This time four years ago I was lying in a hospital bed unable to walk after leg surgery. If you had told me that not far down the line I would have a book on perfume coming out in a Chinese edition (‘The Perfume Bible’ I think it is called – any elucidation on that point by readers appreciated), I would have said you were insane.
Published by Dook Books in April, ordinarily, for such a major occasion, we would undoubtedly have been flying out to Shanghai, where the publisher is based and where a very good friend of ours lives, partying down the Bund after a launch party and lounge lizarding is jazz bars in one of the Art Deco buildings, gladly led round the glittering neon metropolis, blurrily drinking liquor in celebration. As it is, instead, we had a grand Chinese meal (my very favourite food) at an almost empty restaurant in Kamakura, looking out onto the the cherry blossoms and the young women in kimono doing early flower viewing.
I am really excited.
