The Black Narcissus

Citruses are usually destined for summer – for obvious reasons. But sometimes, an aromatic lemon scent with chypric undertones – think Annick Goutal Eau Du Sud, the original Eau De Rochas, can be bewitching in Autumn and Winter. They become not mere sweat reductors — but sing more silverily on the air; purer: a more wrenching suaveness of melancholy.

I was delighted the other day to get a message from my old friend Peter who has been sojourning in Rome for ten days, revisiting our old haunts and immersing himself in the art, churches, and magnanimous atmosfera.

At the Choistro Del Bramante exhibition bookshop, he came across some copies (with the original gold-leaved pages!) of the Italian, now out of print, version of my book Perfume — and has just very kindly sent me a copy.

The whole package was scented with Acqua Viva, which at first I confused with the similar Goutal (in fact I don’t think I have ever smelled this one before; I associate Profumum more with its thick, luxurious tooth melting confectioneries such as Battito D’Ali, Gioiosa, Confetto and the like; any other favourites from this velvety decadent profumeria?)

This citrus couldn’t be further from that style, though : Amalfi lemons form the main frame, but there is a mossier, darker element from the cedarwood and cypress undertones; a certain adult sternness. I can easily imagine Peter wandering around the ruins in this : he always wore the aromatics well at university : scents such as Aramis Devin that were quietly enigmatic.

Acqua Viva must have smelled beautiful in the yellowing, auburn and russet trees of Ancient Rome, the quiet somnolence of St Paul’s pyramid; the indolent, strolling cats at my favourite place in the city; John Keats’ grave at foreigners’ cemetery, Testaccio.

We had a great ‘birthday weekend’ in Atami. I was supposed to be in surgery again for the Main Event – yegadz I hear ye cry : how can he STAND it : exactiy ) :: so we came two and a half weeks early; the very day the same as Britney Spears’ and the death of the Marquis De Sade.

I just wasn’t ready, after being mauled by the scalpel twice already this year, so am going for the final chop in January instead.

We stayed in our favourite hotel, whose room resembles a lighthouse and where all the senses can breathe.

We went to familiar places and restaurants, but also to new haunts, including the Trick Art Museum high up on the mountain by Atami Castle: I haven’t had such childlike, silly and innocent fun in a very long time.

Perfume : d was wearing Electimuss Puritas; I Hermes Vetiver Tonka.

We were also road testing Puredistance’s releases from this year – Divanche and Ysayo – both very good – reviews to follow, and both enjoying a step away ( though the crowds, this time domestic tourists rather than the foreign hordes in Kamakura ) were slightly stupendous.

Cheers.

Sometimes I have rose cravings. And those cravings are not satisfied by the spicy rose chypres of the 80’s nor by the powdery Guerlains that are replete in my collection – Nahéma is very beautiful but it suits a very particular fragile and vulnerable state with its peachy talcum and that is not what I am thinking of right now.

There are a hundred million prissy artificial rose perfumes out there in the mid-price ranges of department stores that sicken me: the contemporary rose tends to induce a lurch in the stomach. Certain chemicals – I don’t know what they are – pins in the head that I imagine are supposed a represent a ‘contemporary virginality and chaste put-togetherness ‘ – are supremely offputting to me – although I realize I am not the intended candidate in the first place, nor the mouthbreathing pursuants of such insipid individals.

There are an equal number of rose ouds around. I like some of them, but it depends on the oud; the quality, the naturalness, the ratio of the formula. So many have that note in the base, that inescapable black vinous cypriol – or ‘nagarmotha’ if you want it to sound more exotic – that even if you paid me I could never wear them.

But I don’t mind a bit of oud in a scent every once in a while. Particularly if it is the gentler, richer, barnyardy kind (as in Cartier’s lovely Oud & Pink, which you can read about here, along with L’Heure Osée and Pure Rose – one of the better rose trio variegations of recent times) There is also some oud, in the base accord of Dusita La Douceur De Siam, the modern rose I wear the most but which I cannot rely on exclusively. There is certainly too much oud in Electimuss Octavian, a classic saffron heavy Arabia-ish ‘oriental’ I have a strange affiliation with, and I do sometimes suffer a little in the later stages as a result of this if it is not the right day for that muddier plasticene, but the opening of Octavian is sublime: a really high quality rose oil with pink pepper and what smells like raspberries – it is a very haunting accord, and – drat! – I have almost got through my samples now. I enjoy wearing this when I want to feel anchored and a bit heavier in the bones :it has got past my defences, It is also very expensive at 500 dollars, and comes in the most unattractive bottle; my visual brain cannot handle the Trumpian eagle insignia set against that light copper topper – and I would have to hide it away out of sight even if I were lucky enough to obtain it: not the ideal reaction when you shelve out for a luxury product….surely you want the whole package, not to shame it away like Jayne Eyre’s lover’s aunt in the dusting attic?

A nice rose I have in my collection, but which I had forgotten about until just now – a travel sized bottle from a Collection Noire gift set I received once during my brief stint at Vogue Japan – is Serge Lutens’ La Fille De Berlin.

Why have I failed to wear – or write about – this more? It is jammy, syrupy; rich red rosey, soft with geranium and palmarosa, and it works. It caresses. The base of Fille De Berlin is a warm, musky honey and patchouli, but subtly done. The red tint of the perfume is also gorgeous ; hue-tastic. I am wearing it now. And I like it. But why…….. does it ultimately bore me? (it always did, from the first time I smelled it in Shinjuku Isetan, overly excited.). It’s just…… so….nice. Which sometimes I want. A wrist of nicety with a slightly traditionalist edge.; a cosey rose. But somehow, La Fille De Berlin is just a little too fuzzy and drab about the edges, lacking any bite (and I think it has too much Body Shoppish White Musk, ultimately) even if I may still wear it when I go out for lunch with a friend on Sunday in Motomachi, the chichier part of Yokohama where a waft of such an odour will not go amiss. Perhaps with an added touch of Rose Trocadero by Le Jardin Retrouvé on top? This rose goes perhaps too much the other way; an acidulousness of rose morning fresh-hood that almost strains credulity with its photo realistic I AM A ROSE!! desperation, but which still makes for quite a pleasant rose spritz. It makes me want to own again a bottle of the original Annick Goutal Rose Absolue, which was more genuinely heavenly dewy. (You can read about Rose Trocadero here, along with reviews of Mona D’Orio’s Rose étoile D’Hollande and Ormonde Jayne’s Rose Taif Elixir if you want to continue to rose up your day now that the Halloween pumpkins have been put aside).

Tom Ford has a few roses up his tight-muscled sleeves: I quite like Cafe Rose and Rose Prick is alright, but like so many of this house’s releases with their ‘shocking’ names, the juice inside the bouteille often does not match the lascivious projection of the fragrance’s title. ‘Rose Exposed’ is another such item : perfectly fine, a peppery rose oil and rose water opening that was moderately exciting, but ceding quickly to a leatherish /oudish / cashmeran base that belies a fundamental lack of concerted creativity and immediately dulls the senses. What is being exposed here exactly? The project manager’s cowardice?

This is the thing with Names With Claims: Lancôme’s new Forbidden Rose also does not really live up to its name – if you are going to call something that at least give it even a minimal shock of the new- but it is a pleasingly fruity rich rose / fig / amber and earthy patchouli that took me nearly back to my beloved L’ Artisan Parfumeur Voleur De Roses – which wasn’t even called ‘niche ‘perfume when I wore it back in the early nineties – and was my favourite of the large rose selection the house now has at department stores available for your gullible, rosaceous delectation (Rose On The Moon; Hot As Rose; Hell Of A Rose; Not Your Rose; Storm And Roses; I Flamed A Rose (what?); most of these are worth a sniff if you are in the market for a new fresh rose, although Rose Or Die, my second preferred of the roses from this overpriced collection, is a green tea rose and doesn’t quite merit its melodramatic name; suggesting nothing about the kind of passion that would require any form of killing, or throwing yourself from the trellis onto the spiky white garden fence with a pair of rose shears protruding from your gullet because your hybrids for 2025 hadn’t quite bloomed as you’d been hoping).

Of course, despite the vague disappointment we all experience when a fragrance doesn’t live up to its hype, I am not averse to a touch of melodrama, as anyone who reads the Black Narcissus will attest. And I almost miss the verbal garbage , the lavish verbiage – that used to come with each new Serge Lutens release, when pretentious-beyond-endurance mystical ‘poetry’ was given instead of detailed note listings and you had no idea what the hell he was trying to say (though you liked the underlying suggestivity of this rubbish anyway because you were a perfume freak and were lured into bullshit about phoenixes rising from the ashes and the like). As a result, the current releases, both in descriptors and in execution, do seem rather tame in comparison with the past, when the perfumes were so much more potent (can anyone forget how tart and full bodied, green and acidic the original formula of Sa Majesté La Rose was? It was so bitter and twisted! A startling entry into the perfume market at that period of time unlike anything I had ever smelled before or since, and it is a shame it has become the wan attenuation it once was (you can read my original review of that perfume here in an old article, ‘Some Roses For Winter’, which features some other all time rose classics and personal favourites, such as Caron Rose, Creed’s Fleurs De Bulgarie, Maison Parfumeur et Gantier Rose Opulente, Sisley Soir De Lune; – in fact, if you type in ‘rose’ at the top of this page in the enquiry space it is surprising how many reviews of rose perfumes do come up that I have written over the years. Do I really like the scent of this flower this much? I think I probably do… ).

But I was supposed to be discussing the contemporary rose. And although other reviewers describe La Fille De Tour De Fer (‘the girl in the iron tower’? hardly) as a tad dull and inferior – simplistic – to the Lutensian rose precursors, I happen to personally disagree: this was the only perfume I smelled the other day at Yokohama Takashimaya that I thought, ooh — maybe, maybe I can get this as a birthday or Christmas present or sneak myself a treat on pay day – the 50ml was not too extravagantly priced and I felt that want want want feeling that I haven’t had for quite a long time with a recentish perfume. What I don’t like about it, just to nickpick – is the colour – why not that deep bloody red of La Fille De Berlin, which would make the perfume so much more irresistible (even drinkable) ? Why this pale tedious lavender purple more suited to a bathroom cleaner when the main ingredients, very prominent, and very lovely, are the immediately recognizable essences of Bulgarian and Turkish roses that both stimulate and mollify the heart? I love the natural oils that perfumer Christopher Sheldrake has chosen for this scent, but it seems odd to have coloured them in this way. Was this tint chosen to represent the iris at the centre, or the metallic edge that is said to come later in the dry down? I don’t know. But though I do get a strange kind of anti-synaesthesia from the colour/smell amalgam, I want this in any case. A rose dab, simple, fresh, deep, real – voluptuous- can sometimes be exactly what the doctor ordered.

I experienced a severe case of SRHG (Sudden Rapid Hair Growth) on the morning of Halloween and by evening had bleached and frizzed it into a nice Boy George meets Hanoi Rocks’ Michael Monroe.

It was a freezing rainstorm but it suited some Halloween cosiness. After some mulled wine – over Dario Argento soundtracks and some mariachi musica – perhaps a little too heavy on the cinnamon and cloves – it was almost mouth-numbing – we headed out getting soaked to the local bar one minute away.

A perfect bottle of vintage Poison had been sprayed on copiously before we entered the premises, the perfume by far the most frightening thing happening. It got passed round by everyone and multiple further spritzes were executed to the point of asphyxiation

Kunihiko – right – liked it best but then he always likes sweet heady perfumes – and the musky, purpled fleurs du mal – all plum and pimiento and vanillically addled tuberoses was a general hit – in many ways it is a work of genius, though in truth I am getting a little tired of it now as Burning Bush’s signature – maybe next time it will wear Shiseido’s Enchanting Rhinestone. What perfumes did you wear for Halloween ?

Peppermint is essential. Where would toothpaste be without it ? ( hello spearmint ).

The best toilet cleaner in Japan was a simple mint that smelled lovely and did the trick. It has been gone for the shelves for about half a year. I smelled a tres pepperminty spray in the ‘restroom’ of the rehabilitation centre yesterday that was so good I spritzed a little extra in the air so that a few blessed droplets would alight on my person – I wanted to ask the receptionist where they got it — I still might.

At the big convenience store today I saw that the one I always use – there are guests coming round tonight for a mini halloweenish shindig – that the Mint Thing was back, so I bought a big bag of it

But bleurrgjh

—– are we now at the point where toilet cleaners are also getting reformulated ?

I cleaned and applied … but Big Bird Of Legoland this smells like vomit in a 90’s nightclub. I am genuinely embarrassed those coming tonight for a bit of costuming and records and a quick trip to the izakaya one minute away might think I wanted the toilet to smell like this.

Mint is good for you. And cheap.

so Why would they take that essential ingredient out of the mix. Is there some kind of IFRA ((JIFRA?)) edict on the mint species ?

This is vile.

I gasped in the Chinese eatery post-physio when D suddenly produced a plastic bag full o scent he had picked up for ten dollars : a sealed Mitsouko parfum; the most beautiful bottle of Bal A Versailles cologne ; a Tuscany per Donna – when you run out of Samsara it makes a pretty good substitute ! and a leaked Guy Laroche Fidji parfum which is assailing my senses alluringly like a Parisian Tahitian siren — but it was this unheard of perfume, with the cretinously chosen title ‘Enchanting Dance’ that has most captured my diamond shaped heart.

Ooh missi. This is a straight rip-off of Ungaro Diva – but possibly improved. A classic 80’s spiced rosa all’italiana – eBay tells me it can go from the extortionate to the very affordable – but for anyone who still loves that genre as I do, mama mia this ticks all the boxes.

Thanks D – your name is even written on the carton !

Shiseido’s Tsubaki range, which I would say is one of the National Fragrances Of Japan – red and floral camellia with a lustrous green apple top accord, I am greeted with its familiar scent on students, their mothers; friends, is now a firmly entrenched mega hit. I find it very pleasing when a person’s conditioner infuses their hair after drying and becomes their Perfume (: a stinking, greasy scalp pit is the opposite, meriting swift decapitation with the shiniest samurai sword) but thankfully, most people wash their everyday in this country and Tsubaki; not cheap, it is a popular prestige Shiseido product after all – is among the most ubiquitous.

Sadly, Tsubaki is the worst possible shampoo for my wispier Caucasian hair ( Japanese barbers and hair stylists often use thinning scissors for their J clients, the follicles so thick and bountiful they are like gardeners chasing topiaries with secaturs) and I need all the strands I can keep at this age, so although it is quite easy to simply ask to not be trimmed with the scissors in question , i usually trim one’s barnet by oneself rather than come out the hairdressers looking a fluffed up chemo-gosling dredged through the hedge backwards.

The right shampoo can maintain things nicely – the cheap camellia shampoo you see on the right side of the photograph above my hair wash of choice now. Floral fresh but not too perfumed, it leaves just the right balance of lightness and moisture and does not overly interfere with my scent choices.

A few weeks ago when d was out on yet another of my demanding cycle out shopping lists – I am determined to do this myself very soon but am still trying to strike the right balance between the right level of exercise and not overdoing it- HE MIXED UP THE DARNED CAMELLIAS ( is it time to head to the divorce courts ? ) and I learned again, firsthand, how important it is to get this right

I knew the Shiseido wasn’t suitable for my particular needs, having bought it and rejected it in the past, but I don’t want to keep being the shrieking harpy every time he gets an ‘order wrong’ — he is doing enough for me as it is….., but lordy : this deep oleaginous formula suited perfectly to the indigenous hair perhaps but so not to my own not only felt deeply vaselinic, but also made it look as if I had placed a beef tallow dipped toupee on the front of my head and actually committed follicide. I swear I have lost quite a lot of hair from just the three or four times I tried using it – they just kind of … fell out. This may suit the tens of millions of individuals who use it across the archipelago, but I shall henceforth be avoiding Shiseido Tsubaki like the plague.

The wrong champù can not only make you look like Wurzel Gummidge but also smell quite offputting (I always find the Luxes and Pantènes a little too sofa showroom in their creamy white pongs; the Timoteis a little too artificially green meadow frolicking; my sister’s Aussie Moist too squealing of sour strawberries; so many others too mariney or toilet ducky or sports locker roomy: unperfumed ones smell of hippified flax sheep; the Vosenes and other medicateds like rough toilet rolls and moustachioed military majors ,and so on and so forth. Japan has just as many overly perfumed wrong’uns: women here really do fragrance themselves primarily with their hair products and many do smell sublime as they sashay past – they are just not for me. I am pleased, therefore, that the one I know I do like – clearly a blatant Shiseido rip-off in concept, just without the cormorant-caught-in-an-oil-slick tanker disaster – is, at ¥150, the very cheapest shampoo on the market.

I went to see the (currently intensely raved about and) future Oscar contender ‘ One Battle After Another’ with a friend last night. The film, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, whose films I have sometimes liked but never loved, was exhilarating in parts, if ultimately disappointing – far too simplistic and clobberistically hammered home for a film supposedly deliciously satirizing the current political mood – – but at least I smelled gorgeous in the cinema.

We had an endless summer – I wanted it never to finish- and were then plunged into a cold rainy early winter. With a constantly aching leg, and possibly a trapped nerve (should I do the right knee as well on November 27th as scheduled? An existential dilemma), the chilling damp exacerbates the pain. So did sitting in a cinema in Yokohama for three hours unable to find a comfortable position, stretching out the leg onto the seat in front like the bad gaijin I am – the country is obsessed with how terrible foreigners are at the moment, and you do feel a bit of a pariah the second you step out the door. Melanie and I couldn’t help making comments throughout the film, though, and even laughed – gasp! keep your emotions to yourself! don’t laugh out loud in a Japanese cinema! – self control is always the key, didn’tcha knew? – because the film was hilarious in parts; Leonardo Di Caprio’s best role ever I would say, and because I have always been something of a noisy fidget who can’t keep its trap shut.

In colder weather I predictably switch to the ambery. And all year I have been layering; it seems impossible to wear just one perfume. I get more pleasure from constantly comparing and melanging. Right now, while stocks last! – the divine combination is Laura Mercier’s Ambre Lumière – a more wearable Obsession, gorgeous actually- and Guccy Envy For Men – a delicious gingery amber that it seems I was born to wear and which the d loves on me: the Ambre Lumiere, down to its last dregs – (both are of course discontinued and phosphorically expensive on ebay – 100, 000 for the Gucci, what? as only the best perfumes always are, so I should be sparingly stingeing my way through the remaining juices but naturally I do the opposite: spray them on the shoulders under a Uniqlo light undershirt; the Envy on the beard and behind the ears and on the clothing, and on the wrists, and goodness did it smell lovely all blended together last night. Bliss. I love that cozy warm undernuzzle, when, even if what is transpiring on the screen is insulting to the intelligence, as it often was – M and I groaning and eyerolling quite often when the caricatured lefties and righties uttered their ludicrousnesses – the rightwing racist c*&^%s as hateable as you wanted them to be; the wokeistas often equally irritating (probably Paul Thomas Anderson’s point – it’s all a load of fucking bullshit even if I know what side I am ultimately on): when your own body is emitting such fragrant heaven though – M was wearing Matiere Premiere’s Encens Suave which I gave her a decant of and might be her future signature – Somalian frankincense, vanilla, coffee, she is in love – it worked great with my own bundle.

I am all for spiced ambers. A particular fave is the original Guerlain Heritage Eau De Parfum – piquant black pepper melting into one of the best balsamic drydowns I have ever experienced – where can I get a bottle? – and I must say that the new ‘Above Us, Steorra’ (?) reminded me a little of the Guerlain at times when I tried it the other day at the new Aesop store in Kamakura – The Elephant Man out perfume testing.

I love cardamom, even if I have never been satisfied by its usage in perfumery – no one ever uses enough (only the one perfume I ever made by myself, Java by The Black Narcissus, fulfilled the cardamomonic quotient). In the shop, on first spray I said, ah yes, frankincense – I was told: no, amber and pink pepper, but of course I was right – obviously there is a lot of olibanum in this you fool – over vanilla and labdanum….quite a nice, physically hot and spicy new release even if ultimately there was a hint of sports fragrance somewhere in the subliminal mix that put me off. I wouldn’t mind retrying it though nor having this on a casual passerby – at least isn’t yet another Baccarat Rouge copycat. Aesop perfumes are not entirely my bag (are they yours? ) : nice enough; some decent ingredients, but to paraphrase Madonna, they don’t quite take me there. Too…pressed down inside themselves in interior pulverization with no room to breathe and never a lick of humour. Very popular in Japan though; with all the sandalwood and rosy spice recognizably leaking out from the doorsteps of each premises, they have become the new Lush.

The only Aesop perfume I actually have in my collection in Hywl, given to me as a birthday present many years ago but which I would rather die than wear (thanks Denise, in any case). This is one of those uberserious forest scents with some properly hard-assed woods (my god, Sean Penn, excellent granite thighs aside, was ridiculous in that film last night, such a caricature- meaning, of course, that he is guaranteed to win an Academy Ward); cedar, hinoki, vetiver, oakmoss with no sweetening mitigation whatsoever; on my own skin it makes me smell like the very worst kind of Neanderthal Idiot and pick up an Uzi myself and go a bit postal: it is a wrongness I can’t exaggerate in words.. I truly do hate it. So does D.

And yet. I have had two distinct experiences where women smelled so beguiling in Hywl that it almost derailed my senses and I had to do total double takes. This was quite a big lesson for me. The film was perfectly right to mock gender politics – they had become fascistic and oppressive and something was obviously going to give – but I still deeply believe that in perfume terms, though I probably sound like a broken record, bridging the so-called divide between the can sometimes lead to beauteous results.

The first experience of Hywl-On-A-Laday was with my friend Sarah, a British entrepreneur from Liverpool who I have become closer to this year: wild and hilarious and a bit on the neurodivergent tip like me – oh god, I sound like someone satirizing oversensitive asparagus tips like myself in ‘One Battle’ last night – but it is true; we both get oversaturated very quickly psychically in social situations so will just say after a couple of hours together, ok that was great, I am going back now – without drawing it all out for the sake of politesse and we both love that fact; on one memorable occasion singing Prince songs for two hours in a cheap Italian restaurant, whole albums all the way through, to the point of considering even doing a performing tribute band called Bendy and Risa – then saying right, let’s go . Her Hwyl gave her a gorgeous, sultry and unplaceable edge that both accentuated and counteracted her powerful personality. I kept inhaling.

As I did with a young translator I met for the first time either this year, was it or last …recently, anyway – now when was it, kin ell, am I disintegrating ? – I have no idea (time has become meaningless with all the painkillers and and god knows what else…, operations, so much time alone sometimes I just feel that I am going into a twilight zone and actually want to just get back to work and have a more stringent lifestyle if my shite skeletal system will let me ; to get on a more even keel.

Anyway, we met the lovely Helen at a local institution we call ‘The Brown Bar’ down at Kitakamakura station because of its nicotine stained walls and smeary atmosphere though it is actually called – Wabisuke – a slightly cold and unwelcoming, but very bohemian and conducive place we nevertheless sometimes go to because it has great ambience, music and lighting for those local drinkers who like a bit of tango or jazz and to chat quietly and drink themselves to death in the low lights.

I am always slightly nervous in such situations with newcomers. One thing that has re-emerged as an obvious things from this year is d and i’s great difference in social interactions. As I write this, he is at a new writer’s workshop he has organized for poets just down the road at our friend Simon’s – a journalist and poet from New Zealand. The congregated are going to read poetry, give feedback; walk around the haunted lake and write on spec. I am delighted they are doing it but I could never – I would feel so squeamish though I might meet up for a drink with some of them at the local izakaya one minute from here a bit later in the evening once I have finished writing this. Physically I just couldn’t do it right now, anyway (I feel this knee replacement has done something to my whole skeleton, so out of balance I feel like like a de-backboned python ) nor mentally – I like my interactions one on one. D, as I am sure I have written before, is a social butterfly with no hang ups in that regard and will meet anyone. He simply doesn’t have my (osteo) porosity. He likes new people.

Which is how we ended up spending one evening with a lovely English girl from Kendall – I knew she was from there because my previous partner, a certain Nick Chapman I was with for six months at Cambridge many many moons ago – had exactly the same mint cake burr specific to that area in the north. She was very cool, and had just released her first English translation of a novel by Izumi Suzuki, ‘Set My Heart On Fire’, a nihilistic exploration of a woman in the 1970’s Yokohama groupie scene I had happened to have already read a review of in The Japan Times the day before; I envied her young confidence and unforced charm; we kind of hit it off.

Her perfume though: I could never have personally identified it as Hywl; I was just so transfixed by the atmosphere she was giving off I eventually had to ask her. Like a picture with the ideal frame, it set her off perfectly; self-containing her inner confidence, a girl who had recently spent months just ‘being’ in Chile because she liked all the space and the mountains of Santiago and the Atacama desert and thought she would pick up another language while she was at it, and she had a distance about her – a quiet magnetism- that the perfume brought out succinctly. The chypricity of Hywl on her skin – honestly fascinating- was set at precisely the right volume – and brought out a backdrop of intelligence and ‘you will never know me unless I let you’.

I suppose I could do with trying to be more subtle myself in this Helenish way . People might have been coughing on the bus with my ambry spiceness last night (they actually were). Sorry but I couldn’t help it and am going to wear the same combo tonight. I very carefully took my paces out in the rain last night (I can walk without a stick when I want to impress friends with my progress), but I was loving the vibe my own unidentifiable sillage was giving off – certainly not immediately categorizable at any rate (unlike the characters in that film last night, who were either machine gun toting pregnant revolutionaries or repellent smelling white supremacists – Leo himself clearly stinking in his filthy plaid dressing gown and greasy hair – there was no subtlety in that film overall whatsoever and it eventually grated the goat. Which I know is probably precisely the point intended. Sometimes satire needs to paint the picture in very broad strokes so that the audience at large – they are hoping to fill out the multiplexes and teach them a lesson – can ‘get it’. To understand the message (that We Are Living In Dangerous Times, Baby – oh really? I hadn’t noticed. ). And it was funny: the action packed, brilliantly choreographed second of the third hours having me on the edge of my seat thinking wow this is like 70’s Scorcese – so beautifully filmed and propulsive. Quite entertaining. Still, the ending was, for me at least, too moronically basic. Which is also how I don’t want perfume to be. I need complexity. I need resonance, style, subversion even – Hywl had that,on both of the women described above. Why not put a few intuitively felt plot twists into your own life story to escape the obvious and boring we are so surrounded with on a daily basis, wear what is not expected; not resorting to what is typical and prescribed and deathly dull. No: give me something to think about. Immerse me in ambiguity.