Friesin

Salt on the skin, wind in the hair, the sound of waves in the ears, that's what I call happiness !

Come on, take off your shoes, feel the sand between your toes and finally let go !
Yes, we must go back - but not now, no one can take this away from us.
Take my hand and let's dash along the hem of the wave until we run out of breath and then we'll skip stones .
Here I want to be, with you at my back and my nose in the wind.
For we mustn't forget what it feels like to break free!
And now kiss me to taste your finally smiling, salty lips.

Sel de Vétiver (The Different Company) is the first fragrance for me with real sea-association.
I've smelled aquatics that tried to achieve that fresh sea stereotype with citrusy ingredients.
Or algy brackish water scents that made you think of a broken washing machine rather than the sea...
Like a bad imitation, it often seemed to me, an image without soul, it never touched me.
Céline Ellena, however, has managed to play with vetiver- ylang-ylang and iris notes in such a way that the result is simple to name, a day at the sea. Absolutely authentic. And not a Mediterranean bikini day, but an Atlantic rubber boot day. Nothing is sweet or bright or lemony fresh here, no, here the wind comes from the front and blows through properly. In its luggage, sand, beach grass and spray. Cardamom and lovage I recognize as a spicy substructure, which probably also suggests the sensual impression as well as the originality, because that's where the fragrance develops on the skin.
And over everything is salt, wet sea salt, iodine, almost oily.
For me, 'Sel de Vétiver' is like a work of art, I can name the colours, but they don't do the picture justice. It's not a decal, not a clumsy attempt at a cliché. It's real, touching, wonderful.

For anyone with sea-sickness, this is a perfect fragrance.

A few years ago, with a midlife crisis looming, I introduced the 'noodle dinner' to my circle of friends. Always on the 19th of a month* - so no matter on which day of the week it falls - I have noodles with sauce, for all friends who have time and desire. After a certain age it is hardly possible to meet friends spontaneously. One must already make an appointment, because children, job, back gymnastics (!), old parents, whatever, prevent us from the uncomplicated coming together.
Where I come from, the back doors of the houses are always open when someone is home. You just barge in as a visitor, sit on the kitchen bench, possibly help fold the laundry, and have fellowship without having entered the date into your cell phone beforehand, uncomplicated.
The 'pasta dinner' in question is my adaptation of the open door. I'm not a gifted cook, but 'a tasty pasta sauce is no problem and
in large quantities. Fresh pasta from the fridge is ready in 5 minutes, so it doesn't matter if 5 or 20 people show up. In the circle of friends, the date has been established, who can come, and is welcome to bring another guest. It's a great opportunity to meet old and new people, stress-free and relaxed, without fuss. A bit like in the old days. No matter how big the round is, a loud bustle and clatter when arriving and eating, is followed by a lush, languid, wine-soaked relaxation in the circle of nice people, in the middle of the paced everyday life, beautiful!

So, how does she get the hang of eating noodles now to 'Embrunsd d'Ylang' by Guerlain....
Thierry Wasser has tried with this fragrance creation to dust off Ylang-Ylang (back gymnastics) He wanted to give the 'Retro-Chanel5- Ylang' a new context, in this case with a salty note, l'embruns means splashing water from the sea.
Right at the beginning, Ylang stands radiantly in the room, has loud flower friends with it, and if it went on like this, the party could tip over, but it doesn't. Bar any affectation, Ylang, carnations and jasmine turn out to be pleasant, considerate guests, who enrich the evening with their presence and fit perfectly into the group.
You can see what T. Wasser was going for, because even though I personally can't smell the salt, it seems to tame and brighten up the floral troupe. Who would have thought I'd ever say that about a ylang-ylang scent - but this one really delivers. For me, the best part of pasta night...er, fragrance night, is when people are chatting away the evening with a wine in hand, content, sated, with their trouser button loosened. And that's exactly how 'L'embruns d'Ylang' is towards the end- with the help of patchouli and vanilla- warm, lush, complex, quite wonderfully unpretentious and uncomplicated.

I thank Turandot, without whom I probably wouldn't have given it a chance....
*Date changed by the editor :-)

"Everything with the calm and then with a jerk",
that is such a typical Frisian saying. The Friesian is not a friend of many words, while others are still chatting is tackled. The cliché that "Moin, Moin" is already babble, because "Moin" is also enough, comes not by chance. I've been living in exile for a long time now, but when I return home, when the sky opens up and I can look into the distance again without being distracted, I immediately regain my composure and focus on the essentials. Boasting and extroversion are as suspect to the Frisian as vegetarian food and yoga.
This stubborn attitude towards new things is often annoying, but at least honest. With the opinion is not kept behind'm mountain, it is spoken openly, what one says, one means also in such a way - clear edge
This may sometimes come across harsh, but if you take a little time, you can see a wide heart, even if you just got to hear "Orange sneakers? Dor in de Stadt machen se dich kaputt . So, sit down, drink tea ! "

Frisian review of ' Mortal Skin ' S.H. Lucas
The bottle is already times so of "over", no Friesian I know, would want this gold glitter EdHardymäßige snake part at home.
The name is as striking as it is strange, and one wonders if a fragrance needs such a constucted skin-changing story.
One is relieved, however, that is not in what it says.
So, let's get to the inner values.
A loud prelude with blackberries, cardamom and ink, there I smell and marvel. This is exciting and I have not smelled so yet.
Incense I can still detect and a touch of leather. All together gives a pleasant spicy warmth with this special Tintentwist, really very convincing.,. Only, as so often, after a fulminant start, is weakened on the long haul. Promising so much, 'Mortal Skin' becomes more and more cloying, arbitrary and skin-deep when musk and amber are added. And after 3 to 4 hours, the snake is dead.
The idea of the composition can be guessed and is really nice, in the long run, however, more calm and power would have done the whole thing good.

Cheers, tea !

A little cricket had been making music all summer. She had fiddled, fiddled and fiddled. But when winter came and it got cold, she realized that she had neither supplies nor a roof over her head.
So she went to the head forester, the stag beetle, and begged him to let her stay with him through the winter. " Nah, nah ", he said, " fiddling around all summer and not caring about anything but then living at other people's expense, you can forget it ! "
Then the cricket went to the squirrel, which now really had supplies for 4 winters but also here she flashed under the words " Who does not care also gets nothing ! ".
Now she trudged to the mole, who lived in a basement apartment. " Oh, visitors ! How wonderful! Feel free to come a little closer, my eyesight is so poor." She gladly entered, not only was the mole super friendly, his place smelled quite wonderful. Threaded vanilla beans were strung throughout the apartment and there was a pot of heliotrope soup on the stove. When the Mole recognised the cricket, he was even more pleased, as he had often listened to her playing in the summer. "Why don't you play your violin?" and the cricket fiddled and the stove banged. They cooked themselves an iris tea to go with the vanilla blossom soup, and sometimes there was a little patchouli for each of them. In the evening they sat on the warm, soft sofa, drank hot clay calade, read together and never, never quarreled. So the winter flew by like a day, it was probably the most beautiful in their whole lives .

'Réminiscence Vanille' is total vanilla power. Vanilla , vanilla flowers and only if you smell very closely you can recognize the patchouli. The scent is not overly sweet or sticky, it seems rather creamy and rich due to musk and tonka. In addition, he remains very close to the skin.
My fragrance it is not, for vanilla lovers but probably a pleasure, because it comes so subtle and unkitschy. A warm- spicy- winter- Wanille , cuddly as on Mole's sofa.

*With the support of Janosch, who became 90 this week.

A phrase, yes, that would have saved me. Couldn't he have been ranting about the weather? I hated weather talk. "When the sun's gone, it's about to get cold," that was a delightful turnoff. Instead, here he was, standing next to me, coincidentally at the same boring event. Caught my gaze and didn't release it as he casually murmured " This isn't for people who are barefoot at heart, hmm? " I took those words from him, and they fell delicately into my lyrical heart. Crap This wasn't supposed to happen, I was just going to show my face here for a minute, and leave right away. The wine I'd been drinking wasn't helping now either, the smirk guy smelled lovely, like spices, smoke and leather and a sensual buzz flooded my system. As we pretended to listen to the speeches, we grew closer and closer. Like magnets aligning. I could feel his warmth against my side. And without further words, in this room full of people , a lustful aura surrounded us, a connection that made my heart beat faster and my senses heighten. I wanted him to touch me, and was completely at his mercy.

'Tabac Blond' won me over.
I wrote him this story because I cannot share the attributes assigned to him.
Often described as harsh, cool, androgynous and aloof, 'Tabac Blond' is extremely approachable to me.
The brilliant spicy-nutty start, opens the heart and nose for leather. From the beginning, the interaction seems adult, almost intellectual.
The iris note breaks the edges and gives an ensnaring powder impression, without being sweet or sultry. Amber and musk lend warmth for hours. Enveloped is this fragrance work of art from the namesake tobacco, but without smoke development.
The impression of paper from old tobacco tins, it is , which prevails here.
And all this close, very close.

I'm totally smitten with this timeless classic, which, like any other fragrance, is suitable for any gender.

*'For all who are barefoot at heart.'
Poems by Jan Scácel