A Saturday jaunt to the Capital

My wife and I, and our two kids, spent the day in London on Saturday. Nothing remarkable about that, except that as a family, we only get up from Tunbridge Wells about twice a year. Since leaving London in 2007 we haven't really missed the place, but as the children are getting a bit older its nice to make the odd excursion. 

On this occasion we went to the museums in South Kensington, the Science Museum and The Natural History Museum. For those of you not that familiar with London, most major museums offer free entry these days, and have done so since about 2001. Major exhibitions are different; one still pays to see these. There is actually a lot of free stuff to see and do in London, which makes it a great place to visit, and also with children. For those of you who have been to any of the museums in South Kensington, you will have probably found out for yourself that they are exceptionally busy, particularly the Natural History Museum. It was manic this weekend, with literally hundreds of kiddies running riot, including ours. Anyone with young children will know that little minds do not have great attention spans, so we only spent about an hour in each of the two museums. My older daughter Hannah enjoyed looking at the aeroplanes at the Science Museum. They have one of the engines from a Boeing 747 on display and it is a frighteningly massive piece of equipment, close up. Both children loved the Natural History Museum, which has a great (if busy) dinosaur display and lots of the to-be-expected stuffed wild animals, like a lion, tiger, gorilla, etc. Particularly impressive is the skeleton and also life-size model of a blue whale, which takes up the better part of the roof space of a huge exhibition hall. Imagine meeting one of those in real life!

Of course, London being London, and me being me, crazy perfume fanatic that I am, no visit would be complete without a brief excursion to a couple of perfume places. I popped into Les Senteurs in Belgravia (more about that in another post) and Harrods in Knightsbridge. As Valentines Day is on Monday, Harrods was awash with zombie men trying to find a last-minute perfume for their partners and of course, sales assistants waving perfume bottles in one's face. I have learned to bump them off, mostly politely, but I do find Harrods daunting at times, particularly around Christmas and Valentines Day. I did smell the two newish Guerlains on paper, Arsene Lupin Dandy and Voyou. I must say that neither made a huge impression on me, but I clearly would need to test them on skin to form a proper and fair opinion. Of the two I think I preferred Dandy, but both disappeared very quickly on paper, lasting not much more than a couple of hours. I also tried Fleurs de Sel by Miller Harris, which I've never seen before. It was interesting. Slightly weird, but worth a revisit at some point. My final spray was Secret Oud, by Caron. The sales lady said that Harrods have the exclusive right to sell this in London, but a hour later I saw it at Les Senteurs as well, so I am not convinced she was correct. In any event, it smells rather interesting, although the oud had more of a vetiver vibe on paper than the oud smell I was expecting. This is seriously expensive at about £137 for a 50ml bottle (not sure what this is in US dollars). Actually, the Guerlains are bloody expensive too, not much cheaper than the Caron, and with less staying power, on paper at least.

After the perfume detour, we popped into a pub in Victoria for a quick pint of Doom Bar beer, then it was off to a Chinese Buffet place that we always used to eat at when we lived in London. It is cheap and cheerful, and doesn't feel awfully clean, if I'm being honest, but the crispy duck and pancakes are yum, as is the crispy seaweed. My two girls loved it, having not eaten Chinese before. We eventually got home at about 9pm that night and the poor mites were utterly exhausted. Actually, we felt a bit guilty keeping them out so long, but they did have a good time and we don't do this often.

So, all in all a good day, but I must admit that one day in London at a time is more than enough for me. It can be a crazy busy place and it's always good to return to a more mundane and sedate pace of life all being told!

Perfume beginnings

Welcome to my blog on fragrance and perfume. As this is my first post and no one knows who the hell I am, it is unlikely that anyone is reading this, or if you are, perhaps you stumbled across it by accident.

Firstly, in case anyone is wondering, I am blogging on perfume purely out of interest and love. It is self-gratification, and like a lot of bloggers, I can claim no genuine background in perfume - I certainly have no qualifications to write at all, let alone about fragrance. I have no literary background, no history of being published and do not claim to be good at writing at all!

Secondly, my opinions about fragrance are exactly that. I am biased, probably like many others, and also influenced by how I feel on a given day. I find that my mood can alter my fragrance perception and appreciation quite considerably. I do try to wear a perfume or perfume sample a number of times to give it a fair chance, but even so, if I don't like something, I will say so.

How did I "get into" fragrance? Well, to be honest, up until 2007 I wore fragrance usually because it had been given to me as a present, or probably because I had read about it. My very early exposure to scent was through my dad; I have vivid memories to this day of the smell of Old Spice, which was always in his medicine cabinet. In my teenage years I wore stuff like Brut and Tabac, graduating to Hugo Boss in my early twenties. My dad worked for a while for a pharmacy and he got given quite a few testers and other perfumes through promotions and I was passed quite a few perfumes, which at the time I wore only because they were there. Ones that spring to mind are Tsar by Van Cleef & Arpels and Farenheit by Christian Dior.

Anyway, for the next ten years I "dabbled" a bit with fragrance. I tried Paul Smith London, which I liked a lot, then bought Helmut Lang for Men, which I read was Robbie Williams' favourite. But in all honesty, I never thought about fragrance much, and at the time if you had to mention a perfume structure to me, or talk about top, heart and base notes, I would have stared at you blankly. 

Then for my birthday in 2007, my wife gave me a bottle of Calvin Klein's Euphoria for Men and that is when my perfume journey started. Now I can hear you say: "Calvin Klein, hmm, not exactly Eureka! is it?" Well, first, I am not a perfume snob, and second, for some reason I looked up Euphoria on the internet, as I had never heard of it. I clicked on the first link I saw and was directed to some weird site called Basenotes, and lo and behold, to my surprise there was a whole load of reviews on this perfume. Reading a bit further, I found out that all Calvin Klein's perfumes were listed with reviews and indeed, so were other perfume houses, most I'd never heard of. Two hours later I'd learned that there are hundreds of perfume houses, and that people seemed to be obsessed with perfume. I even discovered that perfumes have a progression, from top notes to heart notes to basenotes.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, I started to read Basenotes regularly, then started visiting some blogs, such as Now Smell This and Perfume Smellin Things and the bug started to bite. At the time I lived in London and would spend almost every lunch visiting department stores like Debenhams and House of Fraser, spritzing on perfumes I had read about. Within six months I had started to become interested in trying more niche perfumes, so went to Liberty, Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols, discovering houses like L'artisan, Serge Lutens and Maitre Perfumeur et Gantier, to name but a few. I then read about a place called Les Senteurs, which specialised in hard to find niche fragrances. I popped in one day and a charming bloke guided me through some of their stock, giving me samples of the mens' Carons, Knize 10 and Uomo by Lorenzo Villoresi. I was hooked - big time. What started as a quick dabble into finding out what people thought Euphoria smelled like had ended up within a year as what quite frankly, was fast amounting to an obsession!

This post is really drifting on now, so apologies. Three years on, I am a full-on perfume addict. I read many blogs daily, I visit department stores, both locally and in London, whenever I can. I usually order samples monthly from sites like First in Fragrance, Les Senteurs and Luckyscent. I cadge and beg what I can for free. I order directly from houses. You name it, I do it. And you know what? I love it and make no apology for my obsession. It gives me daily joy and satisfaction and I can't ask for more than that.

Over the next few weeks and months I will aim to delve a little deeper into my obsession. I don't know exactly what I will write about. Some days it may be perfume reviews, other days it may be about what I find interesting or irritating about the fragrance industry. Who knows. I am no perfume expert and I know there are many people who are able to write about perfume and review perfume far more intelligently and eloquently than I probably will. However, this is perfume in my world, the way I see and interpret it and I hope if you reading this, that you will join me on a journey of discovery from time to time.