Thought I would take a brief opportunity to blog, while I have internet (it's been down because of the snow).

I organised a perfume swap evening last Friday for the girls. Not all went according to plan, I must say, as many people were ill, and then the weather got very icy, so in fact I cancelled it. But luckily, some of the girls didn't get the email, so all of a sudden, five people turned up looking forward to an evening of swapping, spraying and nattering.

I turned it, instead, into a masterclass of sorts, not that I know all that much about perfume. But I took them through the differences between a chypre and a fougere, a fruity floral and a woody oriental. And what struck me most was the difference between the six of us.

M, in her early 70s, loved white florals - Eau Serge Lutens, Cristina Bertrand #3, Yardley's White Satin.

J, in (I'm guessing) her early 50s, loved loud florals: Amarige, Arpege, Poeme and Beautiful.

E, in her 40s, was on the hunt for the perfect rose perfume. Yves St Laurent's Paris wasn't quite her cup of tea, and she rejected Parisienne as too sweet. But J had brought with her Dolce & Gabbana's Rose The One, and this very much met with E's approval, so I decanted a 1ml sample for her.

K, in her mid-50s, is not a perfume wearer and had brought with her, her only bottle - DNKY Be Delicious. Unsurprisingly, she proved to be a fan of fruity florals, but rejected the idea of taking a decant, as she doesn't even wear the one perfume she's got.

A, around 50, liked citrus perfumes, but she reserved her real love for Serge Lutens' Ambre Sultan and was gutted to find that I had only 2.5ml and couldn't decant any for her. In general, she preferred the woody perfumes and orientals - Opium, Eau Dynamisante, Jeux de Peau.

And myself? Well, I'm a white floral, loud floral, woody orientals kind of gal. I loathe fruity florals, aquatics and soliflores, and I love perfumes that some might think smell a bit more like room sprays: Tea for Two, Serge Noire, Comme des Garcons Incense Avignon, Fille en Aiguilles.

It was a fun evening and I hope people went home with a better idea of what they liked and why, and what other perfumes they might profitably try in the future. Perfume is a luxury item and it's tough when you make a mistake. 

Right, I will post this before I lose internet again... batten down the hatches.  

I was corresponding with a perfumisto friend recently when it dawned on my that in some ways, you know, I really am starting from absolute scratch when it comes to perfume. 

Tania Sanchez defines the first phase of perfume addiction as watching your mum put it on when she gets ready for the evening - the first hint of the fascinating, glamourous world outside your four walls when you're a small child.

The problem there is, my mum never went out. My parents literally went out once a year - to the 'do' at the colliery where my father worked as a miner - and that is precisely how often she wore perfume (one of those many things of which my father did not approve).

She used a tiny weeny little black bottle of Coty's L'Aimant (which means slightly more than just 'magnet' in French). It was her favourite perfume, but she wasn't allowed to wear it the rest of the year, nor any form of deodorant, nor use fabric softener, or air freshener, nor did we have scented soap in the house (or toothpaste either, but that's another story).

Our toilet (nothing so grand as a 'bathroom) smelled of the puritan wholesomeness of shit, carbolic and Vim and to this day, the smell of Jeyes Fluid can make me homesick. Maybe once a year I was given a present of skin-scouring bath salts (six to a pack) or bath oil pearls by some kind relative, and then I'd have to wait for another year.  

When I was 13, my aunty Margie gave me Astral Skin Creme Soap and the luxury of it overwhelmed me. Soap that actually lathered (my father baked the coal-tar soap, which he got free from the pit, in the airing cupboard until it was rock hard. It lathered like a stone in your hands). But this was different - soft, and fluffy, embracing, and left my hands feeling soft and fragrant.

On holidays to my glamourous Aunty Glad's house in Gayton, the scent of her bathroom, with its Lux and Camay soaps and little ladies in crinolines to hide the bog roll, was an earthly delight to me. I bought myself Norfolk Lavender perfume on trips into Norwich, and revelled in it, quickly followed by cheap-as-chips Jovan Musk, still made by Coty, and which I probably smelled of from the age of 11 to the age of 20. 

The slippery slope, clearly, though it's taken me a long time to really start sliding down it - something very common, I'm told, in young women who came of age in the era of the big heavies - Poison, Opium, Samsara, Giorgio - but who couldn't bear the olfactive reek of those big aromachemicals. Personally I retreated into the world of soliflores like Yardley's English Lavender and Jasmine from Culpeper (sadly no longer with us), or 4711 Cologne. 

So, for me, as once it was for the world of wine, the world of perfume is an unexplored territory,  which I must say I am having great fun charting. I got my first Diptyque fragrance recently, and a stack of Etat Libre d'Orange samples is on its way from an Ebay friend. 

I will report back from the frontiers...

Lately, I'm becoming something of a perfume fanatic, but since only have a small budget, I have been buying from various resellers on Ebay. This way, I can get part-used bottles, small sample bottles, discontinued fragrances, etc. But yesterday I noticed something very strange - you can't buy luxury LVMH-owned perfume brands on Ebay if you live in France.

There's not a single Dior, Givenchy or Guerlain fragrance (or, for that matter, beauty product) listed on Ebay.fr, though you can get LVMH's lower-priced brands such as Fendi and Kenzo. There are masses of Diors, Givenchys and Guerlains listed on Ebay.co.uk, and Ebay.com, but when I bid on them from France - even if the seller permits overseas bidding - my bid is blocked 'pour raisons judiciares'. 

Interesting.

I would have thought this amounted to restriction of trade, though doubtless the companies concerned would claim it's an anti-counterfeiting measure (it is a criminal offence to buy or own a counterfeit object in France, so even by having it, you're breaking the law). But why assume that all vendors are counterfeiters? And why would this only apply to the luxury end of the brand spectrum? And why only LVMH-owned brands? I can, for instance, buy niche luxury brands such as Serge Lutens and Annick Goutal perfectly easily on line, so I assume this is not a government matter.  

Anyway, I find it annoying, really, when all I'm trying to get is a little 5ml sample of each perfume, and it leaves me thrown back on firms like The Perfumed Court, and having to pay for postage from the US, as I am obviously not about to drop 100 euros on a large bottle of perfume which I then find I don't like after all.

However - I have also found a way around it, for anyone who needs to do the same. It's (obviously) not allowed by Ebay, and you have to trust the vendor, but just ask them to list an item that doesn't exist, with a buy-it-now price, and you buy that and they send you the real thing instead. Yes, it's a risk, but for a 10-quid sample bottle of fragrance, no great loss if you do get shafted - though if you do, it's a simple case of caveat emptor. 

I will be reviewing perfumes more often on this blog, so I thought perhaps I should give some background as to what I like and don't like in scent, to give more of a base line. Because the thing is, I'm not what you'd call an ardent perfume fan - in fact, I haven't bought a bottle in years.

It is my recent introduction to the more selective perfumes lines that has proved something of a lightbulb moment. For many years prior to this, I had been a bit fed up with perfumes, for several reasons. 

Firstly, many of them smell the same... Ammonia-powered top note, migraine-inducing heart note, chemical-smelling base note. Nothing special, nothing individual, all way too artificial for my liking.

Secondly, I have a strong body chemistry that turns many perfumes rancid, and the majority of high-street perfumes mature on me in a way that I don't like, unless I faff about spraying them onto tissues, etc.

Therefore, when I find a favourite (usually in a selective or organic brand) I tend to stick with it. I will wear a perfume for years if I like it, because - after all - they are expensive. In this, I am remarkably boring.

I find many perfumes too unsubtle. In my hectare of garden I grow roses (about which I am PASSIONATE), along with lavender, witch hazel, osmanthus, lilacs, buddleia, jasmine, viburnums, elder, phlomis etc. Scent is crucial to me in the garden, and an important criterion when I choose plants. So I know the scent of a Gloire de Dijon from a Belle de Crècy, how some perfumes carry on the air and how some require you to bury your nose in a blossom to appreciate them, how violets anaesthetise your sense of smell, how witch hazels can't be smelt close up and how some flowers smell only at certain times of day. I ofen feel that artificial perfumes fall far short of what can be found in nature.

I mostly detest the scents to be found in air fresheners and household cleaners - so I make my own from white vinegar, bicarb and lemon oil. I use pure essential oils in the bath (lavender, black pepper, rosemary, grapefruit...), favour unscented skincare products, wash my clothes with Savon de Marseilles, don't use fabric softener at all because I can't bear the smell, make my own talc from cornstarch and bicarb, and prefer a deodorant stone to a scented anti-perspirant.

So, fragrance, for me, has to be either very worthwhile, or not used at all.

Having said that, I am not immune to how useful fragrance can be to induce a mood, or complement your clothing. It's delightful to use a beautifully scented body lotion (current favourite, Mariella Rossetti's Lime and Caffeine), or have your friends use your loo and say it's the best-smelling bathroom they've ever been in (Airwick Apple and Cinnamon candles). 

When it comes to actually wearing perfume, then, for summer evenings, I favour florals such as YSL Paris, Crabtree and Evelyn's rose (eau fraiche), or an essential oil such as ylang-ylang, while my pillow gets a spritz of Durance's Bouton de Rose pillow spray or lavender oil. During the daytime, I'm quite happy with true lavender scents such as Norfolk Lavender (a memory, also, to me of holidays spent at my auntie's house in Gayton), which smells nice and clean (lavender, from 'lavare' - to wash).

in winter - perhaps because I like cooking - I favour edible offerings like apple, cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg, lapsang souchong, ginger and clove. I also like woody, leathery, tobaccoey and smoky perfumes, along with a dash of patchouli.

For over 10 years, my main winter perfume has been Tea for Two by L'Artisan Parfumeur - a smoky, black tea-based scent, and I am also fond of Jean-Paul Gaultier's first perfume for women (now known as 'Classique'). Having recently tried Serge Lutens' Jeux de peau, however, I am a complete convert and will definitely be wearing it for the rest of the winter.

In spring, I tend to switch to clean, sharp, lemony perfumes, or alternatively what the trade calls 'aquatics' - perfumes that smell of the sea, ozone and fresh air. Aquatics are a new note in perfumes, incidentally, and the accord that creates that smell was only created in about 1991.

For some time I favoured L'Eau d'Issey (the main problem being that everyone else I met seemed to be wearing it), and when my bottle ran out, I switched seamlessly to the DH's L'Eau d'Issey pour Homme - rather more musky but in the same general ballpark.

However, for a few years now, my main spring perfume has been another tea-based offering - Thé Vert by Roger et Galland. This is a very crisp, sharp, green perfume that feels instantly fresh, but like many fresh perfumes, it doesn't have much in the way of staying power - a perennial problem with the volatile oils on which these lemony perfumes are based. I also like L'Occitane's Vervaine, but this too fades - and after an even shorter time.

Finally, I hate celebrity perfumes, and dewberry and all other similar, cat's pee type smells, so anything with even a whiff of this is enough to put me off. Even walking past Bodyshop's Dewberry range has always been enough to give me a pounding headache. 

Actual perfume reviews to follow over the next few days.