The Black Narcissus

” The door opened without warning.

The light from the hall chandelier accented his finely tailored suit.

‘Pardon me’.

His blue eyes were set deep in a chiseled face.

‘But we seem to have been given the same hotel suite.’

He held out a room key in his open palm.

‘Unfortunately.’

His expression recovered into a warm smile.

‘I’m afraid it’s a mistake’.

The suit has lucked out. He has opened the door onto a beautiful woman mid-pose, apparently about to stonk off, unnominated, to the Golden Globes.

With Weinsteinian wiles, The Chisel senses the sinuously spiced Gucci No 3 floating on the air before he realizes that the visuals before him match up to the advertising.

What will happen next?

Will she flamenco towards him ?

Will he step back, or inside ?

Will they tryst?

Looks like he closed the door behind him after all. They Mills & Booned all through the night, the arched tan of his muscular back; the toned curves of her La Perla.

By dawn they were married; they strolled the beach, still in their regalia, tufts of Gucci 3 enfoldened in his chin cleft.

But would a generic 80’s aldehyde/chypre/ aromatic by Firmenich (she didn’t even know who had authored the fragrance ! and would not find out until the age of 95, Alexandre long having passed in a terrible St Tropez accident involving seven water gliders and a stray catamaran, his beautiful body churned through foaming motors when sleuthing Fragrantica’ one day at her assisted living facility in San Marino that the perfumer of her all time favourite was Alberto Morillas)— —would this crisp, fresh sportive patchouli a la mousse de chene- sexy, no doubt, but did it really say anything, ultimately be enough to sustain his interest for an entire lifetime ?

“He had never been late before.

Could it be he was not coming?

She felt the beginning of panic tighten in her stomach.

Maybe something had happened to him? The road was narrow.

With an effort she forced the thought out of her mind.

Here I am, a grown woman, acting like an adolescent school girl.

‘It’s silly,’ she told herself.

But she knew she couldn’t stop “.

*

Right from the start when we look at this retrogressive dribble from the mid-80’swe realize that Gucci No 3, a perfume I had never even heard of until we found a pristine perfect bottle of edt in a Kamakura antique shop by the rail tracks (the very well to do, tastefully soigneed Japanese owner turns a blind eye when I smell test something – it probably also didn’t hurt that d was buying a framed etching at the time ) —- is going to lack a certain… true grit and definability.

It is not Fendi. It is not L’Arte. It is not Scherrer, Farouche, Givenchy III or any other of the self-contained chypres that couldn’t really be anything other than what they are – but it still smelled magnificent from the bottle and there was no way I was going home without it ( I have already used up about a fifth).

I suppose I am the kind of perfumophile who knows everything in one sniff. Of there can be surprises in the unfolding of a scentstory, notes and accords you might not have anticipated, but generally with one full bodied inhalation I can give a straightforward yes or no.

Gucci No 3, despite its lack of clear messaging, was a spontaneous yes. I felt the full power of a classically mossed patchouli rose chypre, but also a stringently fresh opening of very white marbled soap aldehydes, green leaves and coriander over luminous narcissus. I thought of D’s mother Daphne straight away, who would be all over this in a jiffy ; I also thought ooh this is one I reckon I can really pull off. The aldehydic luminosity at the beginning is very bright laundered sun ; new white shirt / blouse (it is very androgynous); very soapy and verdant until the end when it becomes a bit Ungaro Diva and I think ok, Daphne – you need this after all.

*

This time last year, D’s brother’s family came for a three week trip in Japan.

Andrew and Louise had been before on their honeymoon, but this was the first time bringing their four kids, who were wide-eyed with excited curiosity at every turn. They did a full tour, but we met up in Tokyo, for a fantastic karaoke session in Yokohama, took them around Kamakura, and a big party at our house with some Japanese and foreign friends and neighbours – in the end there were about thirty people going up and down the stairs and meandering about on a very hot August evening but it was a memorable night. Our Japanese mother, Mrs Mitomi sat in the middle of the tatami mat in our bedroom with red wine surrounded by bright-eyed adolescents as they spun records by Sun Ra, Primal Scream, Tyler The Creator and Echo & The Bunnymen – with all the fairy lights we had strung everywhere and the guests bemused by our raggedy collection of objets and abnormal exotica, it felt like some real psychedelic 60’s bohemiana – exactly as we hoped it would.

The kids ate all pretty scenthused, with their own collections I have gone through when we have stayed at their big thatched barn in the Norfolk countryside. Daphne, a true perfume lover, has been a great influence in this regard – they love her love of deep, chypric spiced patchouli roses – the Greek Cypriot side of their lineage coming through ( last time we met D’s parents at Norwich she was as glamorous as Maria Callas with scentage to boot (probably a layering of Montale Aoud Flowers and Santa Maria Novella Patchouli – two holy grails) – and when I told the young visitors that they could each take something home from my collection (with the exception of my huge vintage Shalimar, Vol De Nuit and L’Heure Bleue, nothing was off the table in my Mad Uncle Moment which had me clutching and biting at my black pearls in nervous anticipation once I had said it) – they loved the challenge and went off for a competitive sniffing contest laced with a little sibling competitive rivalry.

I also presented things I thought they’d like.

“It’s okay, “, Ruby, the youngest would say; or “it’s quite nice….. but it’s not the one”.

The boys were the easiest.

Charlie, the second son and by far the most mischievous and humorous, went pretty immediately for my first or second suggestion, a bottle of Escentric Molecules 01 Iris? won over by the idea that the girls would definitely go for something modern and enigmatic as long as he didn’t pull the trigger too often. I warned him that this kind of perfume can quickly fill up a whole building : it is designed to shift and shape around you in varying angles; there one minute; gone the next; coming back round again through the garden and the back door before you realize it but this only made him want it even more.

“Yeah I really like this”.

It became the inescapable backtrack to the rest of the holiday.

I was impressed by Edward’s surety.

” This is quite nice” he said, proffering Argentinian brand Frassai’s A Fuego Lento – a sambac jasmine suede I was partial to (ouch!) even if ultimately the base wasn’t 100% right on me. I was impressed by the fact that none of them were bothered by masculine / feminine cliches and just went for what they like : this is very floral – if gentle – and apparently his girlfriend loves it on him -so I chalked this up as another success.

The girls were far more selective and really took their time. All the kids kept saying “oh wow I love this it smells like nanny Daphne (Parure, Karl Lagerfeld, Cerruti, – even though she hasn’t work any of these but it is the patchouli – with musks and mosses and spices they are identifying and now have a natural affinity with). When Edward came back to stay with his rugby mates six months later he intuitively gravitated towards the stunning bottle of Guy Laroche ‘J’Ai Ose exclaiming ” wow what beautiful smell ” totally unselfconsciously and not realizing that it is a dead ringer for Yves Saint Laurent Opium – a Daphne classic.

Both girls were drawn to the Daphne-esque in the collection, which is why Olivia eventually went for Shiseido Koto – a watery narcissus galbanum chypre not dissimilar to the Gucci no 3 – perhaps just a little more limpid; she also fell in love with the most perfect Lanvin Arpege little extrait that d had given me ; I hesitated, but then realized that Arpege is bound to reappear at some flea market or other, and the mere idea of such a fairy like girl, so otherworldly at times, always chic, wearing the gorgeous Lanvin at her new job in architecture in exquisite contrast to so many of the vulgar perfumes inevitably surrounding her made me happily close the shiny black bottle in the palm of her hand.

Meanwhile, the party was getting raucous; I couldn’t even get up or down the stairs to see what was going on. Ruby, still on a quiet, determined mission in her librarian glasses to find the perfect perfume, would take up drinks to people and report back on proceedings, who had food and who still hadn’t ( a few too many bottles of prosecco had been consumed at this point and D’s Greek platters were getting later and later – hilariously chaotic).

The youngest and perhaps most thoughtful of the children was still deciding on her options, whittling them down to a few choices she would then present to me as possibilities.

Not long before they all had to leave – it had been a really great evening, they really got to see where and how we live and interact with ‘the locals’; I did an impromptu piano / singing concert upstairs – just like you would decades ago with extended family members at Christmas parties – Ruby had finally made her choice.

” I think I would like this one” she said.

It was a Nina Ricci L’Air Du Temps; unusually perfect ( the most perfect I have ever smelled, very clove/carnationy airy and alive with vivacious particles of light – amazing given that it is a spray, in a dove- encrusted white Bakelite bottle that d had found for me somewhere), impossible for me to wear – the animal femaleness of the final notes just do not smell right on me – but I did love sometimes smelling it.

But on little Ruby? My goodness. Celestial perfection. Encircling the air around her like the olive branched birds, she smelled like an actual angel. She happily put the perfume in her bag, we all hugged goodbye, and d took them down past all the temples on the hill and the station – and back to the place they were staying in Kamakura.

*

What struck me as so wonderful about all of this, aside from getting to know each other a lot better – often we only have fleeting, flying visits to family and friends in the UK out of necessity – was the combination of individual taste, inclination and preference when it came to fragrance – I did give a few pointers, some of them summarily dismissed, which impressed me – but also the way in which as children we are influenced – sometimes unconsciously – by the smells and the perfumes around us. They become comforting ( probably why I am so drawn to the classical floral aldehydics like Nina), my mother’s choice. D’s nieces and nephews have grown up with the scent of chypres – Daphne’s ultimate is Magie Noire – they are now part of their DNA.

They can also – move away from the horrendous cliches of the times when some of these masterpieces were released; recontextualize them into something more interesting; no corny crap about chiselled chins and mistakenly chancing upon a ridiculous frozen woman frozen in a hotel room or fretting over her boyfriend being a few minutes late as though she had no agency of her own. Edward smells splendid in his South East Asian jasmine; Charlie in his powdered but super suave iris; Olivia in her mossed calming beauty; Ruby in her angelic carnations.

As for Gucci III, I also decontextualize it completely and am not planning on waiting around in some hotel room for Mr Lantern Jaw to come barging in and ravage me in my ruffles. I do really like it, actually- and it can be found quite cheaply – Hanamini you might want to give it a try as a daily green : while it might lack that definite je ne sais quoi – that anonymity in itself can also make it rather unplaceable – in itself a nostalgic, but not too obvious, pleasing choice. At the end, though – and I knew this the second I smelled it – this perfume is destined for one person only.

I let Duncan smell it as the lady was wrapping up his picture.

“Who do you think would love this?”

He didn’t need to say anything.

Daphne, this one’s for you.

It is strange how scent travels through time and place. How it reconnects you, spatially, with other locations.

I brought home with me- even though I wasn’t trying to.

But everything I have with me is impregnated with incense. I washed my bags and clothes several times prior to hospitalization in order to ‘fit in’ (as if that was ever going to happen). But books smell old papery and agar/benzoin; my underwear umistakeably Kamakura; the weirdest and most unexpected being a bottle of mineral water which not only smelled of incense when I took it from the fridge, but also tasted of it. Cool camphor and patchouli; coldly austere; holy water :creepily delicious

The nurses all smell uniformly lovely in here : couldn’t smell soapier nor more clean with shampoo.

The male physios smell of nothing – incredibly odourless or gentle – with perhaps just a vague lingering about their person of what they had for lunch.

I vastly prefer this scenario to the dongschlong idiocy of stale woody ambers that would undoubtedly trail the air behind some hospital employees in UK hospitals – as they do in London airports like malingering clobbersticks. In comparison, this place is a blank canvas.

Perversely, there may come a time though, when I start to feel some androphile yearnings : a hint of bloke.

Could Rogue Bon Monsieur, which d has taken a vague shine to recently, the merest spritz on one wrist only, be the one to stir up the ancient loins ?

On first application, I am slightly embarrassed on the behalf of perfumer Manuel Cross, as this prototypical barbershop lavender fougere – fresh and crisp and very well done though it is – could not possibly smell like more of a stereotype. It is every men’s scent you have ever smelled, particularly Guy Laroche Drakkar Noir, and theoretically I should find it objectionable (I sometimes do: it is a genderbore).

But it also reminds me, a bit nostalgically, of a stick solid deo I used to wear as a teen at school: the top notes sing : it is warm, easy going ; quality crafted.

And in the base, a really good one: predictable though it is, although not listed in the notes, I get the most divine, loitering, muskily armpitted patchouli

No one came to the door. I rang the telephone number on the site. No response.

I thought that perhaps I had made a mistake. Checking my reservation, I saw that my time and the address were in fact right. Perhaps she was deep in a session; they hadn’t come round yet.

Eventually Emanuelle appeared. She reminded me of my first love, Rebecca – who now lives in France. Spritely, full of empathy; sparkling eyes; but an appropriate professional distance.

The house ; seventies ; wooden hallways and staircases, the Japanese father-in-law an Irish literature scholar. Yeats and Joyce books liking every bookshelf. Careful art and collected trinkets on shelves and on walls – but not too precious, or pretentious. Winding up stairways and corridors (my knees!) – and then to the therapy room.

Big enough to contain a narrow bed; a stool either side (she served me green tea with osmanthus flowers she had collected and dried herself).

For a claustrophobe, the space was a little tight, but I decided to gird myself.

Light-framed as a bird, she asked me some introductory questions and the floodgates were open. Past traumas; present anxieties ; the problem at hand :

WATER.

I told her I thought I could not be hypnotized. Too alert to every stimulus ( she agreed; you are extremely sensitive to noise; you come back up every time there is a noise outside), but the pungent smell of what I had thought was wintergreen upon entering – a smell I happen to love – was, she said, actually pomelo root oil – as pictured at the beginning of the previous post.

Penetrating, green, astringent, there was a boldness to the oil being vaporized in the corner of the room that both nulled and boosted my senses; and it made for an effective icebreaker (it is never the easiest just pouring your heart out to a stranger ; so we zigzagged around for a bit ( it turned out that she had worked at perfumeries and essential oil producers in Grasse, enfleuraging tuberoses among other wonders; we both shared a like of Fragonard’s opoponaxic Reve D’Inde; she avidly took tons of notes).

I could see why this wasn’t cheap : she was putting an impressive amount of energy into every moment ; nothing rote; pure empathetic reaction and suggestion).

An hour passed. She began to have an idea of my situation.

”Let’s try some reiki’.

*

I have never been a huge fan of massage. The head of physiotherapy in this ward has a firm hand ; I get irritated by a wispy touch. Emanuelle herself is very ethereal ; light as a feather; and at first it felt as though she were merely waving a magic wand.

She was whispering throughout ; sometimes beyond earshot, in heavily French accented English. I could barely hear.

She was manipulating my left arm; bringing the energy back, or at least recentering it. She could feel immediately where I had had accidents ; teenage broken wrists; bike falls, where the muscle memory trauma was still stored. She unlocked it. She gauged that I had been having bad stress headaches, right at the back of my neck. She endeavoured (successfully) to release some of that negativity, that stored up tension.

Then she asked me to lift up my right arm and compare it with my left – the one she had just spent about thirty minutes manipulating.

It felt whole; solid. Connected. The right one felt about half the weight : wizened, pathetic.

I could hardly believe it.

More than two hours had already passed. I could see the clock when I looked to my left.

She then counted to ten (I think) and told me I would be coming back.

I didn’t even realize I was out.

But I had been in a definite half trance.

I was groggy.

I felt vastly calmer going out than I had coming in.

When I got out onto the street I could smell the piercing scent of early spring plum blossoms.

It had started to snow.

The Second And Third Sessions

I have conflated them in my mind and cannot distinguish them.

I know that I became too self conscious, and therefore less suggestible (and there was no pomelo root being atmosphered, a more standardized aromatherapeutic blend in the air, probably more suitable for a wider audience – there are always other clients coming in before and directly afterwards)

Your Inner Cactus

The therapy could not have been more tailor-made.

The goal : for me to be able to get through the pre-operative two hour no water edict. Laughable to many – but like asking a confirmed arachnophobe to sit in a room with a tarantula on the wall (for me).

Just the thought of it made my saliva dry up; my heart to race; my mind to panic ( I still don’t quite know where all this has come from: my mother just taking a glass of water with her to bed every night ? Can it really be so very simple ?)

We talked. She moved energy. She opened up chakras. Maybe it is wacky ; unbelievable; perhaps there could have sometimes been more silences ; as I drifted into another sphere of consciousness sometimes the words would bring me back :

At others I fell deep.

And I had the most peculiar sensation.

I could feel the imprint of her hands on my shoulders.

But she was standing on the other side of the room.

I could feel three pairs of hands now on my body.

Had I entered another dimension? I felt safe with her, but almost as though I were in a seance. Were those hands that were cradling me definitely benign ?

*

We talked of waterfalls. About how much water there is in the human body. About cacti: how they survive in the desert with little water because they don’t need it.

I would have to be like a cactus.

I know, it sounds kind of ridiculous. ‘Rely on your inner cactus’. You can do it. You have to do it. Otherwise you won’t be able to have these operations. Which you obviously do need’.

She had been hypnotizing me without my realizing it, with specific techniques. I wasn’t completely under, but in and out ( and possibly beyond, given the previously described spooking experience, which nevertheless mesmerized me beyond the core).

The next day, at my patents’ sensible suggestion, I decided not to wait until the day of the hospitalization to try water-fasting, but to start practicing.

That day, I couldn’t possibly.

The next day, I went into a zone that I think Emanuelle had either suggested or enabled in me ; though I kept swallowing – as I am writing this in hospital bed – let me just reach for some water thank you very much – I guided my mind to a different place ; I got to two, then three and a half hours.

The following day, I did it again.

It could be done.

The Real Thing

On the day of the first operation in May, when I woke up, I knew that I could do it.

The hospital had specified a time when I could drink, and a time when I couldn’t.

I sat with D in the corridor, talking and laughing, or reading a book, until three and a quarter hours had passed.

The operation had been brought forward by an hour or so; the time would soon be up.

I took gulps from the bottle – but not excessively – until the last possible moment.

And then, I went off with the nurses.

I did not drink any water.

Perfume Posse, one of the best fragrance websites that has ever existed, is both informative about perfume and frank about emotion. It is one of the main reasons I have continued to read it for so many years (even if I have rarely – if ever – actually commented : if it’s a faff to log in a response on any forum I invariably lose my spontaneity in the heat of the moment and give up immediately).

Whether discussing marital breakdown, financial impoverishment, leaking bathrooms, escaping wildfires, hilariously (if poignantly) wry self deprecations on the challenges of getting older, the posse weave their daily life stories with perfume mania and scents of the day into a vast tapestry of experience you might call life.

One post that particularly touched me recently was the brilliant Portia’s startlingly candid piece on the terrifying lows of depression and potential ways to dig herself out of the troughs of black despair when they hit – seemingly on a regular basis. I don’t suffer from depression as such, but I do from anxiety, particularly this year, when there has been so much to be worried about, and I thoroughly appreciated the brutal levels of honesty in that post – the beautiful transparency of feeling. It takes a lot of bravery to just put yourself on the spot like that – once you hit publish it’s as though all the world knows your vulnerabilities – but it is also profoundly cathartic, truly touching others. I have been meaning to get in touch with P to convey my appreciation for that piece of writing whose unfettered honesty went right through me like electricity one day while reading it on the train and shifted something within me, but with everything that has been happening in the lead up to being in here have not managed to get round to it (my Facebook Messenger also doesn’t work outside the house for some unfathomable reason): perhaps one of you could point her to this post.

The Empathy Of Friends

In the middle of February when I had begun my enforced ‘sabbatical’ and had to apply for social security here to get through this difficult year of surgery and stress management I found myself tumbling down into deep holes of heart-throbbing apprehension and uncertainty very frequently. Suddenly not working after 32 years of continuously doing so was not as delightful as it might initially appear. As d went to work early every morning leaving me my usual cup of tea, a void would open up; a geothermal fissure of loneliness and fear of the future that was difficult to fill. I can’t write in that state; I forced myself to exercise (which is already proving useful in my rehabilitation here as I have decent muscle strength); otherwise I would just cook; drink; binge-watch Netflix Scandinoir.

I have D, who has been amazing. I have my family. And I have a lot of really good friends. Some back in England and other places that I maintain regular contact with, some closer in physical proximity on Japanese shores (my best male J-friend and colleague lives right next door).

Aside standard socializing, though, I have also wanted to take this ‘year off’ as an opportunity to explore new avenues of thinking and ways of living – as well as writing about my life here in Japan – which means opening myself up to the unknown. I have done some psychotherapy, with varying results. I have consulted a psychic recommended by someone on the family – fascinating, I may come to that later, the biggest revelation being, and the first thing she said when she saw me, that I am psychic myself – which isn’t entirely a surprise.

I am also interested in cults, sects, religions. Fret not : my core of bedrock skepticism – no, not skepticism, but of an unstupid questioning of everything –everything !- means that my gullibility and impressionability are very low. I detest uniformity and conformity too much for start , always have, which is why I had my legs slapped by Mrs Llwellyn a few times at my primary school in the black country for being cheeky / disobedient / daring to have a brain of my own. As my thighs smarted and the eyes bore holes into shame, I am sure I felt equal part guilt and humiliation, and if I had been familiar with the expression at the time, f*** y**.

I am mesmerized by cults because anyone who has watched any documentaries on this subject surely knows that they follow the same pattern. A sociopathic narcissist with sadistic tendencies exploits the vulnerabilities of desperate truth-seekers and then draws them into her arbitrary system of dogmas and ‘beliefs’, often losing all their money and being sexually assaulted or held in slavery or forced to hang or poison themselves in some pointless and ridiculous doomsday scenario. So predictable !

And yet one of my best friends in the UK – a musician with impossibly penetrating intelligence and intuition was in an Indian cult for eighteen years and had to go through many deep mortifications and realizations :when we talked about all this in a Birmingham Irish pub two or three years ago I was practically speechless – and just let her talk. That she has managed to build her life back up again in such a spectacular manner is a testament to her spiritual strength and genuine artistry ( can anyone doubt the power of music ?)

Natural wariness of cults aside, I have lost none of my inquisitiveness about them. They fascinate me – which is why one of book chapters is going to be devoted to bearded weirdos and other humourless individuals who yield themselves up to enigmatic and charismatic with usually tragic results. D and I have penetrated the environs of the freaks at the Museum Of Art in Atami, whose grand edifices are a masquerade for a Messianic Creepfest that naturally isn’t averse to siphoning off all your savings; I have been to a Jehovah’s Witness gathering at the Grand Temple in Fujisawa after inviting a mother and son into my house one day for tea after they kept pestering me every Sunday (:”Ok, come in; and I will go with you for one meeting just to see for myself what it is like; after that, though, if it’s not for me, perhaps we can leave it”).

After hearing that precisely 144,000 souls would be getting to heaven, and the rest of humanity would be resurrected to limboland or purgatorial waiting area, crawling out of the earth like a mass Thriller flash mob and saw in their eyes that they believed every word of these random pronouncements, I told them I would leave it.

*

Melanie and I still plan to go ‘cult window shopping’ – I would like to try Happy Science next for research purposes – but we are also very interested in the esoteric, the beyond, what might constitute a meaning of life : clue, I don’t think it lies in Balenciaga handbags or collecting the full range of Louis Vuitton fragrances – but what do I know ? We have to fill our brains with something, be it soccer, Pokémon, ululating for Donald in a materialist mega church (GAD WANTS YOU, yes YOU !!! TO BE WEALTHY !!! Wire some cash to us right now and the Lord will show his benevolence !)

I am interested in Buddhism, and live on the top of a zen-infused mountain. Which isn’t to say that I am about to renounce the world and meditate in the seiza position for days (with these knees?), nor that I will ever fully accept any man-made scripture – as beautiful as the sutras may be, to me they are just one possibility and are arbitrary : I don’t think I could ever accept anything as literal gospel – but that doesn’t mean that I am not interested in the precepts or fundamental philosophies of a said religion (I like many of the teachings in Islam, Judaism and Christianity), but especially Buddhism, which is why M and I headed off to our friend J’s Soka Gakkai meeting one Sunday morning up in Tokyo.

It was good to be with one of my best friends – despite my bravadery there is always a fear of brainwashing that lurks at the back of your mind – especially when ensconced in the heart of a religious group’s main gathering and prayer space (or at least one of them). Everyone was very friendly, there was a human scatttiness to the loosely organized proceedings that appealed, although when the chanting began : nam, myoho renge kyo, over and over, accelerando, de-accelerando, rising in pitch and speed and then slowing and lingering, all present chanting in perfect unison, a chill did spread along my spine. Part of me found it hypnotic, and I could gradually feel reality loosening , like I was being suspended in something — the chant is for increased inner awareness, and I could feel some of that happening ( if I were stuck in a truly dire situation, I can imagine repeating this lotus mantra again; it does do something to the spirit )- and yet despite my appreciation of certain aspects of that morning and my willingness to perhaps go there again – I am hardly about to become a member. And neither is M. But none of this is what I am wanting to write about today in any case. All of this is just a prelude.

THE UNHYPNOTIZED

After the meeting we went for a cheap lunch at Saizeriya at my request (an unimaginably cheap Japanese Italian chain where a glass of wine is 40p and a spaghetti bolognese under £2 (and it tastes really good). The whole of Japan practically lives in these diners and I could and probably should do an entire piece about it.

Saizeriya is a good place to economize and also to catch up with friends. It’s so noisy that no one can overhear your conversations with the same canzoni forever on repeat on the sound system that d and I can now sing along to : with little money prior to securing my social security I appreciated being able to have lunch and pay my own way – not that I am averse to being treated- but there is a limit.

In fact, I have some very generous friends. So much so that when we all got deeper into conversation – M and J were meeting each other for the first time, and it turned out that they both went to, and were very appreciative of, the same French chiropractor /reiki healer/spiritualist / hypnotherapist up in the burbs of East Tokyo – one had gone for a chronically cricked neck and been cured; the other for ‘energy work’ and swearing she had some trapped, destructive energy released in the process. Hearing about my various distresses, but knowing I was strapped, and despite the high cost, they both spontaneously offered to pay for two sessions with her if I were willing to plunge into such new and uncharted psychological territory.

The Cynics

I get very bored by my otherwise hyper-intelligent prospective Tokyo University students when the majority of the usually science course students stubbornly refuse to even entertain the idea that anything can be real beyond the proven scientific. Equally, I find the Candles N’Angels Stevie Nicks brigade – if they automatically believe every last unicorn rainbow and garden fairy to be real – a little …. silly, but then I do know that we all exist on certain points on this spectrum – as we do on the moveable ground between religiousness and atheism : and ultimately, each to their own.

My own ‘policy’ in this regard is to keep an open mind : I went to the Buddhist sect meeting, I sang with the Jehovss, I Zoomed with the psychic, so I very gratefully accepted the invitation to go up to the outskirts of Mitaka – two hours at least away from my house – to have my first hypnotherapy session with Emanuelle.

The Slaking

I will come to our encounter in a short while. First, I feel that I need to explain why I thought being hypnotized might be useful for me in the first place.

The truth is, as some long-term narcissi might recall as I did write about this once eight years ago before my double osteotomy surgery, I have a severe case of dehydrophobia – otherwise known as dehydration anxiety, and it is this, rather than the actual cutting up and potential dangers and painful complications of surgery, that I have been fearing. I am nervous before an operation, as anyone would be, but the principle source of my mental discomfort is the nil by mouth water policy of many hospitals (in Britain this is changing : many researchers now believe that some hydration, sips of water before and after surgery is actually beneficial to the patient rather than feeling like scorched evaporated river, desperate beyond desperate for water to the point of real crisis, as I was in 2017 when I thought I would die from lack of water (nine and a half hours of surgery and then four hours of slaking sand hole, lips like burned biscuits and a brain that was ricocheting in its edges like dry peanuts in their shells). I didn’t give a shit about the leg agony : I just. wanted. water.

Which is why when I came to this hospital, and spent the entire day here doing reparative health tests, bright and breezily going from floor to floor, from blood test to cardiogram to bone density diagnostics to getting ready to sign the confirmation sheets, I was the perfect patient until they told me that I would have to wait for eight hours on the bed before the operation without water, and I told them that unfortunately, that would be impossible.

Plethora of phobias

The good thing about my particular affliction – in the literature but barely mentioned – is that for the vast majority of the time, no one need ever know anything about it. If I am carrying a bottle of Evian – filled with tap water from home – on the train or the bus or have several bottles stacked away in my backpack nothing could look more regular and normal. I am claustrophobic up to a point – must have an aisle seat on a plane or at the cinema – but that is about it. I can get in a full-ish lift, on a crowded-ish train ( even though my pulse rate is admittedly really quickening just thinking about it): usually I will simply wait until a less sardine-like situation presents itself and get on with it. For these reasons I don’t think of my own phobias as particularly problematic or severe – and I haven’t collected any new ones over the years. I don’t like the sensation of powdery surfaces but as a teacher have learned to use chalk ; I was attacked on the head by a crow last year – as was J, strangely, coincidentally – but didn’t develop any ornithophobia. I have been stung by wasps or bees at least four times in my life – all throbbed terribly – but am totally blase about them to this day, even when I shouldn’t be – there are life threatening killer Asian hornets here and we had a nest – but I was just trying to usher them out of the room with a newspaper even though they could have your eyes swelling up like a balloon. I stop and take pictures of snakes crossing the road. I will screech at big spiders on the wall – a primeval fear that is shared by so many human beings, but it is nothing like an old girlfriend of mine who was reduced to sobbing and asphyxiating hysterics when her older brother showed her a horrible arachnid on the wall during her 17th birthday party. She apparently couldn’t go into the room for several days.

Pedro Almodovar And The Bitch Bite

I am very curious as to why/ how phobias develop and also why they don’t (needless to say, I am enormously interested to hear about any phobias you suffer from openly or in secret or have experienced in other people as I am baring my soul here).

An episode :

In 1999 I was in London having an evening to myself. I had bought a ticket to see All About My Mother at the Screen On The Green in Islington and had decided to just kill the hour or so before the film began by having a look along the high street and sitting down for a beer somewhere. For some reason or other I leaned down to peer at the menu of Burger King – a place I never go to, having worked there as a part time job in my late teens and vowing I could never eat again as that ‘grilled’ smell had so permeated my brain – but as I bent forward towards the window the next thing I knew was a ferocious dog had leapt up and bitten me on the leg. The new jeans I had bought the day before were torn by the bitch; and I was bleeding. Looking down at the fang bared mutt – I remember it as a bulldog but it could have been anything – I erupted in fury and stormed into the ‘restaurant’ shouting about the asshole that had left their what should have been nuzzled canine outside with a piece of paper stuck to its head saying ‘ don’t touch me, I bite’ then though I knew I should go straight to the nearest hospital as I hadn’t had a tetanus jab for a very long time I instead went back to the cinema, my leg slowly trickling throughout Todo Sobra Mi Madre. I didn’t get to the Whittington Hospitai much later that night, when a laconic Caribbean nurse said to me ” You should see what the human bites are like”.

Trainspotting

Yet though I am not exactly Fido’s Best Mate and Julia’s 300 ft tall Jeff Koons cockadoodle made me want to shoot it when it jumped up and scratched me when I went round to her house (never again!) – I have never come down with canophobiav ( I was also chased by a snapping turtle I mean a ‘dog’ as a child when I was about 6- it bit my cousin Caroline instead); I can stroke my friends’ more amenable pups (unenthusiastically ) but don’t come out in cold sweats from the sound of the merest whimper.

In contrast, I was to learn of the severity of D’s potent needle/injection phobia first-hand.

Trainspotting was all the rage at the time. It was being raved about – part of the Britpop Boom – Oasis/Blur/Pulp (yawn) that was travelling around the world : the Danny Boyle Glasgow film that was equally beloved in Japan as new apex of UK culture. I would be asked if I had enjoyed it – but I only saw the first ten or 15 minutes. Emma was there too : she will verify or negate/ embellish or detract from my account, but this is how I remember it:

We had scarcely settled into our seats at the Clapham Picture House South London when the opening credits began – and d had what seemed to be an epileptic fit. He started convulsing violently in his seat, eyes going into the back of his head. I panicked and shouted that we needed a doctor : it so happened that there was a dentist on the end of the row. E’s husband had been having actual epileptic fits at the time so they knew what they were doing.

This was not my proudest moment. D was carried out and laid on the steps; as green and grey as a battered El Greco Christ. Unconscious. thought he was dead. And I couldn’t handle it – —

— so ran away !

Great job, Neil.

Soon gathering my senses, I ran back from the Clapham Common where I was flailing and hyperventilating and returned to the death scene where those present had fanned d back to life : an ambulance was called, and Emma, Hugh, myself and a swooned thin person on a stretcher were taken to a hospital for tests. There was nothing wrong. It was the needles from all the shooting up scenes in the film.

I caught him when he started to faint at the local doctor’s after a flu injection. He had to be taken to a special lie down area for all the Covid vaccinations. The nurses were very understanding – trypanophobia is one of the most common of the phobias, along with acrophobia – fear of heights, agoraphobia, arachnophobia, and aquaphobia (the very opposite of mine ! which Duncan also shares to an extent, along with his mother).

It is here though that things perhaps get unfair. Some phobias are more acceptable than others : understandable, when last night I discovered perhaps the most unusual :

Others include

-definitely an excuse for me not to do housework – :

.. and it’s probably good that I am not genuphobic either.

…. I personally adore ferns – but the list goes on ( how do we humans ever make it through life ?)

The point is, I suppose, that though some phobias seem strange beyond belief, for the person having a meltdown at the duckpond they are very real. I know two people with emetophobia – the fear of vomiting, though that feat of someone else throwing up more than you chundering yourself; Helen has misophonia, an utter hatred of, and inability to tolerate, loud smacking noises made from a person’s mouth, particularly while eating (there are specially designed headphones for this condition);

(still in the process of writing this : rather than nomophobia – a fear of not having one’s smartphone I have a hatred of this f****+++ device sometimes when it goes all glitchy and feel like throwing it against the wall – bear with me before you develop full Chapmanphobia !)

A fear of needles is taken more seriously than a fear of having no water. I can’t really relate to the whole injectionphobia thing : I am hardly fond of syringes, especially when they hurt – I have had some botched attempts this week that have left my arms bruised as well as my leg; but I would rather have an IV in my arm and multiple injections throughout an eight hour flight on a budget airline to Singapore than not have enough water to drink because they only accepted a particular payment I didn’t have and was gasping from start to finish.

The Scent Of Pomelo Root Extract

Two seasons having been paid in advance by my extremely kind friends, I left my house three hours before the appointed time so as not to be late (the Japanese address system is extremely difficult to fathom and it was in the middle of nowhere. It was good that I took a taxi, to ascertain where the house was – in the middle of an Eastern Tokyo suburban street ) and just kill a bit of time by looking around.

Thirty minutes later I went back and rang the bell.

A scented touch-up, just a touch, can be a lovely thing. With a solid perfume – little pots of concentrated unguent – you can steal a dab here and there without the full commitment of a top-to-base fragrance phantasmagoria.

These pleasing cheapies – ¥1000 or so, which I got from the Ofuna Flower Center the other day but which you can get from Ainz & Tulpe – Japan’s Sephora – aren’t complex, but they don’t need to be.

The perfumes come across as scented candies. Sweet and cute. Delightfully designed.

At home, I kept wondering what the rosy top note was in the air every time I walked into the small kitchen. Then eventually I found it was this solid- whose top had come off : it was working really well as a quite natural, eglantine air freshener. In hospital, it smells deeper, more sultry. Though hardly a masterpiece, and probably just some geranium, citronella and some form of natural rose oil in the heart (it has that otto depth) the base notes on skin are good – there, not sour – and it eventually fades away just as it should. A dot here and there in the middle of the afternoon does give you rose-tinted spectacles.

The cosmos is even better. One of the most adorable things I have ever smelled, it is as innocent as Florentine cherubic putti chewing celestial bubblegum and will probably appeal to three year old girls and old fruits like myself who love its momentary projection into a clean and sinless world of strawberry shortcake; my little ponies and freshly opened cosmos petals — a world where nothing ever gets soiled, where everything is soap bubble radiant.

On closer olfactory analysis you find it is probably rather chemical; all ‘iced pear’ and ozone and cutesy fragola – but who cares. A soft application on new pyjamas or on hair is sheer bliss after a shower, a perfect skin scent. Momentarily, you feel unblemished.

This is my seventh day in here. It hasn’t been easy. But I am not complaining. I can walk on the hikoki frame. I bend my left leg, even if it feels like an unbasted chicken drumstick/ swollen baseball bat. I can finally get out of the room (lightbulbed: no natural light; stuck with another person for the entirety beyond this curtain —

which is a world of issues unto itself.)

Today is going to just be a ramble / bitchfest / gratitude diary mainly for selfish reasons just to exPUNGE some of this shit for bedtime catharsis — but also because you might find it interesting and entertaining.

There is a tendency for things to suddenly disappear on here when I am writing on my phone, which could raise my blood pressure to Vesuvial levels- which I definitely don’t need – so I am just going to press publish – now, for example – and update as I go along. If you are looking for a breathlessly sycophantic niche review, go elsewhere. If you feel like the bedridden microneuroses of a ravaged hysteric, look no further.

The State Of Play

Last Thursday I was paralyzed and it was hideous. The jaunty anesthesiologist came to see me for a chat about art – a thing we have started – and to explain why I felt such extreme numbness (she used a particularly strong lumbar spine number because apparently they think I am afraid of pain). This is is not true. I am actually pretty brave in that regard as anyone who knows me will tell you – my physical pain threshold is high, and I don’t complain . Quite strong really ( the man in the next bed thought I was an injured rugby player).

I think they mistake my water obsession – the hospital specifically changed their surgery schedule in order to let me go nil by mouth aquatically for no more than two hours as I said I couldn’t do the surgery otherwise – with bodily feebleness. But I am not the frail type – more a bull in a china shop. People can’t believe that men with broad shoulders can be hypersensitive. But missus I am telling you that they can be.

Anyway, the physios and surgeon are pleased with my progress as is d : he came to see me yesterday and was amazed by the transformation from Friday, when I could hardly move. Yesterday I surprised him for his fifteen minute allowed visit by walking to the lift to greet him.

As I have written before, in more callous counties you would be turfed out after two or three days

HOW

THE FUCK

ARE YOU SUPPOSED TO DEAL WITH ALL THIS

BY YOURSELF

?’!!!

It is unimaginable. Here you are treated, nutrifed and rehabilitated until you can walk safely with a cane – a marvellous system for which I have the utmost respect.

Did You Bring Your Intercourse Mat?

When we came in to l’hopital, there were some forms to fill in. Soon d was crying with laughter behind his mask at some of the auto-translations : I thought I would show you.

Have you secured your Oral Pension? Mouth or No Mouth? Mute: silent ? ( yes, I am sharing a room). Final Defecation turned out to be more prophetic than I would have liked it to be, but do feel free to skip this next session – this is meant to be a perfume blog after all.

Prune Wars

Obedience has never been my forte – which I consider a forte. I take matters into my own hands when needed. The food here is excellent quality – a bit mushy, granted, but it’s a hospital – but nutrific to the max and tailor made to each patient and I am going to write a thank you card to the nutritionist – but I CANNOT EAT RICE THREE TIMES A DAY. This has now been rectified – I now have two small bread rolls for breakfast and yoghurt, which is a godsend, I feel so much better. I have the full washoku rice fish wet vegetables miso soup the other two meals – I love how they prepare fish here and it’s great for rebuilding tissue when your knee – the one you were born with, the one you hugged tight to your chin during boring school assemblies as a young child – has been ripped out and thrown in the trash.

Rice, thrice, is a no-no. Even most Nihon-jin vary the carbo once a day – bread, pasta, udon, soba; it becomes real alimentary drudgery – and in some individuals stops up the passages.

Hence the prunes for a bit of slip and slide; dark chocolate (for sanity); nuts because I love them. But the most literal and spectrummy of the nurses saw a stray chocolate wrapper then started going through my bags like an asshole at customs, discovered three bags of cocainr, heroin and methamphetamines – how else was I going to pass the hours – no, I mean prunes and the other goodies – and confiscated the lot.

But Nurse Ratchet, hon, Burning Bush ain’t giving up the prune fight quite so easily : it pleaded with the surgeon the next day to return the evil contraband. Four days in, Chernobyl was avoided.

Vintage Amazone

I am craving perfume and missing my collection.

Interestingly, any thing fragranced smells very different in here; amplified .

This white grapefruit Vaseline ointment I made with Muji essential oil – forbidden – and I don’t want to bother The Other Patient In The Room so have to use it in small quantities – is the best possible thing I could have brought into hospital.

At home it smelled a bit bland and washed out tangerine. In these colourless confines though it smells exactly like a real grapefruit : incredibly invigorating and refreshing – an instant mood booster ( and sometimes, one’s emotions do dip, crikey; have I done the right thing ? will this cobalt implant lead to psychosis, as evidenced in a terrifying Netflix documentary; shouldn’t I have had titanium ? will I really be able to walk again ? Am I going to get my visa in November ? Will I even be able to physically make it into immigration ? When they take the frame and stick away, will I be a quasimodo? Do I really want to be given opioids as painkillers ! Am I going to walk out of here an addict ?…..

So many scared emotions and worries run through your bloodstream and head when you are confined to a curtained hospital bed and can’t even talk on the phone to anyone because of your room partner (a nice diabetic gent in his late sixties in for back surgery tomorrow ; non-racist, easy going, very smiley, but it is awkward not doing how much/ whether I should even be having – conversation is appropriate and how much privacy each of us want and being able to hear every breath, emission, doctor’s explanation)

Scent is a way of bypassing some of this with a sensory immediacy that cuts through crusts of negativity. The pamplemousse is the greatest – but I also love wearing a touch of Nina – didn’t have a shower for four days and was in sudsy H E A V E N yesterday practically ingesting soap I was so eager for it ; on freshly washed skin, the Ricci was a private contentment – although from the bottle, in this context, it smelled darker, more chypric, practically vintage Miss Dior – mossily depraved rather than the holy alabastrine angelic.

Vicarious Hermes

Not being to see the sky, the changes in light, is quite difficult for me. Call it neurodivergence, hypersensitivity, I just think you have to be a moron to prefer closed curtains and electrical lightbulbs when you could – at least visually – be connecting with the air outside.

That’s why I often have the TV on so I can have some nature in the background, or else the fine rumps of the Kōshien baseball players out sweating in the sun; the sizzling food porn of Japanese cookery shows that really stir up your gastric juices even while irritating you at the same time with their banal predictability.

When d was about to leave yesterday I suggested he try a recycle shop that is sometimes open in Hodogaya, just a few stations away. There is a Spanish empanada place he could try and he could possibly pick me up a vintage fume or two if they had any to give me an imaginary olfactory thrill.

One of mine – I don’t know why – is Nina by Nina Ricci (1987). A very soapy, green, mimosa blackcurrant aldehyde with a classic vetiver moss musk base, it captured my heart when I first smelled it nearly forty years ago – and still takes me to a calm, almost Hellenistic place of classical refinement.

I brought it into hospital with me.

Although yesterday was horrible : I couldn’t feel either of my legs for two hours and was convinced I was paralyzed – even the nurses looked concerned – gradually, I had a ghostly phantom limb sensation under the druggy severance, and could eventually move my ankles and toes.

It was forbidden, but I was wearing some Nina on my left wrist.

Linden, or lime tree blossom, or tilleul– a very evocative French word that accurately captures this flower’s sighful nostalgia, is one of those natural floral experiences – as you pass by under a tree; as you catch it on the air – that is irrevocably mood- altering. For me, it is also a smell full of ambivalence. On the one hand, linden suddenly catches you off guard, dipping you into a dream ; pollened and drowsy, there is a plunging melancholia yet also a strongly euphoric aspect to its savoury perfume that makes it transcendental. Strolling down Unter Den Linden in Berlin, perhaps the world’s most famous avenue of linden blossoms, the soft wooze of the benignly pungent odour drifting off the trees immediately severs you from the every day.

On the other hand, there is something quite gaggy and overly fulsome about lime blossom that is slightly too fecund. Like chamomile, which can repulse me – especially as a herbal tea (tilleul tisanes have the same effect), I am not drawn to anything bilgey, grassy or barn-like :tatami mats can leave me queasy; I cannot tolerate immortelle. This is not an attraction/repulsion mechanism, as when you put your head into a full throng of jasmine or gardenias or wisteria or lilies and experience deep pleasure and a dirty problematic as holistically enjoyable: with certain other flowers it is more a lunging split-screen of like/dislike. I sometimes feel similarly about lilac; freesias; even osmanthus, which, though devastatingly attractive initially when it comes out at the beginning of October, can eventually make me feel a bit peachy around the gills.

Yesterday, on a whim but also because I wanted to a buy a particular solid rose perfume from the gift shop for my upcoming hospital stay next week, we spent a beautifully serene morning at the Ofuna Flower Center, staying far longer than we had anticipated. Ordinarily, the municipal banality of this place – it can be grim on a cold January day – can dull the inspirations, and I wondered how it might in fact be on a dried-out roasting August day when heat warnings were being given over the tannoys and a gardener told us to be careful in English as well for good measure; ‘stay in the shade: be careful of heatstroke!‘. So we headed straight for the outdoors cafe under the shade of a big tree and ended up sitting there for a very long time indeed, the shimmer of cicadas in the background a soothing orchestra.

There was almost no one there. A-sight impaired older woman in lace and straw hat straight out of a Monet painting with her guardian sat for an equally long time at another table, as we all stared out quietly at the vista of lotuses and wild flowers- a little straggly, but all the better for it- I am have never been a fan of botanical neatness – until we decided that we too should venture around the garden just a little seeing that we had paid the entrance fee. The sun was too unrelenting to stand under its gaze for too long, but it was fascinating to see the lotus flowers and how they were being treated with specific aqua-hydraulics and to smell them up close- ornate, aquatic, pristine, above everything — and then head into the hothouse.

It was so hot outside, like an African savannah – D said that yes, it did remind him a bit of when he lived in Tanzania- that the greenhouses’ windows were open, creating a slightly limp, dried out effect you would not usually associate with jungly botanica. None of the raw steamy verdancy and free facial hydration you get upon entering a climate-controlled tropical environment. A bit dessicated and wilting – there was not a soul in there – but therefore more intimate. The musa banana varietals looked alive but not quite thriving; the ylang ylang tree, which I was thrilled to come across (the garden even has a ‘ylang ylang illuminated at night’ feature on August 16th which I will be sadly missing as I will be on the ward then) and which had very extensive, raggled flowers – much bigger than the ones I have seen before (the only other time I have encountered ylang ylang trees on the stem, in the flesh, was when I naughtily picked some from a tree when in Malang, Java, in 2013, beside myself with glee to have finally encountered them just casually existing in the middle of an Indonesian city.)These impressively scaled flowers were a little flaccid and limp: up close, they had the fundamental ylang ylangness of ylang ylang – the more penetrating characteristics you find in lesser quality essential oils – but not quite the exhilarating living flower breath.

If not the ylang ylang, then what was the exquisite scent that met you upon entering that particular room of the greenhouse? My nose led me to the almost linden-like pom poms of a tree I didn’t recognize, but which turned out on closer inspection to be Royal Mahogany, or Everfresh – a light, soul-lifting floral scent from South America – gentle, sensual, a little like snowy azaleas, one of my favourite flower smells – and it filled the room gorgeously – gently, not overly narcotically – and which made me think about how heavy linden blossom is in comparison.

I have never really worn tilleul. There was an Occitane extrait back in the day which I semi-liked and would wear occasionally on summer mornings; I also had a ‘pillow spray’ from some Provencal outfit or other but it never really spoke to me. I guess I don’t really do full ‘blowsy’. Baruti’s Onder De Linde, which I am glad to own but which is alien to my sensibilities (pear, lilac, linden, honey over sandalwood musks) is of the Une Fleur Cassie family of perfumes that I can find alluring – but like linden itself, acacia, and mimosa sometimes too – somehow too invasive and troubling for some psychological reason I can’t entirely pin down. I like my flowers more overt, forthright; dazzlingly fleshy – tuberose for instance, white and ghostly and so dazzling to the senses – and which I could eat. Tilleul is of a more spring/autumnal bent, for those of a more sensible, sober nature- and I think spiritually I am more inherently created for the summer.

Having said that, another linden I do have in my collection and which I do wear on occasion is Schwarzlose’s IA-33, an enjoyably sunny portrait of Berlin that has an extremely appealing top accord of neroli, mandarin and linden blossom that can send you briefly ecstatic with its implacable positivity – until, a few hours later, it wimps out with a wan ending when the detested amberwood/’oud’ note appears making the perfume, if not unwearable, just no longer enjoyable (there is only a very small quantity). Even that, though, is enough to put me off, in the end, and the reason I no longer go near much modern perfumery : I truly wish that those aromachemicals had never been invented.

Which brings us to today’s perfume in question, Tilia by Marc-Antoine Barrois – a Parisian niche perfumery with a range of fragrances created by the ubiquitous Quentin Bisch. As it goes, I would say that this is definitely my favourite linden of all those I have smelled so far: spiky and uplifting, with a very legible immediacy – principally because the perfumer, rather than keeping the dried out husks of linden blossoms in their original beige and monocled hessian, decides, interestingly, to dye the flower a counterintuitive pinky coral red red. Deep red, staining them with vital jasmine sambac; from drab coloured wear to night gown — I find this a very inventive and exploratory opening accord for a linden perfume : my interest was duly piqued.

The blurb goes thus:

Simple. Solar. Smiling. It is the scent of everlasting summer. Of holidays that never end. Of long lazy lunches with friends, out in the countryside, around a big wooden table. Of flowers that just keep on blooming.

Tender verdancy, pollen, honey from the linden tree with its lovely heart-shaped leaves, an emblem of softness and flexibility for the Celts. The honeyed, apricot inflexions of broom. The tender powder of heliotrope. A bucolic bouquet made still richer with a sprig of velvety jasmine Sambac. Underlined, like a stroke of shade intensifying the radiance of an afternoon in the sun, by the smoky earthiness of vetiver…

It has to be said that the composition does work very well, which is why it has been such a rave review online hit. Tilia is both familiar and new. Modern; sharp, fruity, clean, with the grapey tones of the current Givenchy L’Interdit giving the perfume sauce, it speaks in a silky boutique hotel bath robe language I found instantly attractive.

But would I wear it?

I was wearing it. And was glad it had come my way. I will still reach for it every once in a while. There is a rather craveable facet to Tilia which essentially means that Monsieur Bisch has done a good job. When a perfume has an angle or a hook that you get caught on, it distinguishes itself from all the others you know from the past and the present — and becomes a need.

Sadly, all the enthusiasm I had at the beginning for this perfume was, I suppose inevitably, soddened by the slowly accruing realization that every time I put on Tilia, I kept being transported to a gaggle of British teenage girls in low cut grey cotton track suit trousers and thrust up boob tops laughing a little menacingly on the Chiltern Line from Solihull into the station at Birmingham Moor Street.. The requisite orange foundation. The clogged fake eyelashes. The ‘contouring’. The whole lo-cost Kim Kardashian look that has taken over the UK for the last few years and rendered otherwise pretty girls bargain basement drag queens ( I remember Helen telling about the time her son Beau went to Belgium, and in a beautiful medieval city, he had the startling realization that here were the unimaginable actual girls of his dreams; hair, faces, bodies, features — not clowns). The girlz can of course smell very sexy, with their nubile Juicy Coutures and Baccarat Rouge knock-offs, their Superdrug body sprays, bubble gums and the unerasable strength of their hyper-strength all day lasting fabric conditioners – the main fragrance they carry about them, and one that fill up the airwaves of the trains until you can no longer think straight. Unfortunately, this is where the base notes of Tilia end up on my skin though ; ambroxan, and ‘Georgywood’ – extrait de laundromat — and they stick to you like a tattoo.

I felt revved up by the new magenta in Tilia when I first wore it. And if I could keep the lower stages hidden in some way I would probably wear this regularly. My transformation into British teenage girl with a low cut velvety bottom is, however, just too alarming, ultimately, for my presently fragile and beleagured soul system. I become estranged from my own essence. And it is at this point, as the linden extract in the Barrois starts to fade, and the chemicals begin to take over. that I then, perversely, start to yearn for the real thing: real lime blossoms, the blowsy beauty of the tilleuls troublants, as they aerate the city and countryside, with all their perturbing, emotional spectrum: their greenery; their natural, spatial awareness.

These days I am all about combos. I am finding that wearing complementary scents in tandem boosts their pleasure and play; their smellability (you can’t become anosmic when the contrasts are so easy to detect on either arm.)

Yesterday I needed emotional security. Nahema is one of the best perfumes for that. But the rare pdt I have is compromised badly in the top accord, which has obviously degraded. The base – all rosey peach cherryade ; muted passionfruit Guerlinade is worth the wait though.

In the meantime, how about Annick Goutal’s lovely Grande Amour (a Nahema tribute, essentially), but greener and more obviously hyacinthine – the hyacinths have gone in my old Guerlain – on the other arm?

Yes ! They propped each other beautifully yesterday – working in concert. It is not the correct weather for these perfumes but sometimes you buck against the fraghead meteorological edicts and weave some olfactory joy nonetheless.

What about more traditionally summer friendly layerings then? A combo can mean on yourself – or it can also involve pairing your scent with another so they give harmonious sillage : wearing clashing perfumes can be pituitary pit-grating for you and those around you – d and I have got it very wrong on several occasions, particularly when he has opted for marine.

Last weekend we were both in green tea. I wore the matcha green Hyouge; he wore Goutal L’Isle Au The – which was like a glass of sparkling lemonade with hints of subtly spicier, smokier undertones that created a real double vibe.

Earlier this week with the New Boilingness I suddenly took to revisiting a rare discontinued favourite of mine, Creed Zeste Mandarine Pamplemousse- a sheer, ambergris lined citrus of great understatement which was cooling to the senses and though rather old school, refreshing and refined. I thought that perhaps Eau D’Orange Verte (unfortunate 2009 remake – why did I buy this?) would work, but nope. Top notes : fair enough. ‘Mossy Vetiver’ base ? I hate it (could be good on the right girl in Tokyo) but here, the effect was simply jarring. Zeste definitely works much better on its own.

What else can be combo’d? Incense, actually. I can’t afford the really high end stuff right now, but with an erratically semi incontinent elderly cat who is currently pissing on the stairs, and – unforgivably – on my RECORD COLLECTION – I know she can’t help it but why did it have to be my beloved Joni Mitchell Miles Of Aisles? —— you had better believe that I consider daily incense to be a true daily essential.

Two very affordable boxes I use which you can get from the local supermarket are the bog-standard Seiun by Nippon Kodo – a hazy benzoin patchouli with a hint of tatami mat that never thrills, but masks to an extent what I shudder over from the cat drips and mopped up leakages and leaves a pleasant aftersmoke of Japanese old temple hanging in the air.

Another I get on occasion is the white rose – Kataribe -by the same company: these sticks I prefer just left sitting in the box – they give off a Japanese pot pourri scent when you walk by; even if when lit, they create a certain sourness (rose can sometimes just be so… fogeyish).

Yesterday I suddenly had a lightbulb moment. Might the rose prominent soliflore joss sticks be rounded and softened by the warmer, more wide reaching benzoin patchouli of Seiun? Might the latter also be rendered less boring and multifaceted by a swirlier upnote of ‘fresh’ rose ?

Bingo ! I vastly prefer these two in combination – and will be burning them together henceforth. Again on the topic of roses, the good roses, I am having really quite the nerve-shredding time of it right now with bureaucracy and pre-operative realities and many other things I have to contend with – don’t we all – and scent is thus more important to me than ever. It really is a cushion, an emotional comfort blanket. We have to go out in a while to deal with some of these things in the town centre despite the incredible heat – and I know I will need my Nahema/ Amour combination – just some, on each wrist, to give some anchoring. I will also have my more recent Nahema eau de parfum in my bag – not perfect, but a thrilling, very soapy rose hyacinth opening – that I may find myself spraying when one more notch in the bullshit list has been crossed off and I head outside.