Monthly Archives: December 2014

Perfume

Fire Obsession

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Bitten by the perfume bug, scent now an obsession, I ‘ve experienced odd things in the past year.   Here’s the latest.  In 1982 the Sultan of Oman set out to restore the Arabian art of perfumery.  He hired the great French perfumer, Guy Robert, who did a fabulous job, as have the other perfumers who since collaborated with Amouage (I think it means wave or ground swell).  I happened to obtain a decant (sample) of one of their attars, called Tribute. It’s a smoky, woody, spicy, rose and jasmine dream. Unfortunately, it’s no longer produced, but luckily there’s a huge market in vintage and discontinued perfumes.  I searched and found an extremely rare bottle of the original formulation on sale in Dubai for $815.

However, my obsession is not that serious.

Still, I mourned the loss, now and then opening and sniffing my meager 1 ml decant.  Then I had an inspiration.  I went to the perfume site parfumo.net, looked up Tribute’s notes and typed them into the search engine.  Perhaps  an affordable smell-alike existed!  Sure enough, Mary Greenwell, a London perfumer, had a perfume called Fire, just out this year.  It contained all but one of Tribute’s notes (ingredients)!

I searched for a decant.  None available.  I searched for an FB (full bottle).  Turns out Harrod’s (London department store) sells Fire for a price I might pay for a blind buy.  Then tragedy.  As I tried to add Fire to my basket, I saw the dread sign:  “UK delivery only.”  Frantic, I searched Amazon, searched ebay, searched every outlet I could think of.  No Fire anywhere.

I imagine I’ll survive.  After all, this is better than my hypersensitive nose’s previous occupation: human canary for all things toxic in the air.  I do own other perfumes.  My nose can smell them at will.  There’s no reason for it to upset the rest of me like this.

I’m sure Mary Greenwell’s Fire will eventually show up somewhere.  Searching . . . searching.

 

 

Food, My Books

Setting a Scene — Alain Ducasse

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I’ve just revised a scene in my thriller, The Enemy Apostle, fifth and final in The Jesus Thief series.  It takes place in Paris at a real location, the incomparable restaurant, Alain Ducasse au Plaza Athénée.  Alain Ducasse was the first chef in the world to hold three Michelin stars (the highest given) for each of three different restaurants he owned.  For much of my life, I longed to dine at his flagship, but the electrical engineer in me argued it was illogical to spend so much on a single meal.  Luckily, I wrested her slide rule from her for the sake of this novel and reserved lunch there for my grandson and me in 2011. At long last, I entered between the famous spoon and fork. Check out the video here to see the restaurant.  We sat by the window overlooking the garden and for more than two hours existed in the culinary heaven of Ducasse’s tasting menu. My young character, Peter, eats there too, but who is his dinner partner?  Does she have an ulterior motive?  Does he? Most of all, how will his actions affect the devoted mother he left behind, who is now desperately afraid for him?

Almost as much fun as having a splendid meal in this amazing place, is remembering and writing about it.  Insertion of book four, The Covert Messiah, in the series’ time sequence interrupted progress on The Enemy Apostle, which then became book five.  It’s great to be working on it again.