The Black Narcissus

Just got home.

The smell is beautiful.

Tuesday was raining and cold. I contentedly went through the motions. Today was a bright blue sky, blissful sun – but that didn’t stop someone from jumping onto the rail tracks at Ofuna station.

Fortunately I was at the other end of the platform, so didn’t see the moment of impact – as you can see from the photograph above, though, they hit the front of the train pretty hard – but the sound of the emergency alarm was unbearably loud and I decided to go into the station to wait for the inevitably delayed train in an area I could sit down.

I feel guilty taking the photo. But it was impulsive. However, having witnessed this before (a colleague was stuck on a train yesterday for two hours following yet another terrible ‘accident’ – most of the time it is suicide, even if the drunken do sometimes also fall onto the tracks); last Thursday night I was also unable to get home for a long time because of yet another jinshinjiko on the same line – what the hell is happening, it feels like a contagion), I did not want to see the unfortunate individual in any shape or form, and yet I contradict myself immediately by having taken a quick of the smashed bumper; a prurient, morbid curiosity taking over, a gaijin, salaryman disgusting paparazzo.

I sat in an area above the tracks, facing away from the window, the area in question ( my heart is beating very fast writing this). But it was obvious, a stretcher being laid out and paramedics, police, the Kamakura fire service department rushing anxiously down the stairs on both sides (and I glimpsed behind me I could see various rail staff peering in horror under a specific part of the train – ironically a ‘holiday train’ full of happy vacationers on the way to the coast in Izu, frozen in place for a dreadful hour); I knew it was where I would be forced to take a look ( did I actually want to?) – but I couldn’t move.

It happened. And it was horrifying. Impressive in the extreme in the professional efficiency – at least twelve professionals surrounding what was left on the stretcher with portable blue curtains to prevent anyone seeing anything up close – several passengers were actually filming – but still, with the beautiful, blinding sunlight pouring in through the glass windier of that part of the station, I was deeply struck by the terrible contrast between the sheer beauty of the autumnal day and the fact that a depressed, desperate individual had just decided that now was the time to actually jump.

The proximity to a just killed soul as the makeshift memorial shifted past me was knife like in its utter sadness ; I then realized over the tannoy – I don’t know how many minutes it was – that a train in the direction I was going – I was already an hour late for a meeting – was leaving from another platform.

Getting to work, and failing to respond to the light laughter; seeing the medical truck outside of the main building, employees going in and out to have chest x-rays for the compulsory health check (my god writing this as I walk on my phone I have just realized that I am walking past almost the exact place that it happened), I realized once again that the sadomasochistic work culture of Japan is precisely what leads to this carnage in the first place.

If I were to follow the regulations, which I will not – I will have checks privately if and when I need to – I would not be allowed to consume anything tonight, nor tomorrow morning or afternoon until 2:45pm, even though I have three morning classes. This, to my logical mind, is quite cruel; nonsensical. One colleague tonight was starving himself today and tomorrow to ‘lose weight’ – I will be eating my oatmeal, nuts and bananas as scheduled – – what: am I supposed to just strive through the day, starving, lightheaded ( it always used to be first thing in the morning), to gambaru – do my best, exert samurai self control over my body and mind only to be weighed, injected , examined, tested, syringed, and then grab something to eat before proceeding towards my evening classes ?

The problem is that I have too much self respect. To me, scheduling a mandatory medical check up like this is actually irresponsible. And it brings out the absolute worst, self sacrificing instincts of the population as a whole – always keen to demonstrate to others a spirit of perseverance and self denial; fortitude; selflessness.

Which are laudable traits; there is much to admire (such as the discretion, tact, professionalism and dignified demeanour with which all the government services worked quickly together to get things moving again – it seems so callous: but they have to – while remaining respectful to the very recently deceased person who was still alive as I was eating my lunch on the platform just forty five minutes before.

I couldn’t stop myself, this evening, from talking about all of this with some students who I knew to be sensitive and inquisitive enough to be able to handle it. Because I want them to think about all of this; maybe as young people they can do something about it in the future. Because it is already a known fact that in Japan, after a gruelling and punishing summer ‘break’ in which they in truth don’t really have a single day off, unlike the new pencil nervousness of a British September when you go back to school alienated but refreshed, here they are often so tired they just can’t face anymore, and so hurl themselves tragically in front of a high speed, passing train.

Or it could instead be an exhausted company employee, drained and depleted from years without a proper holiday, doing their best, but one sunny day in October, too tired and confused and deeply sad to even think straight , just deciding that – now is the moment

I can’t think of a more perfect Autumn perfume. At least when it is worn by D.

On me, the slightly pungent extract of pu’er leaves, a fermented Chinese tea from Yunnan province, blended with notable cedar, cypress, incense, patchouli and vetiver), comes across a little odd; clammy even, in the perfume’s opening section. On D, though, it smells suitable right away, morphing quickly into a deliciously warm, sandalwood- like skin scent with presence : two small sprays and you are circumscribed with a lovely, natural aura.

He came to rescue me after work one evening a couple of weeks ago when I had stupidly mislocated my wallet and couldn’t get home; as we walked alongside each other down the pink- night lanterned streets of Hiratsuka, I recognized the scent ;the sillage surrounding his person sensual; fine; quietly captivating.

Yesterday I suggested this perfume again (we have a 10 ml sample bottle but it is going down quick) for an event of a friend celebrating the tenth anniversary of the founding of her business at a restaurant down on the Zushi seafront; D was wearing a vintage silk kimono for a piece in which he would be spinning and unravelling (in the dressing room he was wrapped up in bunting and o-mikuji paper) to the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows.

Long after the party had progressed to the beach and we all sat and watched the sunset, talking for a long while before walking back to Zushi station, the scent, now more founded and quietly saturated, had fused beautifully with his body – more a natural exudation than outer embellishment.

Simple (some will say simplistic), Pu’Er tea is a smooth, linear, woody, tea-accented aromatic with few extraneous elements. It has a glow : subtle, but enwrapping; deep.



We have been blessed with the ginger lily this year. Planted a decade ago, it first came to life in 2021 with one flower; this year it has sprung back, tree like, with three thick stems, and heads of flowers that wilt and bloom, wilt and bloom endlessly, depending on sun and rain conditions, throughout the summer.

With a second spell of warm, fecund weather (Autumn in Japan is really so gorgeous, you should come), the third head has opened, and smells so very lovely. Though I nearly just put my face into a spider, smelling it close, I am thrilled that it is still going.

Well that was quick.

The 45 day prime minister, Liz Truss, has resigned.

While I don’t doubt that a great deal of burn-the-witch sexism lies at the base of the gleeful levels of derision, vitriol and scorn being levelled left right and centre at this very clearly incompetent politician floundering in an extraordinarily difficult job position ; and I do genuinely, at the human level, feel a bit sorry for someone who has spent a life clawing their way up to the top through sheer cut throat ambition, just like Boris; yet is now no more than an embarrassing footnote in British history, a humiliating butt of the joke that she will probably have to spend the rest of her life living down ( it really has been totally shambolic) : despite this small modicum of sympathy I have for her mortifying series of failures and rapid exit at the personal level, she is a stupid cow.

At the heart of people like this – if she even has one – is a complete lack of empathy for the ordinary person. She couldn’t really give a shit if old people are dying in their homes of hyperthermia because they can’t afford the heating, or if kids in the north, are malnourished and heading for a cruelly deprived life of crime and real poverty ; the main priority being- of course !- to give more money to the rich in tax cuts that would eventually, hypothetically, bloat their bank accounts sufficiently to trickle down to the needy and impoverished, like dribbles of slow, dark urine through the urethra, from a benign prostatic hyperplasia suffer’s malfunctioning bladder.

I am no economist. But the ill-thought out, disastrously impetuous ‘budget’ that escalated Truss and Kwarteng’s dizzying helter skelter into the latrines of yesterday, was so obviously wrong – not just morally, but fiscally: zombie Reaganomics to stimulate ‘growth’, cutting off revenue when it was vital to pay for a mass spending spree to sustain a nation, that you had to wonder if, despite her dreary snapdragon demeanour, this prime minister was actually off her rocker —- totally out of touch with immediate reality.

God knows which spitting image puppet will next be in charge. But I do hope it will be someone with not only experience and common sense (dream on, Neil!). but also a wide-scope vision of society at large, not just for the lords, whips, magnates and CEOs supping on Glenmorangie in their hunting galleries, but for hardworking ordinary people trying to make a living, not just eking out a miserable existence in a world of endless exploitation with no forseeable hope for the future. A politician who is in it for the people, not just themselves. A leader. Someone decent. Who thinks of the country as a whole.

For while detailed knowledge of policy, media savvy, sharp geopolitical awareness, and control of the coffers are obviously vital attributes for a prime minister to survive (it really is an unenviable job);; an eye on the polls (9%!) and the vultures in parliament constantly bloodthirsting after your position and power essential; the state as a plaything of sixty million souls with which to play and recklessly try out ‘new ideas’, no matter the cruel havoc you may wreak; the most important attribute a leader of a country should have, ultimately — surely — is just a conscience.

I went to my treasure den today and repaired to a convenience store to drink rooibos and calm the heart.

Planning to buy something else, I then saw an as yet unnoticed 15ml, boxed parfum of the extravagantly understated beauty that is Farouche by Nina Ricci.

The sticker on the outer cellophane states that it had never been opened ; carefully opening the top envelope of gilded paper, within there seemed to be a heartstopping red velvet box.

This is a scent I only have very low reserves of as I wore a lot last year; it suited the pre ‘post-pandemic’s solitude, or days walking around local temples and shrines.

I gave a similarly paper-embalmed vintage Ricci – in pale lemon yellow : L’Air Du Temps – to my aunt, 85, who has worn that perfume for years ( alternating with Diorissimo). She is frailer now – still elegant – perhaps why she was so thrilled to receive something this delicate. Like me, though I wanted to know how it smelled at this summer’s party at my parents’ house, she wanted to keep it as it was. Too pristine to tear open.

Chloe is not a brand that really speaks to me. Ultrafeminine, very floaty but proper, the house specializes in high end women’s Parisian pret a porter and matching modern fragrances that tend to be at the primmer end of the scale.

The eponymous eau de parfum from 2008 which re-launched the brand into the public consciousness, was hugely successful and is a best seller in Japan to this day. Fresh, brash, chemical roses and freesia, it remains one of my ultimate betes noires, a scent that can literally anger me when I come into contact with it (this happened recently at a herbal apothecary : an assistant had sprayed on too much (one spray) and for me, it ruined the natural ambience).

The recent eau naturelle of Chloe from last year was interesting though, in the way it proposed a new interpretation of the original theme with lighter, clearer, purportedly ‘all natural’ ingredients ; it was like meeting someone you think you used to know but are not quite sure. I much preferred this greener, more delicate take, even if the notes do eventually coalesce into a recognizable Chloe.

The Atelier Des Fleurs collection, light, sheer, is in a similar vein. Excepting the curious aberration of the very heart-on -her-sleeves femme fatale that was ‘Chloe Narcisse from 1992’ – cloying and sweet, a perfume that could give divas like Ungaro Senso and Moschino Moschino! a run for their money, Chloe almost always goes for transparency and bite; a ‘chic clean’ to go with the veiled beige pussybows, and these flowers are no exception. Narcissus Poeticus, a name I love for obvious reasons, is a shiny bright bubblebath of ‘ethically sourced’ French narcissus; powdered, soapy – uplifting and easy, without the obvious indolic facets of this troubling, narcotic bloom :I could happily have this one on standby for perfumed levity.

Ylang Cananga I found a tad sickly and synthetic despite the natural claims : using ylang ylang oil from the Madagascan island of Nosy Be, there is something too Chloeish about this one that I can’t quite ride with, even though I am usually drawn to ylang ylang flowers theoretically .

Chloe Iris, using a special Moroccan iris from the Atlas Mountains, combined with violet, sandalwood/cedar and musk ambrette, is one of those ‘not quite there’ perfumes – it feels almost unfinished – but I think that is probably why I like it. The Iris top note is gorgeous; just the cool, papery crushed orris bulbs you were hoping for; as this fades, a dry, sullen wood musk takes over with echoes of Feminite du Bois ; androgynous, a little empty ; you are left with the feeling that there could have, and possibly should have been more, but as so many perfumes these days feel so overfinished, , packed to the rafters with no breathing space, it is quite nice, for a change, to just have a private, daylight, churlish and moody natural iris to which you can nuzzle, switch off to — —and drift.

– guest post by d

N had his midweek encounter with a preying mantis and so we’ve been a little in awe and terror of them; with their ominous martial prowess and camouflaging tendencies, they are indeed a formidable insect. And researching them this evening threw up all kind of magical and petallic ingenuity. Witness: the orchid mantis

I wore a unnameable (as yet unreleased) scent today; a sweet masculine tobacco that was moderately pleasing – a little too sweet and almondy to my nose but certainly interesting.

Sitting in the launderette in Ofuna after a delicious Indian/Nepali meal – the boss is away in Nepal right now and the staff have blossomed in terms of gregariousness and personality which led to an entirely different experience of the restaurant; perhaps less efficient but rather more rounded – I rather like the dry down because the sweet marzipan aspect has disappeared and a calm has manifested itself

Speaking of which, observe the mantis, majestic and delicate (yet ominous) careening over the lake on top of a turtle or a frog

I am often baffled in Japan by the extreme reactions provoked by the visitation of insects. A cockroach appearing somewhere can render grown men into quivering ninnies: a hornet mass hysteria (mind you, these can kill ; every year a number of people do die from the stings).

Even a tiny winged fly entering the classroom is a gateway to mayhem, though – much to my irritation. I am simply not bothered by them; a spider, providing it hides away somewhere, I can live with. Cicadas whirring towards me like clockwork kamikazes do make me scream, I will confess, but I like hearing them whizzing in the trees.

We are all different in our levels of entomological acceptance ; I have rescued giant stag beetles, mean no harm to them generally even if the swatting of mosquitoes happens almost unconsciously – when they draw blood I draw the line- but my personal phobia is most definitely the praying mantis.

Much as I understand some people’s fascination with them, these green, swivel-headed, limb articulated leaf gleaming monstrosities viscerally repulse me at the deepest level ; once in our old house there was one on the washing line grinning down at me like an alien from a 50’s b-movie and I was screeching in octaves I didn’t even know I had inside me; firing gallons of water from the garden hose pipe did nothing to deter the creature : ( in my mind ) it slowly advanced towards me ; I had to run, ashamed, shrieking and undignified in immediate earshot of the neighbors.

On Wednesday, I had just finished writing the previous post on The Black Narcissus when THIS appeared out of nowhere a few feet away in our upstairs hallway.

I lie. We had seen it a few days before crawling slowly on the window downstairs and I had shouted for Duncan to come a witness the horror – not ever expecting that it would enter within.

When I saw it my heart stopped.

I went all clammy and I couldn’t move. Though slow balletic, graceful, curious (etc etc), its presence – and it did feel very present, imbuing the air around it with its obvious personality – was unacceptable to me; yet I could also find no viable reason to kill it. It was just doing its thing.

BUT NOT IN MY SPACE.

And I had to get past it in order to go downstairs and get in thr shower before work. But this was impossible. Because if it flew at me – and they do fly / I might literally die of a heart attack.

I was frozen.

Naturally, when I eventually came somewhat to my senses I called up d, who very serendipitously happened to just be on his lunch break.

At first, he probably thought it was some random heavy breather, as I couldn’t exactly speak.

Bar me throwing heavy objects at it to dislodge, we then discussed it and the only option seemed to be to somehow trap it.

But, obviously, doing that involves approaching, which wasn’t something that I felt I could do.

However, this creep wasn’t going anywhere.

In fact it seemed quite happy where it was, in its natural praying position (UGH !!!!! So repellent !!!’ ‘’’’ :::: would any of you have felt similarly ?)

In the end, after hanging up and what felt like an endless passage of time, I finally plucked up the courage to seek out a plant pot with breathing holes on the balcony, and heroically managed to entrap it within in one fell swoop that also involved frenetically piling books on top so there was no escape until d could come home hours later and hurl the lot from the window (he sent me a message, later, saying it had been ‘feisty’ and ‘rattling around’ inside, making me blanch at my work desk with a profound quease).

It only occurred to me later in the evening, on my way home, that the females of the Mantodea species are ‘semi-cannibalistic’, devouring their sex partners after the act is done (as you do), and that we had just had our bizarro carnavsl Papaya: Love Goddess Of The Cannibals on Saturday,; it was almost as if we had conjured it up.

Strange as that might sound, this has actually happened before ( literally; with snakes, raccoons and once with an owl, which you NEVER see in this area but which soared up before me one night after d had performed with some owl-themed material : I was startled beyond measure as its vast white and grey wings swooped up into the night …)

Sometimes you don’t know what you are getting yourself into.

There is a lot to a name.

And Viking, buoyed up by the current popularity for roaring marauders in pelts torching villages and carrying off wriggling maidens in blood and axe epics such as the recent Northman by Robert Eggers, or by the matted haired musclebeards in the ragingly successful TV series The Vikings, is presumably meant, by image alone, to evoke unheard of levels of masculine potency. Women will begin screaming, or swooning, on initial contact : caves of babies will be born forthwith.

According to a 2014 British YouGov survey, roughly a third of the UK male population considered themselves to have descended from the Vikings (I can imagine it would be even higher now), while a quarter of women make the same assumption (the University of Bristol estimates the reality to be closer to about 6%, demonstrating the pull the iconic tropes of this defunct culture have on the popular imagination).

I have never personally done a DNA test, but as a white Briton it would intrigue me, at some point, just out of curiosity, to eventually do so. Mostly a historical whirl of Germanic, French, Viking, Angle, Scandinavian, Roman in terms of ethnic ancestry, but depending on which region of Britain your forefathers settled in (the further south you go the less the likelihood), it would be interesting, in some ways, for me to find out the ancestral breakdown in my own cell structure.

Although undoubtedly partially Viking myself, purely through geographical coincidence – the genepool possibly somewhere hidden in my mitochondria, emerging in the gingerish strains of my beardhair if I let it run out like enough (in the green of my eyes?) unlike many – especially on the far right; those that feel terminally emasculated and are yearning for far more testosteroned times when your vigorous might could be proved by the sword and your seed ; those who re-enact battleground slaughters in costumes bought on Amazon or storm into government buildings baying like stags

—I personally have no atavistic or instinctual pull towards Viking culture whatsoever.

In fact I feel quite the opposite – and always have. Maybe Burning Bush has some ancient link to piracy and pillaging seafarers and fiery wicks of twisted moss, but I personally can’t stand anything – particularly on the aesthetic level – that features dragon boats, hoary breath, boar carcasses turning slowly on the spit as women with long crimped trellises sew wool and the Norse gods are invoked with vein-busting sword bellowing amidst miserable freezing cold waves spewing onto jagged rocks; D is even worse. All of it just evokes feelings of the purest anathema.

(With the global rise in ethnocentrism, and the sense that everything is falling apart into chaos, it is easy to understand why many people, no matter their ‘race’, feel a deep desire to retrace their origins and roots in order to capture a feeling of belonging to something – a tribe, a clan,


– I just don’t personally share that longing. )

My extreme, instinctive aversion to anything of this nature – Lord Of The Rings, anything of the Dungeons And Dragons pixies and faeries genre notwithstanding, all of it – earlier in the summer, on the plane back home in August, we did valiantly attempt (though we knew, ultimately, it would be completely in vain), to watch Viking revenge drama The Northman – but mainly to see my Icelandic hero Bjork as the soothsayer:

bye Nicole!

Willem Dafoe, eating the scenery left right and centre, was even more indigestible

However, by far the most serious problem from the discerning cinemagoer’s point of view, was the casting of Stockholm Hunk Alexander Skarsgard – presumably chosen for his rock hard abs, good looks, and Conan The Barbarian Schwarzeneggerisms – who was truly overegging the lead role of arch-avenger Amleth (supposedly a prototype of Hamlet);

For the forty or so painful and mirthful minutes we endured before pressing abort, all this actor, with his very limited expressions, could do (a permanently furrowed brow and ‘intense’ stare – I have seen stegosauruses in the Jurassic Park series display more personality) was roar, slay, flex the triceps and kill, then, do it all over again

…there he goes again

…. and again …..

He finally takes a bath!

Yes. I would definitely nominate Skarsgard as lead contender for a Worst Actor Razzie; with him in every scene the film was intolerable, we were laughing in our plane seats at its profound insufferability, although it must be said that it was received rapturously by a lot of film critics for the detailed representations of daily Viking life and the general lightning-forked melodrama it impaled, so if you yourself are in the right mood for a dark and brooding revenge flick which features huge levels of ultrarealistic violence, wherein comeuppance is ruthlessly enacted whenever and wherever it can be, you should definitely give this a whirl (Richard Brody of The New Yorker hit the nail on the head with the belittling summary of his headline: ‘The Northman’: Just A Bunch Of Research And Gore’, callously dismissing its ‘thudding banalities’,) though it seems that he was definitely in the critical minority – most people have been apparently just swept away in its bloodcurdling passions and antlers dripping in harpooned intestines; some of my friends also liked it…

GOD KNOWS WHY THOUGH.

Anyway, though by Odin, Allfather of the Aesir – – – – – FFS!!!!

What about the perfume review, I hear you beat your iron breastplates in fury: does Creed’s Viking, in fact, capture any of this meatly brutality; does it reek of a thousand armpits, of bodies sweating endlessly in bearskins for weeks on end, of rotting teeth putrid with unpicked flesh?

It does not.

As I sheepishly approached the perfume counter towards this one, eye rolling heavily in advance anticipation of a nuclear strength synthetic woody, I was quite pleasantly surprised to find that instead of what I expected to be a rival to Sauvage in the panty-dropper ‘performance dominance’ sector, slaying writhing, hotbreathing wenches in its stead, what I smelled, in fact, was a crisply and alluringly constructed orchestral ginger.

Fresh. Zesty. Kind of delightful. Affirming. Light. While ginger – one of my favourite smells and flavours in the world – is not listed as an ingredient in Viking Cologne (an airier edition of the 2017 edp), the spiced citric woosh of the juice (lots of mandarin, bergamot, pink pepper, allspice and nutmeg with a lightly fougerish base (lavender, geranium, olibanum, sandalwood, patchouli etc with a hint of sage) to my nose, added up to an overall ginger thematic; brisk and uplifting, male-tilting but could be worn by anyone, Viking glowed quite nicely on the back of my hand for a whole day as I walked the streets of Birmingham. I even briefly considered this as a possible ‘me scent’ (I sometimes wear Old Spice), until the modern masculinity went a bit too potent in the base – not enough to conjure tongue-lolling heads on poles – but still, perhaps a little too much synthetic cedar….

Nevertheless, I was glad to have my (what feel to me innate) prejudices duped. The Vikings, although probably not the most peaceful bunch of folks, surely had a lot more going for them than their very cliched, Hollywood onscreen representations would seem to suggest (and apparently there is no evidence whatsoever that they even had any horned helmets in the first place – this was merely a costume choice for a diva singing in an opera by Wagner – The Ring Of The Nibelung at a German 1876 theatre premiere). It was nice for me therefore, in a way, to discover that the Viking’s namesake perfume was a fine spice, with touches of old school tropes but not enough to be rendered duddy, you might say even delicate. A very non-marauding, and pleasingly rendered, spruced; trim; and almost gentlemanly counter-stereotype.