I Found A Magical Mystery Tour Inside A Thrift Store Perfume Bottle ~ Then Set The Genie Free.
I was feeling very Barbara Cartland in the charity shop today and I bought what I thought was just a really decadent 99p bottle fit for my Hollywood Regency dressing table, but when I picked it up it was way too heavy for its faux-gold plastic-metal self and turned out to be full of perfume. A mysterious liquid I assumed would be a toxic mix of noxious gasses and counterfeit chemicals, it was even quite intense just sitting there lidded-up on the shop counter.
I’ve been thinking about choosing a new perfume for about three years now, since my perfectly matched “Dark Amber And Ginger Lilly” Jo Malone ran out, but I’ve got an extremely sensitive sense of smell, I used to use it in my business as an organic spice merchant, and wearing the wrong perfume in the wrong climate can totally unbalance me. I had absolutely no intention of wearing whatever poison was festering in this murderous phial, no matter how seductive the wrapper.
Jo Malone perfume “Dark Amber And Ginger Lilly”.
This was an intriguing, exotic little murderous phial though, sitting there all gold and fancy giving me the eye. The writing on the bottle was Arabic, but it did have an English script word Asgharali, so after a cup of tea and a sit down I took a little sniff of the nozzle and did not expect what I got - a tantalising whiff of a complicated and alluring character, just how I like my cats.
My curiosity will be the death of me, I know this, however I was convinced enough that I wasn’t about to acid attack myself and I gave it a spritz on my left wrist. The smell sent me into an immediate catnip frenzy, it was high and sweet and talcum powdery like the 1970s Yardley “Nights In White Satin” I found last year, still boxed, in the flea market. Not as floral and sea breezey as the Yardley, but bubbling hot with multiple unknown components - like an Arabian Night.
Vintage perfume “Nights In White Satin” by Yardley.
It felt frantic like tasting powdered sugar on Turkish delight for the very first time, then opening a dark, dusty, musky wooden box from a pharaohs tomb, steeped in myrrh and ancient Egyptian embalming oils. It was so fast I felt like I’d been whisked off on a magic flying carpet to a time and place that doesn’t exist and I’d spend the rest of my life looking for Gertrude Bell.
I couldn’t stop inhaling it from my wrist. I wanted to experience every second of it’s mystical journey. I don’t know how long it had been trapped in the bottle, like a genie desperate to get out and be it’s fabulous self, but it was living it’s dreams and singing it’s song now.
The first verse smelt like a manic souk near a dockyard - sweet like a fruity sherbet and sounded like a top C. After five beats of a long inhalation it dropped an full octave and sang out like a hot rose in a Turkish bath, dark, ‘bassy’ and full of Eastern promise.
I adore the unique smells of countries, and I often make a synesthesia link with people I know with a scent. One friend will always be tarragon and another is cooked Bramley apples. Although I’ve never been to Pakistan, I couldn't stop connecting this scent to the country. Not everywhere, but that unique smell that occurs in a country which can’t be identified. It’s the alchemy of all things. It’s lingering in the doorway of a shop or clinging to the coat of a cat when it comes home in the middle of the night. However it’s possibly because I’d found a gorgeous rose pink Pakistani kameez the day before.
Rose pink embroidered Pakistani kameez.
I’ll never find out what the essence of Pakistan smells of, as my exploring days are over, and my flying carpet has been decommissioned. A 30 minute flight on Google Air dropped me off at the Amazon where I discovered my mystery potion was called ‘Safa’ by Asgharali, from The Kingdom Of Bahrain and fragantica.com of the Internet had diarised it as “A Woody Cypher fragrance for women. Safa was launched in 2014. Top notes are grapefruit, ginger and apple; middle notes are rose leather and spicy notes; base notes are musk, patchouli and sandalwood.” Told ya. I’ve still got the powersnout.
I feel like I finally found my new perfume and with it I have found a new identity - Florence Of Arabia. I wonder how it will be received in the flea market tomorrow?
