Sensory overload? Yes and no

I sort of went awol last week. A lot on, being my excuse.

Starting with the more banal … well, work – and when work calls, it calls. Plus, car needed to go for its tax appointment (which entails drive there, bus back, return to garage by bus, and then, finally, home with approved car). All tax returns had to be dealt with. You get the point.

So, what wasn’t banal in the week? you might ask.

I got a serious treat.

A few months ago, I got an email from Portia – yes, our Portia: “I’m going to be in London in a bit and have X and Y free. You wanna meet up?” Hell yeah.

I’ve done meetups in the past with perfumistas I’ve only known over the net, one of which included a visit to Ormond Jayne’s tiny shop near Bond Street and a chocolate fondue at Fortnum & Mason.

But I digress.

I haven’t done a lot since covid that hasn’t included people I don’t know well, so this was a bit of a leap of faith.

Well worth it.

I love day trips to London — the whole ritual of train up and back, plus minor shopping at Paddington Station before back on the train home, and recently rides on the new Elizabeth Line. And whatever other city activities are planned.

Anyway. We decided over the interweb to do Harrods and Harvey Nicks as they both have very decent perfume offerings. I mean, of course this would centre around perfume.

Met up outside Harrods (see pic – I hate most pics of myself, but Portia looks so fetching), hugs all around, and off to the serious business of the Fragrance Hall.

Suffice it to say we smelled a lot of stuff (most of which I’ll talk about next week) but one of the highlights was watching Portia interact with the SAs from various houses. I don’t know what their regular customers are like but they got to experience the full wattage of a generous and highly amusing perfumista soul. Some of it was hysterical (I thought the Themeen SA with his astonishing blue eyes was going to vault over the counter and tag along with us before leading Portia off to someplace dark and decadent).

Once they realised we weren’t going to buy but simply interact most relaxed, talking about best sellers, who generally bought them (and how many at one time – this was Harrods, after all). None pressured us – it was just great interactions.

Then, it was off to the sixth floor ‘exclusive’ offering – the long hall (see pic) with individual small rooms.

More sniffing (in one place we were simply left alone to faff). Two standouts were the Fueguia 1833 kiosk (had never heard of this house) with its huge offering – and weird ‘smelling’ from the fragile upside down chemistry beakers. This was the only place I tried anything on skin: a cocoa fragrance that started off great: dry proper cacoa with some spice and a bit of pong (sadly, this turned into simply overly sweet twitchiness by the time I got home in late evening which cried out to be showered off).

And then off to Guerlain, where Portia had a ‘thing’ with the SA – like watching ping pong: “Have you tried this?” “Yes, I own X number of iterations”. “What do you think of this bottle?” Etc, etc.

I think we managed around close to two hours of perfume before going off to Harvey Nichols for afternoon tea. That was the non-perfume (mostly) chat time – all over the map.

And then another brief trawl through HN’s perfume (I need to sample more Memo perfumes) and back to Harrods for the food hall (“go straight, turn right at Gucci”). Appreciation of the beautiful fruit and veg and a bit of sweet shopping before off to tube, parting at Green Park.

Portia is a hoot – and so full of perfume and other great stories.

Pics are mine or Portia’s