Thursday 16 February 2012

The Chemical Smell Trick.

I was thinking in the bath tonight that I’m not all that keen on women’s perfume any more. It smells of chemicals, probably because that’s what it is.

Somebody throws a bunch of chemicals into a test tube, adds water, pours it into a bottle, gives it a pretentious name, and then sticks a £30 price tag on it.

That’s stage 1. Stage 2:

Seek out some actress or other who is generally regarded – though rarely by me – as being attractive and whose agent charges £1,000 a second to pick up the phone, slap some skin coloured concoction on her face, deck her out in a costume which raises serious doubts about her level of self-respect, put her in front of a camera with a soft focus filter over the lens, have the director call ‘do pouting,’ and the job’s complete.

People will now queue up at the covered wagon in the shopping mall, desperate to throw quantities of £10 notes at the feet of Doc Crockett in the hope of acquiring a precious bottle of his elixir guaranteed to have every man within sniffing distance falling to his knees in helpless supplication.

Good trick. It probably even works, since most men are easily driven to a state of helpless supplication.

I do admit that I used to find the smell of musk a little more than merely pleasant, but it’s so long since I smelt it that I have no idea whether it would still have the same effect. I doubt it, somehow.

But, what the hell. It’s life and life only and my opinion on this matter is of no more consequence than it is on any other. For the record, I prefer women to smell of nothing but clean hair.

But I’m weird, and too old to matter. And the scotch tastes nice tonight. And Luke Kelly is singing Raglan Road. He’s dead, you know. Must work out a bass line for that song, then he and I can sing a duet at dead of night in Mill Lane some time in the future.

4 comments:

andrea kiss said...

I read something online a few days ago about which hair styles men love and which ones men hate and one of the things mentioned is that men love the smell of freshly washed hair. You're not alone on this one.

JJ said...

I'm not? Damn! I take it all back.

I WANT TO BE ALONE! Or a lawn. Or a loam. Or something.

Do you realise, I deliberately chose the name Crockett in honour of a girl from Tennessee? I am right, aren't I? Davy Crockett hats were big when I was a kid (I didn't hear the term 'coon skin cap' until I heard Subterranean Homesick Blues.) I had a good one, home made by my mother from an old fur coat. I thought it was inferior because it wasn't bought from a shop and made of plastic and fake fur. We move on.

andrea kiss said...

Well, Davy Crockett was born in Tennessee but not on a mountain top.

My high school's name and mascot was Daniel Boone... well a guy who dressed up as him and wore a coon skin cap. The other high school in the county is Davy Crockett High School. Their mascot wears the same exact outfit. They looks funny together at football games.

JJ said...

Our schools tend to be named after royalty and politicians. The local one here is called the Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, after Elizabeth I who founded it back in the day. I think it might partly explain where we go wrong.