Special Musk and Required Reading

I smelled a Man Scent that I really liked a few days ago: in Korres, that wonderful shop full of toiletries from Greece that look and smell incredible.

Ian has never been an aftershave man, for which I am terribly grateful. All men's scents remind me of cheap drunken secondary-school fumbles in 1988. But this, this smells of saffron and amber and cardamom and agarwood. Like incense, but not in a Camden Market way: a tall, dark, interesting way. I put some on my arm while I was waiting at the counter, and ten minutes down the road I couldn't stop smelling my arm. I went back and got some for Ian. Who never wears scent.

It sat on my shelf for three days, then I decided the Time Had Come.

"This is for you," I say, putting the box on his desk. "I got it from that nice Greek place. It's the one I had on my arm."

"Oh!" says Ian, and peers at it. "It's in a box! All unopened."

"Yes. It's for you."

"Gosh," he says.

"I know you don't really do smelly things, but I thought, in case there's ever an occasion when you want to smell nice, you might like it."

Ian turns the box over curiously, then pulls away the cellophane wrapper. (Here's a photo I stole from the Internets that shows the way it's packaged.)

"Look," says Ian, "it's in Thick Cardboard. This is a Thing for a Man."

"Yes. Pour Homme."

Ian reads the ingredients.

"It has cardamom! Extracted from CARS AND BOMBS."

"Yes! It's terribly manly."

"And amber, which is of course extracted from GUNS."

"Hot!"

"It also has saffron, which is squeezed from the AGGRESSION GLANDS of TIGERS!!"

"Only a real man could possibly wear this."

"It's got a child-proof cap, too," Ian grunts.

"Yes, I asked for that especially, in light of That Time With The Calpol."

There is a little more grunting. "How do I get this off?"

"Man not take lid off. Man grunt at bottle, bottle open. Man beat chest, spray come out of bottle. Man is master of bottle. Bottle respect Man."

There is a victorious pop as the lid comes off. Ian sits the bottle on his desk. They face each other squarely in silent contemplation. Neither has ever seen the like of the other before.

Then he fiddles with it a bit more.

"Oh shit. That's the spraying bit. That's not meant to come off, is it."

The Spraying Bit is put back on.

"What - what do I do with this?"

"I find the best way is to hold it at arm's length, spray a tiny cloud of it and then walk quickly through the cloud."

Ian sprays his wrist with it, like an old lady. Then he shoves his nose to his wrist.

"NO don't smell it YET. Give it time to settle."

It settles. Idly, Ian assembles a car with his right hand. Several scantily clad young ladies drape themselves over his feet, handing him spanners. Ian sniffs his arm again.

"Hm! It's quite nice."

Man smell Quite Nice. Man go back to Peering at Bicycle Parts and Welding Equipment on Internet, also Scratching Beard.

So that was that.

Now. I am, of course, Going Away, and while I am away, this is what you should be reading.

ELOHSSANATAHW

If the thought of 123 miles to Norfolk with a whiny toddler turns your hair white, read this amazing, funny, golden-hearted, foul-mouthed and wonderful lady from the Deep Deep South, who drove one thousand miles home to Alabama with just her and her 80-something Alzheimer's mother in the car. On her other journeys, she's had guns pointed at her by Russian border guards and as a child, she was chased by a crazy drunk aunt with a gun. However, she has never shat a baby's arm. Her blog is quite unlike any other I've found on the Internet: she's my latest online hero. The day I started reading her blog, I put everything on hold and sat and read the whole archive in one go. It's not for the faint of heart, and it's fantastic.

See you next week!