wendy house

The Viking Portable Library: Dorothy Parker

This weekend involved a new haircut, classic 1920′s bob and a lot of serious, if creative, woodstaining. My log store should now last at least a decade before crumbling. Some of the nearby blooms also got their share of preservative, the pathway is developing early signs of Pollockism

As reward for achieving this chore, with aching arms I tackled the internet to dig up a wee treat – Dorothy Parker – her portable library.  This Viking edition is from 1944, the original publication year. Its one of only 3 books in the ‘portable’ series that has been continuously in print, the other two are the Bible and William Shakespeare

The font is charmingly well spoken

The paper smells of ages

Immersed in Ms Parker

A good place

Riding the 6.45pm First Great Western fast commuter train, peak time, from London Paddington to some exotic location in the west. Standing room only, though some people are sat on the floor in the isles. I choose a place where fresh air can shift the almost rank stench of warm and stale sweat.

I lean against the toilet door.

Surrounded by besuited men with unimaginative ties and gently bulging stomachs. They all wear identically styled black leather shoes that are only differentiated by the size and degree of wear. I run my gaze up their bodies, risking eye-contact. No, not risking eye-contact because they are all immersed in their phones, silently thumbing their importance to others.

No fear of eye-contact, even though I’m the only woman present and dressed in bright-blue with flat shoes conforming to neither girliness, motherliness, nor business attire. I am invisible.

The new factory workers are crammed onto this train like chickens in a battery coup. I thank an undefined diety or two that I am not, and may never be, a conformist – no matter how painful noncomformity can be.

There were lots of best parts at the New Year’s eve PART-tea at the Lilypad.

For example, the kitchen was full of vegetarian Tapas dishes that included Potato. Potatos in cheese, Potatos in Tomatoes, Potatos in garlic, Potatoes in Omelette. A veritable council of potatos. Eventually I escaped from the kitchen… and discovered even more of the best parts including

• local, Loddon, beers
• a walk-in drinks cabinate
• a  gently heated stairless wine cellar
• star guests
• a plethora of tingy lead crystal champagne glasses

The bestest best bit is unpublishable, though I’m reliably informed it smells lovely within a 6 inch range

PS This is a 100 word post, before the PS

The TV is brimming with commercials for perfume occassinaly pausing for a Drama show, Quiz show or the chat show that hangs on to the old school branding of  ‘the news’. The commercials all seem to contain

• artistic images
• scantily dressed young heathy people
• shadows and strong directional lighting
• swathes of chiffon
• kissing and caresses
• water
• last scene including a bottle or a few spoken words, normally the name of the perfume spoken in a French accent

I’m looking forward to when someone innovative and brave steps away from the formula. Lets see some wrinklies wielding power-tools in a well lit garden shed.

‘Eaue de Woodshed‘ bought to you by the gardner and Black and Decker.

Hoorah, I’d consider dousing my skin in that!

tall colleague: it smells like electrical equipment burning in here

wendy: OH No! The last time someone smelt something that no-one-else could…

colleague:  …it happened just afterwards

wendy: everyone out of the building

tall colleague: which electrical equipment should I torch first?

wendy: smells like rain

my colleage looks outside the window at the blue sky, looks back at me, raises a single eyebrow slowly then  the edges of her mouth swing out while her lips furl from her teeth revealing the cheekiest of grins.

wendy: I know, it sounds a bit bonkers, but this room just does smell like rain to me, can you smell it?

colleague: no (laughs, then, about a minute later)  OH MY GOD. WENDY! Look out the window, its raining!

A cloud above the building that we couldn’t see was dumnping its load with avengance, rain against blue skys. To me the smell was overwhelming and kinda sexy.  Apparantly the other people in the room couldn’t smell the rain through the building walls.

On planet wendy we not only smell the future coming we often hear then trip-over it too.

 lover: you’re a very visual person

wendy: I’ve got two eyes and I like to keep them peeled lest I start to loose things and fall over more than normal

lover: no, i mean you like to make love in the daylight, outdoors

wendy: that”s so much more than visual. Thats the breeze drying the sweat on your back, smell of the dew on the grass and the leaf mulch in your hair, the shiver from the scatchy snow on your buttocks.  That’s not just visual, that’s living.

lover: that will take me a while to get used to

But he never got the chance to ‘get used to it’ because I wasn’t patient enough to be waiting for someone in their 40′s to learn how to make love out from under cover of darkness, sheets and comfort of artificially sprung surfaces.  There are times when throwing caution to the evening breeze is exhillerating and worthy of a plunge

Thomones are like pheromones,   you can’t see, hear or smell them but they affect the behaviour of  those around them.   In Thomas’s case he clearly affects the behaviour of Mini’s that come within car parking distance.   Either these Mini’s are stalking him or they find impact of his Thomones too much to resist.   Maybe  the Mini’s natural habitattery is in a  herd, or convoy,   maybe that’s why they were used for the Italian job.

Mini herding behaviour demonstrated:

Outrageously expensive legal person wearing a suit with a tight, short, skirt and a long jacket  with shoulder pads of the size normally  worn American football players:

what a lovelly smell of flowers,   have you got some in your back-pack?

As a very professional person meets me in the security area of a flash building she leans forward and looks around me to the left,   then to the right,   then notices my little back-packand says:

it that all that you have?

I suspect that, if I wanted to impress the business world,  I should be using on of those big wheely-half-suitcase size bags to convey professional person with lots of big documents  rather than a back pack that suggests I’ve just escaped from the garden centre….

When the smell of car,  smell of book,   or smell of plastic  just isn’t enough to please the peoplewho come  within sniffing distance  of  your life.    

When you long for the-day-after-a-night-in-the-pub smokey scent in your hair,  

Try the new tobacco scented shower gel

you know it makes scents.

when smell of book,   or smell of plastic just isn’t enough for the women in your life,   try smell of car …

Loooooook what I’ve got!

A  new technical gadgetty hand-held pocket-sized,   shiney, toy sent to me without solicitation.

This little thingy is going to keep my already seemingly rather complex online banking sign-in that requests out-of-sequence entry of 2 different pin codes,   even more complex.  

Admire It’s all new no-cat-hairs-or-greasy finger-prints casing,   straight out of the box-smells-like-plasitc.   My personal favourite bit is the powder-blue button labelled ‘identity‘.   This button is  for my life as a secret agent,   I can click this and change identity.   For example from Ms to Mrs in the flash of a stereotype.

Scent of autumn arrived this week.   Rolling in through a bedroom window on fine  morning mist to greet my emerging consciousness with cool fingers.   Welcome.

For a man who’s too ‘macho‘ to wear perfume.    Has someone questioned his masculinity?   He needs to reassert he is not a namby-pamby faggot.   “Daytona 500″ scent of the race-track:  oil; exhaust fumes; gasoline. Daytona 500 for men who like to go round in circles,  getting no-where,  fast:

Alternatively,   if you’ve got twice the cash to splash on drowning his natural scent, simply make him hum.    

Looks like the patriarchy is stepping up to sell masculinity using the same tactics that have been tried and tested selling femininity to females…  

A sticker on the underside of my shoe says:

Synthetic upper.  Man made sole.

Woman made upper?  Machine-made upper?  Synthetic sole?   The sole looks like machine moulded plastic rather than ‘hand’ made by people.  It all smells like plastic to me.  I wonder why the sticker doesn’t say something like

plastic

or, to be more specific:

made by people and machines from  plastic

something for the stinker in your life:

hum = verb,   to smell bad.   A ‘hummer’ is something that  emits a bad smell.       How appropriate

Cummings, the  fragrance  official site. The photographic pun’s on traditional perfume marketing images are worth a look.  The whole site is both professional and gently tongue in cheek.   These qualities have  left me wanting  to try this smell.

Excerpts from Cummings, the fragrance site

“With a name like mine it was made to be sprayed all over people’s body’s, what do you think?” A Cummings

“an assertively masculine combination of bergamot, whiskey, cigar, leather, highland mud, and… condom.”    (Allure)

“Mild. Nice. Not obtrusive” (Martha Stewart)

Books and t-shirt both received a thorough face-hugging sniff…  

W