Shazam! A little festive magic...

Right, my dears, it's time for a little bit of festive comfort, a little sparkle, maybe even a little bit of festive healing. Perhaps it's time for our fairy godmother to step out from the shadows and make things just a little bit bettwr with a wave of her wand and a magic word... Something like...
SHAZAM!
Just as well then that my festive review is for that most magical of scents: Shazam from 4160 Tuesdays, and the ever talented Sarah McCartney is our Fairy Godmother.
Its a piquant scent; as sharp and bracing as the orange at the foot of your stocking and as warm and resinous as the heavily laden
Christmas tree in your sitting room.  It's the festive season in a bottle and it opens with a merry little sliver of pantomime sparkle.

Yes, there's a glitter of tangerine and a firework smokiness of basil as the curtains pull back. If you stubbornly still refuse to believe in fairy's you soon will. See, here they come dancing across the stage, luminous pastel shades like candied fruit and sugar almonds. Fairyland is enough to make your mouth water! An inner glow is taking hold, helped by that sharp nip of juniper berries that heralds after theater drinks for the grown-ups. A welcome splash of gin and tonic, like fire caught in a glass, loosening us up, bringing forth laughter. It's not quite Christmas yet though, more like the night before the night before Christmas, but the merriness has already begun.
Just as well, those cocktails haven't made us too bleary eyed (no hangovers from perfume cocktails, think of that) because we're whirling closer and closer to the big day. The tree is up and shedding it's needles sharp and ancient over the middle notes. A Christmas Carol breaking through, notes high and warm; I'm sure I hear "Oh, Christmas Tree", not the most traditional of carols but how fitting it is. And, there's a chorus of spice answering back from the kitchen. Breath in deeply and you will smell all that pepper and cardamon, even a few lingering traces of basil. There's a feast brewing up! Scents and steam rise with the choristers voices from the radio. Those voices which bring with them a suggestion of incense curling round gilded candlesticks from which wax drips and the vast stone depths of churches harbouring a little of the damp of centuries. There will be more of this to come as the darkness closes in outside and the lights come on; fairy lights in every colour imaginable and candles glowing with golden flames. Time spirals out and in, we are tugged back and forth by the time worn movies on T.V and the deeper, sung, memory of another town, lying still and dreamless on another night. You are lost in memory and reflection, until Glenda appears to wave her magic wand and Dorothy clicks her ruby slippers and before you know it, it's midnight on Christmas Eve!
You have slipped into that liminal space between mundane and miracle. Out on the tiles, the neighbourhood cats turn to each other and chat though you remain cheerfully oblivious to their gossip. Too busy venturing out of burrowing into your nice warm house for now is the hour of Midnight Mass, and whilst you may not celebrate there is something alluring about the sounds, the scents and the ritual. Inside, as the incense threads of amber and patchouli spiral in your mind they are greeted by the sweet scent of cocoa brewing on your stove top. It's as luxurious as a present and as sweet as a sugar plum. Not unlike the sugar plum fairy's which will soon be dancing in your head as you lie yourself down for a long winters sleep (all credit to Clement Moore). Tomorrow there will be stockings full of parcels and plum pudding, but tonight there are fairy tales to dream.

Perfume Notes:

Top

Basil, Tangerine, Juniper Berry

Middle

Atlas Cedar, Pink Pepper, Cardamon, Olibanum

Base

Amber, Patchouli, Cacao.

This post is dedicated to Robert Herrmann, a wonderful friend, who was always so kind about my blog posts. 

A Midsummer love story...

by Holly Cox

Roses.

Dense and deep at the heart of the wood roses grew. White roses mingled with red roses whose sharper thorns tore the petals of the white. They seemed to spread and flex the moment anyone drew close.

When Jean was young and filled with curiosity he would run off into the woods and play beneath the branches of the rose bushes.

Time and again he pestered the woodsman Franz until he told him the story of those roses.

'At the center of those roses,' Franz said, 'there lies a sleeper.'

'A tomb?' Jean asked. He knew the soft words people said when they meant death. He could imagine how a tomb, once lovingly planted with roses, could become so overgrown.

'No,' Franz said. 'A sleeper; one day, someone will approach and wake him.'

'Oh?' Jean was not sure he believed this story but he wanted to believe it.

'At the center of those roses, so they say, lies an enchanted Prince,' the woodsman frowned and hefted his axe. 'But who knows if the story is true or not.'

'Have you never seen it for yourself?'

'No, the roses will not let me near.' The woodsman gestured for Jean to watch as he swung his axe down on the mass of roses which strayed over the borders of the path. They swayed for a second and then, where the blade had struck, fresh shoots erupted each tipped with a tight red bud.

'Whatever lies within, it is touched by magic. That much I know for sure. The woodsman hefted his axe onto his shoulder and walked away humming an old country wedding tune. Yet it seemed to Jean that he the roses whispered to him, whenever he drew near he heard them saying;

‘Come to me, my love. Come to me.’

Jean stayed a moment longer and then he had gone home into the setting sun.

Years passed. Jean grew out of his habit of playing in the woods and applied himself to his studies instead. He forgot the roses and the woodsman's fairy tale till one evening, Midsummer Eve as it so happens; returning home from the University at which he studied Jean had cause to pause in the shade of those woods. He should have hurried through them, for at night the trees creaked and the shadows howled and it was all too easy to lose ones way. Ah, but Jean was a rational young man, student bold and brave. Jean did not hurry.

The roses were still there; growing in greater abundance than before. They bowed invitingly to Jean as he approached. The blooms so vivid; so mingled in their red and white he could not resist temptation but reached out a finger to touch them. The rose he touched was white as snow but beneath his finger it flushed as bright as a maiden's cheeks. How beautiful Jean thought and he touched the next bloom and the next till they were all flushed beneath his hand. Flushed their petals fell. With a creak the stems of the roses drew back. Dry bark sighed against dry bark. How could this be? Jean reached out again. He touched the bark of a branch but it shrank away from him. He watched the branches wither and part into the unmistakable shape of a passageway.

He recalled the story and he hesitated. One day, someone would come to awaken the Prince. However, even if there was any truth in the story that person would not be him. He was not a prince or even a nobleman. No, he was a poor student who would, in the fullness of time, inherit a bakery in the town.

Yet the roses parted to grant him entry.

He put one foot on the hearth and then, feeling a little bolder, he stepped all the way into the passageway. It was dark ahead of him; he put out his hand to feel the way and felt the rose thorns prick his skin. He feared that the entrance would vanish behind him; he feared that the roses would swallow him up but the woods remained behind him, twilight blue and full of noises. He took a few slow steps forward; he felt the prick of thorns with each step. There was a light up ahead, a flickering lantern flame whose light fell on a stone wall and a door of metal furnished oak.

There was a ring on the door and he reached for it. The door fell open at his touch. Dust hung in the air before him, bright sparks in the light of torches that ringed the walls of a large circular chamber. At the center of the room stood a dais draped in velvet which must once have been sublime but had succumbed to the passage of time and hung in dusty folds. All of this must have been here for some time yet the torches still burned and perfume scented the air.

'It cannot be.' Jean said to himself and he half expected that it would all fall away then like the figments of a dream. Nothing moved. He looked at the dais again and he saw, resting on the velvet, an object both beautiful and horrible: a glass coffin. Within the smooth crystal walls he could make out the shape of a body. Jean stepped back, he did not mind admitting that even his rational mind was afraid of the decay time must have wrought. However, fascination got the better of him. He stepped forward and was astounded to see the body of a young man about his own age and still very much whole. There were spices and solutions he reminded himself that could make a body seem whole for centuries. A clever trick, so carefully done in this instance that he could have sworn the young man was alive. Dark curls tumbled around a fresh face with flushed pink cheeks and lips red as cherries. Jean's footsteps echoed on the floor as he moved closer. He saw the hands of the Prince folded at his waist. He saw the Princes clothes, the style two or three hundred years out of style. He must have lain here that long at least. Jean brushed a little dust from the lid of the coffin. As he did so the whole coffin fell to snow and blew about the room leaving nothing between him and the Prince.

It must have been very fragile after all this time and shattered, Jean told himself. After all, glass does not turn to snow.

He could have sworn he saw the Prince's lips part a little revealing moist pearly teeth. The Prince's nose twitched with breath. Jean leaned forward and stared at these signs of life. He must have lost his footing for a second because in a second his own lips touched the Princes lips; lips deceptively hot as blood. He drew back, reached for the handkerchief in his pocket and dabbed at his lips. He was not a superstitious man in the habit of kissing dead lips and relics.

'At last,' a soft voice whispered, 'you have come!'

The Prince's dark eyes were open and his mouth curved into a smile. He spoke in the most beautiful voice and with each word the roses that choked the windows fell away with a great rustle of leaves. 

'I knew you would come,' The Prince said. His lips pressed; warm, against Jean’s lips. Jean’s arms slowly moved to enfold the prince. Outside the windows of the tower, the roses died away to a last few delicate blooms and the moonlight fell cool upon the tower floor.

On Midsummer Night, by the light of the moon, Jean and the Prince talked and embraced until 

falling asleep, on the cusp of dawn, the sunlight of the longest day found them and warmed them as 

one.   

©Holly Cox 2019

A return to reviews...

With the heatwave of July and August fading away into a distant, though still unpleasant memory, I finally feel like experimenting with perfume again. I know that it may sound ridiculous, but when the heatwave was at it's height I was only able to indulge myself with a few delicate favourites. Soft, light scents were a must and I clung to the calming cool breeze of aldehydes. Spicy perfumes and new additions to the olfactory landscape were quite impossible.
Today, however, I dug out a little vintage bottle of Worth's Ver Toi and am currently luxuriating in it's light woody loveliness. It's given me that perfume sample itch again and caused so many thoughts to rise to the top of my mind. So, this Autumn, there will be a return to perfume reviews on this blog. There will also be diversions and digressions, no doubt, into many other subjects. 

Bird Bones (a short story).

                                                                                                               ©Holly Cox 2018

 The sound of birdsong woke her in the cool half light of morning. She knew if she stretched her arm out beyond the limits of the blankets she would feel the chill and the little rush of possibilities that a new morning might bring.

For a few delicious minutes she was young again, in the country, and beyond her window the whole world waited for her. Then the dull ache in her joints came back to remind her and she recalled that the birdsong now came not from the warm living bodies of birds but from the clock radio on her bedside table.

‘Oh,’ she said, out loud. Then, hearing how the word hung so alone in the air, she said again, ‘oh.’

Minutes passed, the spell broken she rolled over and tuned away from the station of birdsong; squared her shoulders at the grown up responsibility to listen, each and every day, to the world’s misfortunes.

She studied the wallpapers pattern as she listened and weighed up all the different options she had considered for its replacement. She had seen a pleasant floral in town the other day and her friend, Elisa, had suggested a light stripe like a seaside chalet so that, with a few prints and some shells lined up upon the mantelpiece, she might always have summer in her house. Elise even claimed to know where she might get a stuffed seagull, a real one, to affix to the ceiling.

‘No,’ she said quickly, ‘too macabre.’ The floral would be better.

She stayed in bed until the news had exhausted all calamities and the weather man had confidently predicted many smaller inconveniences. Finally she pushed herself up over the edge of the bed; her feet patting about for the soft edges of her slippers whilst she felt on the table for her glasses.

                                                                           ***

The cars passing in the street and the kettle boiling on its stand set her teacups rattling on the shelf. So frail in their rattling that she feared they would spring and shake to slivers. Hurrying to catch her favourite with its pattern of Chinese songbirds; she tried to hum as she filled the cup with tea but the tune seemed to perish on her lips.

Seated at the little table with her tea she found her gaze drawn to her hand, pale, thin fingers clawed around the handle of her teacup. She saw and she could not help but be reminded of the bird’s skulls her brother kept lined up on his bedroom shelf.

“Tha’s a sparrow, tha’s a little kind of lapwing and tha’ big one, tha’s a crow.” He admired them for their lightness, for the way the sunlight filtered through them when you held them up. He had told her it was the lightness that allowed them to soar up into the sky and be utterly free.

She recalled too how his adored collection used to make her school friends shudder and he, in turn, thrilled with a boys delight at their horror. “T’is what we all come to in the end,” he said and laughed.

He had been right in the end. For was she not now dry and fragile as bird bones? She might be perfectly pleased with the transformation too if only she truly could lift up and fly away.

The turn of the year...

Well, midsummer has flown by, as ephemeral as a moth flitting through moonlight. Now, begins the long, languid sink into lengthening nights and shorter days. It's a loss and, at the same time, a moment of joy for the solstice holds open a door to the seasons yet to come. Autumn lies on the other side of that door, which I like to imagine resembles the moss cloaked, ivy wreathed door leading to Francis Hodgson Burnett's The Secret Garden, and winter too. There are falling leaves there and bonfires, hot tea and the possibility of snow. Berries hang, dark and red on the other side of that door, crows caw and wheel over stubble speckled fields and far off, in the distance, the faint fairy lights of a Christmas tree beckon.
For now, however, luxuriate in the honeyed sun of long days, the flowers blooming. Take inspiration from the summer months, store up the days as one stores up summer berries and locks their sun soaked secrets in jars of jam.
I know I will be letting the summer inspire me, and after the summer, the autumn will inspire me and after the autumn, the winter... And so it goes, on and on, a beautiful seasonal dance.

©H.Cox 2018
A page of Apple folklore from my folklore grimoire,

Apologies for my long absence...

Apologies for my long absence from the blogosphere. Alas, life has been rather hectic recently and inspiration has eluded me, buried beneath a deluge of real life problems to be dealt with. Sadly, this post will, by necessity, be short since there are still things which need doing this Bank Holiday weekend. Hopefully, I will be back to longer posts next week.
 However, whilst I have been absent, I have not been idle. In April I managed to complete Camp NaNoWriMo and return to the pleasure of writing poetry, I've been reading some wonderful books (everything from Michel de Montaigne to Angela Carter) and this week I even found time to make myself a Summer dress (see pictures below).

© H.Cox 2018

© H.Cox 2018

For now, I shall leave you with a blog recommendation for those who love reading, writing and historical fiction: 

The History Girls Blog

So many wonderful articles on this blog, so if you've never stumbled across it before, do.

And, as for perfume recommendations: try Imaginary Authors delicious perfume Violet Disguise.
It's the most delightful woody, earthy violet perfume, ideal for midsummer nights. 

Violets, violets, delicious violets! A review of Chanel's Misia.

When I was a little girl, I used to adore a particular sweet: Parma Violets. These appear be a particularly British sweet and a divisive one at that, people either love them or they hate them. I loved them. I loved their scent, their flavour and the slightly subversive idea of eating a flower (even highly processed and blended with sugar). When I was older, and heavily steeped in Jill Barklem's Brambly Hedge books, I sought out candied violets too and, predictably enough, I loved those too. It was practically a given that, once I became obsessed with perfume, I would adore violet perfumes. 

As far as I am concerned there is one violet perfume, a relatively recent addition to the genre, which really takes the crown as the Queen of Violet perfumes: Misia from Chanel's Les Exclusifs range.

Misia is availible as an Eau de Parfum but the version upon which this review is based is the Eau de toilette and I have always felt that violets are particularly suited to the light airy composition of eau de toilettes, as Shakespeare said: 

"A violet in the youth of primy nature

Forward, not permanent, sweet not lasting

The perfume and suppliance of a moment, no more"

Hamlet, Act I, Scene III

If you want words beautifully composed to capture a feeling, one should always turn to the Bard.
    If you want a beautifully composed perfume try Misia. Though, I would have to say, for an EDT these violets, unlike Shakespeare's, are quite long lasting. On my skin, and everyone skin is different so I can make no promises, Misia lasts for roughly six hours before I need to reapply a dab or two.

 Like most Chanel perfumes, Misia carries a signature top note of aldehydes, a spring breeze ruffling the delicate petals of a field of violets. Oh, and how deeply violets dominate the composition! These are, deep, dew moistened violets; their petals sweet and their roots sunk deep into the moist, dark earth. Violets in abundance, their sweetness rounded and warmed by middle notes of raspberry, rose and peach; their roots made temptingly, tantalizingly dark by notes of orris and tonka bean. It's a dancing scent, at once modern and fresh and wreathed in the sunlit glow of memories.

     Misia is a perfume of rococo dressing tables heaped with delicate lace and glittering silver; it's the cloud of powder artfully applied to the maestro's coiffed wig before he settles himself at the piano and dazzles his audience; it's the scent nestled in the beauty spotted decollete of a powdered Mademoiselle; it's the delicate billow of scent that clings to a ribbon tied bundle of Edwardian letters and sepia toned photographs.
     It is also the perfume of an evening stroll by the river; a late spring evening out; a Valentines day bouquet; it's the perfume of romance. 
I can think of no one this scent would not suit. How beautifully it would shimmer and glow on every skin! I do not subscribe to the idea of gendered perfumes and, to me, Misia is decidedly unisex.
How delicate and delicious it would be with a slight rasp of stubble! How delicate and delicious it would be on soft, downy skin!
If you want to escape from the cliche (delightful as it is) of a bouquet of roses this Valentines Day, why not try Misia: a delicious bouquet of violets!

For more information on Violets in Shakespeare, their meanings and quotations, I direct you here:
  A Shakespeare Garden.