sometimes, when i think about posting and i’ve not got a track i’m desperate for you all to hear i like to indulge myself and imagine i’ve got a column in a broadsheet - that i’m so witty and erudite that people tune in to see what’s been going on in my life this week and where that might take them. so i make a mental list of things which’ve happened in the week; anecdotes or experiences; moods or meals, and see what could spark a post. as you might have gathered from our posts of late its been a hectic, almost life-changing month for the latitudes and for it’s writers. and out of all of this what’s sparked in me the kernel of an idea tonight is getting some new perfume.

feel free, all you opportunist blog pillagers to tune out now if that offends your sensibilities. if you only came here for a french house re-edit or new-folk meandering take your booty and run by all means but i like to think that you’re along for the ride so i’ll keep trucking with this idea.

for years now i’ve worn the same scent. available in high end department stores across the globe, it’s one of those designer spin off ones in a beautiful bottle. it smells of roses and i discovered it it in new york (just off 72nd & broadway) bought my first bottle after a day of obsessively (rapturously) snuffling my wrist to catch a hint of the glamorous sweetness and after a couple of years i started getting comments about how other people couldn’t quite bring themselves to buy it because it was too familiar as my perfume.

and that felt good.

“i have” i thought proudly “a signature scent. and when my friends meet someone else wearing it they’ll think “she smells like juliet”.

its no news to any of us that smell is a peculiarly evocative sense. i have a friend who’s mother lost her sense of smell in a car accident. its more devastating than you might imagine. with it goes most of your taste palette. not to mention the ability to sense elements of danger (no early warning that you’ve left the gas on or knocked over a candle) potency of drinks, or recognise the smell of cut grass, cooked bacon or a baby’s skin.

and deeper than that, she must be denied that particular key that smell plays in memory. the whiff of cloves which instantly transports me to childhood christmas times eating leibekuchen, eucalyptus to a corsican mountainside in 1989, pipe smoke to my grandad’s soft liverpudlian brogue telling me stories in his lounge. that proustian evocation of the oddest of memories sparked by warm tar, school corridors, printing ink, new leather or baked apples. smells which remind you of home, or an idea of home.

and now i have a new scent. an engraved bottle of decadence, of itself an extravagant gift which i get to wear everyday. according to experts (or obsessives but often i’m hard pressed to tell the difference) it smells of roses, raspberries and finally sweet tobacco. to me it smells terribly grown-up, comfortable and exotic, memorable and familiar and glamorous, of flawless well-educated women of a certain era who wore bespoke lipstick and hand sewn underwear but mostly, mostly it will always smell of the day i got it. so whenever i unpack a packing case or box of books from here on in to fifty years from now and i catch a glimpse of it, i’ll be transported back to this summer.

here’s a track which takes me back to last spring, my nose pressed against the window of a eurostar carriage, pulling in to lille station still wearing that old perfume and feeling like this is was a song for a grown woman to hear and that i still had a lot of growing to do.

Meshell Ndegeocello - The Chosen