Blog
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I Cheated On My Advent Calendar. She Knew.
Twenty-four little boxes along the windowsill, one a day. I opened five on the 2nd. Box five was a bottle of perfume, and my wife...
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I Hate Black Friday
Not the sales, but the prep. Every oil and elixir sits in steel for three months, so everything you open this Christmas had to be...
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My Wife Did What To Our Radiators?
No heating until November, said the whiteboard. When we finally cracked on 24 October, the flat didn't smell of burnt dust. It smelled like a...
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Everyone At Work Thinks I Bake
A warm vanilla perfume, one question in the office kitchen on a Monday, and by Friday my name was on the charity bake sale sheet...
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A Stranger's Perfume In Hiding
A pound for a second-hand book in a charity coffee shop, and a faint, amazing smell that got stronger with every chapter. On page 112,...
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The One Thing I Always Got Right
A reader's story. Ten birthdays, ten bottles of the same perfume, and a tenth-anniversary confession over the good tablecloth about where they'd all gone.
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The Best Occasion For Perfume
A reader's story. A perfume that sat on the dresser for six years waiting for an occasion special enough, and the drizzly Tuesday in October...
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When I Was Ready, It Was Gone
Same train, same carriage, same seat, and one morning a scent that made me look up from my phone. I spent weeks working up to...
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Can You Recreate It?
A customer brought us an old bottle with one drop left and asked if we could make it again. A few months later, she wrote...
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My Sense Of Smell Left Without Telling Me
A nursery cold, a bowl of oranges, and the moment a peeled satsuma put me straight back into Christmas. I hadn't noticed my sense of...
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The Perfume That Nearly Got Away
I followed a stranger's perfume round the shop. Somewhere between the bread and the fridges, something stopped me. An old favourite I hadn't come across...
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Five Smells That Ended My Summer
I walk every day, and all summer the air smelled of other people's barbecues, suncream and straw. Over the last few weeks that's quietly changed,...
