The late January lurgy

The January lurgy has struck again, which means that I am struck down by a cold/flu/chest infection. I'm not sure which. It's probably not flu, although I can hardly walk as all my joints, neck and eyes ache like crazy.I'm not looking for sympathy, honest, but it is a rotten way to end the month. This year is already flying by. I can't keep up!Another side affect of this is that I can't smell all that much and feeling rubbish doesn't lend itself...

Roses part 2

I've finally got around to part 2 of my musings on roses. Last time I generally just rambled on, describing my love for the plant and flower itself and its scent of course, with some very brief thoughts on its use in perfume.This time I want to touch on specific rose perfumes. I suppose I will be biased and one must realise that this is not even remotely close to a definitive list of rose-centric perfumes. On the contrary, I am still very much on...

Weekend roundup

Some of you might have noticed my relative scarcity of posting this month. Some of this is part of my so-called new year resolution, as I have resolved not to write simply for the sake of it. Which, thinking about it, means that this post is in direct contradiction to that, as I don't really have anything that interesting to say, but I felt like posting, and its my blog, so wah!The other reason for my scarcity is that my work has got incredibly busy...

D.S. & Durga Petitgrain

For some reason, over the last few days the dull, grey and damp English weather has made me yearn for a pick-me-up, and I have suddenly veered towards wearing a few citrus-focused perfumes. I'm very glad then, that I acquired a sample of D.S & Durga's Petitgrain (thanks Cym!).  Most citrus perfumes can be rather fleeting, very nice-smelling when first applied, but they disappear from my skin quite quickly.D.S & Durga's take on Petitgrain...

Bittersweet farewells and a visit to Rye.

I've just got back from dropping my niece Kirsty off at Heathrow airport, as she flies back to Australia tonight. The poor thing has a good 20 hours of flying ahead of her, as well as a number of time zone changes.I felt really sad saying goodbye to her. We had a wonderful time together and I hope she has wonderful memories of England, France and Switzerland.Today we drove down to a lovely little town called Rye, which is in East Sussex, not far...

Friday update

It's been a whole week since I last posted and primarily this is because my niece Kirsty from Australia has been visiting us. I last saw Kirsty nine years ago, not thinking such an elapse of time would take place before we would meet again. She is now twenty one years old, so you can imagine how much has changed. It was my older daughter Hannah's fifth birthday this past Sunday and she had a birthday party with her school friends on Friday,...

Jean Paul Gaultier Kokorico

Kokorico has finally made it to my town and I tried it for the first time today. From what I have read of the reviews, it seems to contain a high dose of ambrox and I would tend to agree with that. What surprised me, though, was how similar this smells to Christian Dior's Fahrenheit Absolute. Perhaps I wouldn't go so far as to say it is a dead ringer, but to my nose it is pretty close. Anyone else tried this yet who could chip in with a few...

Roses part 1

Starting off my series of posts on perfume notes is the humble rose. I say humble only because in some ways the rose is ubiquitous and in this country, one can hardly pass a garden that does not have at least one rose bush or climber of some variety.I do not aim to cover the botany of roses. One could write whole books on roses, and I don't feel I could do the subject any justice. What I can say though,...

Ideas, ideas, ideas

So, following on from my post yesterday, I have a few ideas for the year ahead. Nothing mind-blowing original mind you, but something slightly different to most of what I posted last year.I'm thinking of starting the year by running a series of musings (or whatever one might like to refer to it as) on perfume notes. It's not as if it hasn't been done before, but I'm interested in writing in more detail about perfumes I have tried within a genre and...

To be or not to be...

I've been thinking a lot about my perfume blog lately and wondering what makes a good blog. I started blogging in March 2010. Like many, I was possibly quite idealistic when I started. A year and nine months later, having blogged extensively and also read many other perfume blogs extensively, I have come to realise that while a lot of people can be dismissive about blogging, it  very often is quite a challenge to keep it up.I love writing about...