Such times. Such times!
My body is going through it at the moment. I was on the mini pill for about ten years, which knocked my periods on the head, thank the lord, for they were agonising, messy and disruptive, and made me sad and crazy. But with not having them, I always wondered how I'd know when I was menopausing. Well. Turns out you just know. Everything slides around in your head all of the time, and you could power a small village if they could only bottle your heat and your fury. Also, the sweating. Ye gods. Could water a small village too (or at least their marsh samphire crop, that could cope with the salt, right?).
I should be eating cooling foods and drinking green tea. I should be wearing natural fibres and going for calming walks in nature. I know. I should not be downing Rioja and listening to true crime podcasts and generally stomping around. I haven't been entirely neglectful on the self care front, I have linen pyjamas and a lavender pillow spray and I swim in a cool pool where the water hits my red hot armpits and I think YES. I have started getting my top lip waxed. I have bought this book. I read *everything* that appears in a private Facebook group I was invited to a couple of year ago which is called Hot Ladies (Oxbridge level menopause discourse, I love it).
Having read the book and absorbed the experiences of the Hot Ladies, I made an appointment with my GP for the discussion of my options. After the discussion of my options, about eight months ago I switcherooed from Cerazette, saviour of my 40s, to something called Premique, which I hope will do the same for my 50s. It's a lot better. A LOT better. But still fairly early days. Watch this space (or, you know, don't).
But I think, without getting too woo about it, that whatever is happening to my body, there's also some soul processing happening. It's not like I've had the worst pandemic, millions have had it way worse. I'm double jabbed and boosted, I can still smell, at some point last September I could nearly do crow pose. None of my immediate loved ones have carked it. But however you look at it, there's no way round the fact that It Has Been A Right Two Years.
So... #blessed. And yet, somehow, not? Maybe as a consequence of my over-thinking (see blog posts passim) I am really shit at gratitude journals and the like. I tried it for a week and I annoyed the hell out of myself. I need space for dwelling in the bleakness. I don't drink tea, and I don't eat cake. Do not invite me to an appreciative enquiry. There are no live love laugh cushions or cursively fonted self-help books in my house, no sirree bob, though I do have a well-thumbed 30 year old copy of Our Bodies Ourselves. Self awareness is the way to survive the white supremacist heteronormative patriarchy, kids.
I don't feel, like, great about this. How nice (a word I also do not like, even if it's the biscuit, because I do not like biscuits) it would be to luxuriate in my cosseted existence, while virtue signalling, dispensing generosity on my own terms, and really not paying attention to much beyond that. It's the MO of many people in high income countries, and many high income people in low income countries. But any amount of not-even-over-thinking about the world, in fact the merest glance at Greta's Twitter, will create plenty of space for dwelling in the bleakness, you know? And while I love a negroni and a dancefloor at least as much as the next person, I harbour a deep suspicion of the people who are all about the sunshine. (Except maybe the sunshine causing literally unsurvivable wet bulb temps of 35+ in Pakistan amirite?)
But you can't live in a ditch unless you intend to die in one, so a girl needs strategies. And scent has always been one of mine. As a teenager, I experimented. There was an Impulse Day and Night double set of body sprays that I leant on for a while. In the sweaty bread shop where I spent my Saturdays for £1.35 an hour I would dip into the kiosk that housed the phone and our coats and bags to refresh myself with Day, and once I was outta there I'd shower and become Night. I once bought a can of Femfresh because I thought, well, I'm fem and I want to be fresh. I was spraying it under my arms till my mum saw it and explained what it was really for and why it was terrible. Just Seventeen had a lot to answer for. I wasn't even 17. (I have never deo'd my foof, for the record, but if you have well, no judgement here).
Then the Body Shop arrived in Blackpool. My first purchase was a perfume called Aquarius - every woman needs a signature fragrance, I was learning from J17, and how could it not be a perfect match for my 16 yo proud Aquarian self? Short answer: because it honked. It honked so much one of my friends' mums asked her to ask me not to wear it again if I came round. I did not comply with the request (it was my signature fragrance!!), but at one level I knew she was right.
So I adjusted my perspective and lo! (and approx 50% of my lady cohort will be right here with me, the other 50% being Dewberry girls) there was White Musk. This glorious (I loved it till just very very recently for reasons I shall not disclose but let's just say it is still some people's signature scent), era-defining perfume carried me through my late teens and all of my 20s. I sprayed the cologne on the clothing of the boy I wanted to go out with (he went out with me). I wore the oil on my pulse points every day. I used it in the bath and the shower and it was part of me. Ten years later, a friend I hadn't seen since uni walked into the pub with her husband and said 'I told him, she'll be sitting there wearing fingerless gloves, rolling a cigarette, drinking a pint and smelling of White Musk.'
I love to be a constant in a changing world (as another uni friend beautifully badged me a few years after this), but I have to say that I did eventually outgrow that scent. I will always love it, and you can sprinkle it on my grave, but I needed to move on.
I didn't find a new scent in my 30s. While having a ridiculous weakness for mainstream male cologne (honestly, if I'm ever in the market and you fancy me and have access to original Kouros, you're halfway there), the same does not apply to the lady scent. There was ol' unisex CKOne and its ilk, but nah. They remind me of ladette culture, and I did not belong there. The closest I got was a huge retro trip, back to eau de cologne from Boots in giant bottles and 4711 - a classic from the 70s that an old lady (I say old, but I was eight) I spent a lot of time with used to drench everything in. Love an eau de cologne.
My early 40s took me to Boswells in Oxford, where I discovered Roger & Gallet. This was something of a breakthrough. Gingembre and Cedrat are both warm and lovely, and I wore them for a few years, together with a sandalwood-heavy fragrance whose name I can't remember. I went rather abruptly off them (like many things) when we moved north, my mum died, and everything changed. *Her* signature fragrance was Caleche, and I still have her last bottle of it. I bought it for her in Duty Free on one of my long haul trips for NGO X. I wear it on high days and holidays, and it's lovely, but it's her lovely, not mine.
And then M bought me a bottle of Jo Malone's Wood Sage & Sea Salt cologne. This was a brave thing to do, or rather, a risky thing -- this stuff isn't cheap. But it was perfect. I absolutely fell in love with it and wore it every day till it ran out, then bought some more. I thought I was there, I thought I had my new signature fragrance. I was very pleased.
But then came 2018, the year of cancer (M's), redundancy (mine), confusion and anxiety, and everything changed again. I couldn't wear Wood Sage & Sea Salt, it just didn't cut it anymore. I put it away in my washbag, and moved on to something darker and stronger: Black Cedarwood & Juniper. I never really loved it, but it fitted my mood. Towards the end of that bottle, I got an interview for the job I have now -- I travelled to London for both interviews, and for the second one I had to stay over the night before, so I had my washbag. Thus it was I rediscovered Wood Sage & Sea Salt, which I renamed The Smell of A Simpler Time. I was ready to have it back in my life.
Things were never going to stay simple, though, were they. That job has brought me a lot of joy: deep thinkers who care deeply about the world *and* who deeply love to go to the pub, what is not to enjoy? I haven't had so much brain-stretching fun since the early days of NGO X, back when the world was only partly on fire, and we still thought we could fix it. As I said goodbye to NGO X and the many fine people who were still, at that point, sticking it out (some fine people still are, I should add, but I was not the only casualty of the Thing That Happened), I dropped into the Oxford branch of Jo Malone with my friend S, two large glasses of white deep, and chose the scent for the next part of my life.
That was Jasmine Sambac and Marigold. I chose it because jasmine is one of my favourite smells. It is the smell of hot, humid nights in faraway places, at the point where the sand meets the sea and everything is the same temperature. The food is spicy, the liquor is hard and slightly weird, the music is Santana. Your feet are bare and the main smell, apart from the jasmine, is mosquito coils. You'll have to go back to your life pretty soon, but for now you're free, and now the sun's gone down, you are unfurling like a fern in the warm mist. It's the Smell of Possibility.
Jasmine also has a high sillage, and I was feeling like I needed a bit of that about me. I wore Jasmine Sambac and Marigold for most of 2019, and it brought me many hugs. I hope it will always be in my repertoire: it is truly the scent of a woman trying to work out what her game is and how near to the top of it she wants to be.
So we could have left it there, with the gorgeous Smell of Possibility tempered by the clean Smell of A Simpler Time, but 2020 wasn't going to let us get away with that, was it? Hell, as they say, no. So, please welcome to the group the Perfumes of the Pandemic.
Grapefruit Cologne
My wonderful friends C and S bought me not one but two Jo Malone scents for my 50th birthday, the celebration of which just squeaked under the lockdown limbo pole. One was Sea Sage and Wood Salt -- did they know?? Or am I that easy to buy scent for?? Either way, yay, I still have a bottle for my washbag and I wear it every day I am not in Ecoville. The other was Grapefruit -- I would never have chosen this but it turns out I love it. It is sharp and clever and understated, only two of which qualities I can lay any claim to, but all of which I admire. I wore it through Lockdown One, and it ended up in my swimming bag when the gym reopened, which is where its last vestiges remain. It is now the Smell of Self Care. When it finally runs out, I fully intend to replace it.
Red Roses
At the same celebration, I admired the scent of my friend K multiple times (good sillage) and it was another Jo Malone -- honestly, it's like she knows what she's doing -- this time one of the biggies, Red Roses. Again, I would never have, but it smelt amazing on her, so when my friend E said she had a Jo Malone voucher that she wasn't going to use and did I want anything, that is what I chose. And I cannot lie, it is a perfume with power. I am not sure we met the best of each other, me and Red Roses, because that is what I wore through the end of 2020 and into the lockdown of early 2021. Which was an intense time for me. I had an intense perfume to match, and I drew on its strength, but ultimately it will be remembered (by me, anyway) as the Smell of Righteous Yet Unwise Fury.
Why unwise, Jo, you ask. Surely not you? Well. I swore at one of my neighbours on a Zoom call that was being recorded. The recording now has a life of its own, and I hear that several people just watch that part of it over and over. (I have not watched it, because I was there. I felt like a dog that had been poked with a stick for like months who finally snapped. I remember the sweet, sweet catharsis, swiftly followed by oh fuck I used a swear word, and we don't like swear words).
How bad was it? I called one of my neighbours a bitch. She was (in my view, and if you want to lawyer up, I have evidence) being a bitch, and I was tired of letting it slide. But it was a dumb move on my part, as we care A LOT MORE, it turns out, about people calling people a bitch than about people actually behaving like a bitch. (Full disclosure: I think I said "stop being such a fucking bitch about this", which a) isn't actually calling her a bitch, but that's what people heard, and b) also included the f word, which I am not sure the audio picked up, as I said it half under my breath, but M's wince every time it comes up makes me think I probably did F it as well as B it).
I blame the Red Roses. They made me all heady. To be fair, I should also blame my hormones, as this was when I was running at my hottest, but if you're running hot, Red Roses will make you hotter. It's like the drum beat of every injustice you've ever experienced. Mmmm, Red Roses. But I don't think I'll go there again till I'm out the other side of my 50s.
Forest
Moving swiftly on, the same lovely E, possibly advised by my beloved, got me a Discovery Set from Rook Perfumes for my birthday last year. I don't really have a Rook Perfumes level budget so this was a perfect gift. I spent the spring (when I wasn't Red Rosing it in red mist) trying all six scents out, one a night on repeat, and thinking hard about which one, if any, might be for me. In the end, it was Forest or Undergrowth, and I waited for a decent discount code and decided to make my choice at the moment of purchase.
I went Forest, and I have not regretted it. (I don't think I'd have regretted Undergrowth either, but Forest is more assertive). Forest was my mid-year smell last year. It saw me through getting hauled in for questioning by the community governance team, AC-12 style (I also wore an excellent jacket) for ... I still don't know what, really. Upsetting people with a greater set of privileges than me, who therefore get to present as 'nice', is my best reading, but I know even that interpretation would likely be seen as 'upsetting'. Who's upset by whose upset, we might ask. But we don't.
I grew up on a street called Forest Drive, and I see Forest as the Smell of Remembering Who You Are.
English Oak and Hazelnut
So. What are you wearing now, Jo, I hear you ask. (Maybe not you, but my imaginary friends, who love reading this stuff). Aha, I answer, I am very glad you asked. Because I do, as we limp towards the end of the beginning of this phase of humanity's decline, have a new smell. And it's another Jo Malone - this time English Oak and Hazelnut.
This is what they say about it: "The crunch of green hazelnut with the spice of elemi. The earthy woodiness of vetiver, cooled by emerald moss carpets on a warming base of roasted oak."
Perfumier nonsense, of course. One of my neighbours caught its sillage the other day and said 'goodness, you smell amazing, what on earth is that?'
Well, I said, it's English Oak and Hazelnut, but I call it the Smell of Getting The Fuck On With It.
When summer comes to Ecoville, I will lie on the lawn, inhale the scent of the daisies and let it play through me. We keep going, they say, we keep growing.
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