the edge of the part when the zen hills of Kamakura punctuate the concrete carnage for a minute or two on your train ride; I do find that the greenbelts between towns on British journeys, restful to the spirit. The only issue in the UK being whether your train does actually come. My students were quite flabbergasted to be told that sometimes in Ol blighty, trains are simply cancelled, often without explanation. Two personal anecdotes then make them crease up in disbelief, namely the time when travelling from London to Norwich and the passengers were told over the crackling speakers; ‘We are very sorry. This train will be delayed for up to an hour. This is because this train has no engine’; the other a jostling commuter service from London Euston to Birmingham New Street – the equivalent of an Osaka to Tokyo train in importance – and the pitiful – but laughable, I do remember some cynical guffaws among the groans of those on board – excuse; ‘We are very sorry. But this train has no driver’.

Suffice it to say, the taxi driver dropped us off at the Cushion and Crown in Windsor – yes I am naming names – and it was dark. Admittedly, we had arrived late, and probably should have given them a heads up that we were arriving after 9pm – we had sent some messages but a call might have been a good idea but considering we had paid in advance and were desperate to get to bed after the exhaustion of the flight, to find the lights out was very demoralizing indeed.

‘There’s no one there’, I told d.

‘There must be’ he replied.

‘There obviously isn’t‘ I said, already looking for another place that was open as he went round the back and sides to make sure that the hoteliers weren’t crouching in the dark avoiding our arrival for some reason.

Being a decisive type, I was already dragging my overstuffed suitcase, whose wheels were coming off – definitely time for a new one, but who wants to spend money on luggage? – towards the George Inn just a couple of houses next door, just about to close, but upon seeing our desperate faces – we felt like Mary and Joseph – were happily to oblige us with beers and a room for the night. We were told that the proprietors of the hotel in question were not very nice folks and had a bad reputation – which was then borne out the next, deliciously crisp and bright English morning, when the surly fellow in question offered not a single apology – and along with Agoda, the crappy travel agency – avoid like the plague! – refused to answer our inquiries or give us our money back.

GRRRRRRRRRR!

And grrrrrr to the ladies of Cologne and Cotton in Leamington Spa while we are at it and about to finally get to the perfume(s) in question today, a real shame when I had money to spend- an early birthday present from mother and a place I always look forward to going to.

I ask you: when you have a willing and obviously perfume-knowledgeable customer waiting to throw money at you, why would you act like a trio of cold dummies and give the least personable service imaginable?

It was like pulling teeth.

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I like (d?) Cologne And Cotton because it presents a hotelier’s alternative to the two main options in perfumery: high street/ duty free, with its belching molecular stenches – and niche, which often isn’t that much different (power! projection! the rarest, most precious materials!) – but does at least often a tad more artistry and experimentation.

Being a boring one, though, I often don’t want experimentation and the whole ‘let’s imagine what a skunk on a metal morgue table might smell like, sutured into a tapestry of toxic tuberose and night-blooming bluebell ‘- I just want, as I have said multiplissimo times before —a perfume that feels comfortable, intriguing- nice.

I suppose I also have a predilection for pretty, vintage-style, apothecary-esque labels and flacons, so am drawn to simple colognes and colonias from France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, in big, towering glass bottles that haunt the dresser. I like the brand’s own range – pleasingly designed – such as the incense-infused Niobe, and I was delighted to see Molinards – wow! a new version of Habanita – – Fragonards, and a whole range of locally French produced lavender waters – chypre, fougère, soliflore roses, ready to dip into along with a new Italian profumeria from Venezia, Speziata di San Marco, a new range that struck me as very 007 wakes up with Babe in sunlit 1% bedroom overlooking Palace of the Doge, but my natural enthusiasms were blunted the sloe-eyed trio’s woefully unfriendly countenance; sullen as freshly slapped arses; eyes matte as chocolate buttons. It was almost as if they were in cahoots; the woman behind the other woman at the counter deliberately egging her not to give me any help or information as she plonked down a Vetiver here or a Patchouli there wordlessly, with suspicious glint.

In truth, I felt as if I were robbing a bank.

Self-consciousness, neuroticism, is a curious thing. When someone makes you feel suspicious, you can become suspicious, taking on that identity.

Partly because we are partly Japanized in some subtle ways that we ourselves are not even quite conscious of – something in the eye contact; the way of moving, perhaps- different ways of dressing (walking into d’s local pub one lunchtime in Norfolk one afternoon I couldn’t get over how huge; pink, bald, ungainly, everyone looked, how appalling the cheap ambery ouds that had melded with hot sweat were reeking and imagining a Japanese person trying to discreetly clap a hand or two over their face to mitigate the vulgarity of the miasma; how d and I felt, basically, like newts beamed down from Venus- so clearly very different in a whole variety of unplaceable ways that made us uncanny both to the guffawing locals and to ourselves). I suppose the same phenomenon was at work in Cologne and Cotton. This shop is the freshly laundered and linen’d epitome of the semi-upper middle class aspiration; ladies post pilates popping in for liquid hand soaps and the finest Egyptian threads; aroma sticks and expensive soaps to garner the lavabos of their many upstairs bathrooms; it is a cushioned place of quiet luxe for the well-to-do-with-nothing-to-do; hair-do poised; woollens, tees and dresses removed carefully from dried-lavender’d wooden chests; a trip to the C and C a cherry on the icing of the Georgian white houses that they are fortunate to live in and the whole reason I love the town, with its fadedly majestic fountains and gardens, swans gliding obliviously along the lush reeds of the unkempt river, gaggles of brown-tinged cygnets in their wake. There is an elegance to Leamington; posh but grotty at the seams – you only have to walk a mile or two to get to the toothless and unwashed on the other side of town – that we both love; and perhaps that was the vibe that I was bringing into the pristine premises: who is this weirdo who seems to know almost everything about our wares with his flat hair and anorak? Why is he in such a hurry and garbling on about this ‘Habanita’? (the dunces seemed to know almost nothing about what they were actually selling, so maybe I was showing them up, I don’t know – but Jesus, get a grip, slightly on what you are selling, you hoary porcupine in mauvey, cruddy pink lipstick ) : : : : : : : : : : : : THE CUSTOMER KNOWS BEST.

In truth, we were in a hurry, because we only got to Cologne And Cotton fifteen minutes before closing time. This probably heightened the thrilling sensation that they were in the middle of an armed robbery; I was a bit breathless and sweaty and talking ten to the dozen, as my ‘accomplice’ – so disgusted with these frozen mannequins’ ‘service’ that he walked out in anger – presumably had gone to wait in the getaway car before their heads went all Aunty Sally in Wurzel Gummidge after I pulled out my sawn off shot gun from my rucksack – and I tried to work out what I was going to buy with my walletful of cash.

Yes, perhaps it was my appearance. The weather was weirdly hot and cold at the same time; raining but clammy. We had arrived late – a fallen tree had stopped all trains on the Chiltern line and my dad had to pick us up and take us to Birmingham International for a different route; a packed, boiling Noah’s Ark, disgruntled passengers cheek by jowled with the breath of others unavoidable onto each other’s faces as the train snaked past Coventry and eventually into Leamington Spa. We had then gone to a lunchtime soul concert in a lovely cafe bar on the main high street; followed by the exquisite discovery of an utterly charming Ukrainian restaurant hidden inside a church; refugees providing adelicious borscht and savoury mushroom pancakes laced with dill and sour cream in a sacred place and- it was magical. You felt for the people working there, could feel sadness seeping into every corner from the displacement – but it was the perfect place to spend a rainy day, very hard to leave.

On our way to the three cardigan’d Margaret Thatchers at the perfume shop via a fascinating photography exhibition at the Royal Pump Rooms by queer Indian photographers exploring Colonialism,we had had to go emergency shoe shopping as my light breathable black Nikes had let in rain : wet socks are my ultimate bȇte noire. There are far worse things in this world, obviously – bomb strikes, genoicide, you name it – but bringing it back to the every day, there are few things more dreadful for me that sogging socks – I become deranged; utterly intolerable – so we were detoured by new footwear purchases and hunting in the charity shops before being entranced by the sound of Jolene drifting out from Murphy’s, the down at heel anarchist pub we love to go to with its Saturday night disco and free flowing pints of Guinness. Dolly Parton had died a day or two before and was all over the news: it was fantastically poignant to thus be able to hear such a perfect rendition of this song by a local folk singer – via perfume purchasing we were then going to meet my singer songerwriter friend and partner for a Nepalese dinner – a wonderful catch up that was also a Perfume Handover: learning that Julianne loves and wears her rapidly running out Eau de Gucci Concentree ( 1982 )- a preppy and green, mandarinic Anaïs Anaïs I also have in my collection and enjoy wearing on occasion for its soapy, Gabriela Sabatini-esque white lilies that plunge me into nostalgic revere of the eighties carefree, I was to give her a brand new vintage still plastic wrapped bottle I had miraculously discovered for next to nothing at my undisclosable vintage trove store (my dad was given a bottle of Givenchy Gentleman; my mum a Chanel Gardénia as their Japan omiyage (souvenir); it is always most enjoyable to confer a treasured scent on someone who really enjoys it; who breathes it in, lighting up with the pleasure of it all.

Unlike these motionless vacuum cleaners in their orange blossom paradise wishing the urchin rogue standing before them would just leave, getting more monosyllabic and wary by the minute (were they about to become hostages?!) – panic buttons fingers-edged towards under the counter; ready to clobber me over the head with giant bottles of lemon water if I suddenly made to go postal; call in the local constabulary to drag me away to where I belong……… in the moss-templed shrine precincts of Kitakamakura, but no – I still. Had. To buy. Something.

I was hell bent on it. Despite my growing desire to shear off their bouffs with plastic scissors ; I wanted to augment my perfume collection here in Japan with some nice colognes or perfumes, and that was what I was going to do – unacceptable service or otherwise.

What to get? I wasn’t sure.

And the clock was ticking. And I still had to work out how to get to the cash register without being captured on CCTV. (No, sorry —– enough!)

But a customer doesn’t want to be rushed. He wants help. And as the options piled up on the counter – I got a charming gardenia cologne – very English Kate Bush pillow – from Nicolosi Creations, Paris, a pleasing lavender for d from the same company; plus two 250ml bottles of eaux de cologne extra by Jean Aigle – a rose and a lavande; clean, uncomplicated -Habanita was drawing me in but I didn’t have quite enough cash for it, but I wanted just one more cheapie I could use with abandon once home. So mmm… …….what else?

By now I had finally ripped the ladies’ tights that I had covering my face – as well as my balaclava – and was ready to make my final decision. Eeny, meeny, miney moe…

..but finally realized that I hadn’t gone through the LT Pivers. This is a very appealing heritage French brand whose bottles adorn shelves most agreeably – I remember Helen getting the Cuir De Russie back in the day – and had the raccoons that ran the shop – permed, immobilized with scorn by their embroidered tea towels – done their job and shown any motivation to help me make my decision – I might also have made a better one.

As it was, I settled on Rȇve D’Or – or Golden Dream. In its plump, 130ml bottle, very turn of the century boudoir I thought, this was a new release by the house – or at least a remake of a very old classic; ridiculously aldehydic, like a clovey Nº5 – very eugenolic as well – incensey (saffron, cedar) and apparently a lick of raspberry. Something about it appealed in that rushed moment, even though in retrospect I am not sure – these old fashioned things cloaked in contemporary guise don’t often work- there is an element of quease in the mix that curls my nostrils and duodenum a little – but the clock was ticking, only five minutes to go before the glaring register was shut tight with a security key – I moved whatever else I had lined up with my sleeve like a chess piece and said to the staring befuddled —‘Ok. I’ll take these’.

All breathing sighs of relief as they totted up my purchases and placed them quickly in a nice bag with the pleasant green of the brand for me to parade along the high street of Leamington Spa; I requested samples – I guess they dared not refuse in case I lobbed a silver hand grenade into the store behind me for good measure – and was given, grimly, the full selection of the aforementioned Venezian citruses, which I will review at a later date. I don’t know if I said thankyou — I probably did, because I was raised that way and I live in Japan – not sure if they did – probably not,even though I had just bought a load of stuff from their shop – but by that point we were already on our way for a quick sojourn in the lovely Jefferson Gardens by the river; the waters darkening, the clouded skies with banks of evening light still breaking through; birds flitting; a beautiful English scene.