I arrived in Covent Garden way ahead of time, as is my way. I hate arriving late to anything and I loathe rushing. The British weather mocked the fact that my friends and I had arranged to meet at a rooftop bar and had obviously listened carefully to our deliberations about taking it gently in the London heat. The preceding days had been marked by endless sunshine. On the day we were to meet, a cloak of grey appeared, like someone had hastily covered up all the shiny objects. An insistent breeze ensured that hair was frequently plastered to lip balm. Never mind. The sun was shining within at the prospect of catching up with friends and a pre-meet mooch around.
I wondered into the Apple Store just because I occasionally like to stroke a keyboard. There was a slightly dystopian air mainly because there was someone miked up, delivering a talk in front of a large screen about how best to take photographs. The people who were sitting down - mainly tourists - were doing so, not to learn about angles and cropping, but to have a rest from trudging around the shops. They sat scrolling on their own phones or chatting to whoever they were with. The speaker ploughed on as though they were delivering a TED talk and no one was engaged. My God, I thought. How utterly soul destroying. I supposed that getting paid to be ignored made it marginally more acceptable.
On the way out, my eye was caught by large group of children on a school trip, crowded around a table, hunched over in intense concentration. Each sported a backpack so that they looked like a huddle of multi-coloured turtles. I’d clocked them on the way in and they hadn’t moved in the intervening time when I was stroking keyboards. They could have been marvelling at some experiment or scrutinising bugs, but it was the power of the screen that had them enraptured.
I decided to duck into Jo Malone for a brief wander. So many places now have security given the rising tide in shoplifting. Only ten minutes earlier, two police cars with blue lights flashing and sirens sounding had pulled over in front of a convenience store near Trafalgar Square. The owners were telling the police of two bottles of wine that had been taken. I assumed therefore, that this was a precaution against a smash and grab raid of Lime Basil and Mandarin.
I had the luxury of around ten seconds before a sales assistant appeared by my side asking if I wanted any help.
“Oh, I’m good thanks. Just having a quick browse.” The tired mantra of the vague under-committed with the polite subtext of wanting to be left alone.
“Which scents do you like?” Oh. I’m not going to be left alone. I have to answer a question.
“Oh, well I do like the lime, basil and mandarin, but that’s a bit obvious isn’t it?” Because I can’t resist a pleasant exchange, I realise I am now committed to a cat and mouse olfactory sales ambush.
“How about English Pear and Freesia? Would you like to try it?”
“Ewwww no!” I say physically recoiling too quickly and shaking my head, realising too late that I have failed to deploy fragrance-related diplomacy. My response reminded me of the time I was having dinner in a beautiful restaurant in a Loire château. When a nearby American family were presented with the cheese ‘chariot,’ the teen among them loudly proclaimed to the devotional hush of the dining room, “Ewwww. French cheese stinks!”
“I’m not really into ‘fruity’ or overly floral sweet scents,” I explained, by way of qualification. “I quite like citrus, ozonic types or warm and smoky notes.” Listen to me now, talking about ‘notes.’ I’ll be throwing something out about fragrances with a ‘yuzu base’ any minute. Naturally, I have also invited further ‘experimentation’ rather than close the exchange down.
Before I know it ‘Cucumber and Earl Grey’ is whipped from the shelf and sprayed liberally onto one of those strips of paper that are weirdly redolent of a pregnancy testing kit and those PH experiments you do in science at school. You stand there inhaling and wagging the paper strip around while your brain is screaming, “What the fuck am I meant to be smelling here? Somebody tell me!”
“No,” I declare on Cucumber and Earl Grey. “It’s a bit too powdery for me. You know, it has ‘old Aunt smell’ vibes.” I laugh and then realise that the sales assistant is not laughing with me, and that her eyes have widened at what I’ve just said. I think she may be Spanish and I feel that I have now personally insulted her extended family and only confirmed to her how awful the British are to theirs.
“Try it on the skin, perhaps,” she says. Even though I protest that I’m already wearing perfume (being unfaithful with Narcisco Rodriguez ‘For Her’) and I’m perfectly content(ish) wafting paper strips around, a cloud of Cucumber and Earl Grey descends on the back of my hand. She’s punishing me for being rude to old Aunts, I think. No. I still smell like an afternoon tea with the Bloomsbury set, which is probably not the correct analogy as they were doing much wilder things (with each other) than afternoon tea.
So that the other hand doesn’t feel left out, it is shrouded in a mist of Fig and Lotus Flower. I’m advised not to be too concerned about the proliferation of different aromas as this is all perfect for the art of ‘scent layering.’ I’m more concerned that I will asphyxiate a tube carriage.
Perhaps I am being asphyxiated because I’m starting to feel a little confused and express an interest in the Fig and Lotus Flower, but only the small spendy bottle and not the large very spendy bottle. Ah, no small ones in stock. That neatly resolves things for me and provides me with the perfect excuse to exit without feeling I have wasted her time.
“What about Mimosa and Cardamom?” she throws in.
“Mimosa? You have a perfume with mimosa?” Now it’s my eyes that have widened and my previous attempt at louche disinterest replaced with overt enthusiasm. Damn. She knows I’m hooked now.
The thing is, a while ago I was googling perfumes that had a hint of mimosa. The reason being, that on a trip to Namibia last summer, during one of the game drives in the Etosha National Park, I started to drive my family mad. “Can you smell that? What is it? It’s incredible!” I wasn’t referring to wild animal dung. It would come in wafts. There was a mellow warmth in the smell hanging in the air. It was exquisite and, on a deeper level, for whatever reason, profoundly comforting. It cast something of a spell. There one minute, gone the next. Anticipation and reward. The scent of a beautiful day seeing spectacular animals. At ease. Happiness. Wonder.
Down came the bottle of Mimosa and Cardamom and, as the backs of my hands had been well and truly spritzed, the assistant gently pulled up the cuff of my leather jacket to access a part of my wrist not covered in Narscisco. Would we be seeking an exposed ankle next, I wondered? We were now in risky, high stakes territory. What if it was awful? What if it rejected me?
Despite the fug of Earl Grey and Cucumber and Fig and Lotus Flower, I managed to hone in on Mimosa. It was divine and I was instantly transported from the buzz of Covent Garden to the hush and ochre tones of that magical trip. The smell I sought had indeed been bottled.
I have to give the assistant credit. She got her sale (only a small bottle for now though). Yet, she knew nothing of my memory and mimosa fixation when I walked in. Of the plethora of fragrances on offer, strange that she alighted on that one, and I wasn’t aware of its existence.
As I pay, declining the offer of a free engraving of my initials on the bottle cap, I notice a couple sitting to one side at a table drinking champagne. The sort of thing you might do in a jewellers as you’re buttered up to part with your life’s savings. I wondered if they were compiling an entire ‘fragrance wardrobe’ or something.
I leave reeking of four different scents and am slightly overpowered every time I lift a hand near my face. I splutter my way down The Strand as my unintended ‘layering’ catches the back of my throat. I am that person who walks past and smothers you in a backdraft of overkill. I apologised to my friends on the cloudy rooftop in case they thought I had taken leave of my olfactory senses.
In an unexpected way, mimosa and its memories found me again, and - as a single fragrance - I am very much enjoying it!
a beautiful writeup of life's happy accidents. thanks for sharing!!