SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY

In France and Belgium, lily of the valley is given to celebrate May Day. I have lots of them in my garden, which have conspired to flower just in time for 1st May. Isn't that clever? Lily of the valley, or "Muguet" as the French call it, packs a powerful punch for such a delicate little plant. Sometimes the smallest packages make the most noise.

I have always delighted in fragrances. Certain aromas have a Proustian madeleine effect, taking me back through the phases of my life. My feminist side showed itself during schooldays when I splashed men's after-shave "Brut", "Canoe" or "Tabac" all over. In the seventies patchouli was the order of the day, its main quality being its pungency and ability to mask other less legal smells. As a young professional, wanting to appear older and more sophisticated, I used to favour Miss Dior. In my 30's, brazen and shameless, and - dare I say it - in my prime, I flaunted myself in Jacomo's Or Noir and didn't care who knew it. In my 40's, it was "O" de Lancome by day - sharp fresh lime with honey overtones that gradually become more powerful with the warmth of the body - and "First" by Van Cleef & Arpels at night - very sophisticated and horrendously expensive.

I have tried hundreds of the world's great fragrances. Some absolutely do not work on me - anything by Chanel, for example, or the heavy, musky ones such as Opium or Shalimar. I had quite a long fling with Nina Ricci's "L'Air du Temps" (flowery, understated - so not me - but gorgeous Lalique bottle), Paco Rabanne's "Metal" (1980s - minimalist, metallic), to Fidji (smells a bit like Pina Colada - often on special offer after the summer holidays) and Carolina Herrera who names her perfumes after Peugeot cars.


But ever since my earliest days in Paris, there's always been a bottle of Yves St Laurent's Rive Gauche on my shelf. They say you should find a perfume that reflects your personality. RG is so absolutely moi. Neither flowery nor musky, quite sharp, no-nonsense, unsentimental, straight up, businesslike, doesn't beat about the bush, direct, gets straight to the point.


My birthday's at the end of this month, by the way.

What's your favourite fragrance? Do you have different perfumes for different times of day or occasions? Does one particular scent bring back memories? (McChe can sit this one out).

EVERYTHING'S CONNECTED

OAPs favourite

Barack Obama didn't come to Brussels. Three months slogging at the gym and all for nothing. Mind you, just as well I suppose, as I actually gained weight at the gym. I was told it was because muscle is heavier than fat. And as far as I can see, it takes up as much room, so what was the point of that? I have not renewed my three-month subscription, and I am devising my own summer exercise plan. This involves getting off the metro one station before the end of my journey to work and back and walking through a park at each end. When not dodging joggers it is tempting to amble along, stopping to smell the flowers occasionally, but it's exercise, and it is FREE.

The End is in sight

The rest of the time I'll spend running after the new computer, which should work off a few hundred calories a day.

Eurovision is but 3 weeks away. The Spanish entry has been changed - it's not going to be Melody after all, so no chance of seeing the former child star with the seven sex gods of flamenco although they're still on YouTube. UK's Jade Goody sings Andrew Lloyd-Webber (subs: is this right?) but personally I fancy Armenia, who are putting up a jazzy kind of workout dance by the home grown version of the Cheeky Girls, one of whom has a voice spookily reminiscent of Cher, a daughter of Yerevan herself, who was once married to Greg Allmann, the composer of the theme to Top Gear which I featured a few weeks back. You see how everything's connected ?

Anyway, I will expect to be doing a spot of this dance in the park on my way to work in a few weeks, when it wins Eurovision.

I BLAME THE GERMANS

I've been spoilt rotten this week. By the Germans. Following last weekend's designer Easter egg, Bert gave me an elegant flat box of Marcolini mini eggs, and then I was taken out for dinner by a visiting brass section from the Rheinland affiliated to the KNOB*, who with typical Teutonic gallantry presented me formally with a beautiful bouquet of flowers in thanks for my playing third triangle. They even made a little speech, in which they said I'd been a Fundamental Pillar. I've never been called that before. I almost did a Gwynnie Paltrow, blushed furiously and just about managed to stutter "Aber ich habe gar nix getan ... " "Euh, fast nix ...", I added, as Bert kicked me under the table. On the way home in his little tank, he gave me a lecture about how to big up meself. "Daphne, schatzi, you must conwince zat you are ze greatest dritte Dreieck in ze ganze Welt," was his advice. He's been watching The Apprentice too much, in my opinion.

Many of the musicians in the oompah band were from deepest Neanderthal, and didn't sprechen a word of anything except deutsch, and so I have spoken more German - badly - in the past two days than in the last five years. My German is really rather approximate, although as long as you can count up to four and not mention the war you're pretty safe in a German oompah band.

Mayor of Brussels, Freddy "Toots" Thielemans

As part of the oompahs tour of Brussels, they were officially received in the historic Town Hall by the florid-faced Mayor of Brussels Freddy Thielemans, who showed off his grasp of many languages and inexplicably went off on a long tangent in English about how great the Brussels police were. (I think he just meant to start off praising the police band, and got carried away). It went over the heads of the majority of the participants who didn't understand a word, but clapped politely anyway. That's what Germans do. I was surprised Freddy didn't ask if he could play harmonica on the next gig.

He's not wrong about the police. I saw Brussels' Finest in action a couple of weeks ago when a group of Tamil demonstrators got a bit overheated. The cops gave a textbook demonstration of how to corral a group of hotheads, de-escalate the situation, and shuffle them slowly out of the way of the general public and out of sight of the TV cameras before giving them a Taser sandwich. Mind you, the secret of their success was in numbers, there was a ratio of about 10 police to 9 demonstrators . I'm not sure how the Belgian forces would have managed at the G20.

The problem facing the London riot police is, nobody will give them a decent fight any more. I remember the old days in Paris, when the burly steelworkers would lob crash barriers at the CRS. Now THAT's what I call a protest. London's motley crew of middle-class pigeon-chested taxdodgers in their Che Guevara T-shirts armed with mobile phone cameras just annoy them, with the disastrous results we have seen.

Where were the redundant workers, the trade unions, the ruined pension fund beneficiaries, the negative equity homeowners, the people who have really suffered from the economic crisis? I'll tell you where. At home. They had already demonstrated on the previous Sunday, peacefully and in an organised manner. The real veterans of street battles, such as Dany le Rouge and Lech Walesa, wisely kept a dignified distance from these rather uncoordinated flashmobs.


Serious contestation requires strategy and training. As any fule no, if you want to keep the police under control, you need to tire them out first. Although I have no wish to condone any unnecessary police brutality (as opposed to necessary police brutality), there is evidence on YouTube of mob provocation that would try the patience of a saint, targeted at Specials who are not trained to withstand a barrage of mobile phone cameras trained on them while the crowd chant their number and taunt them. When the well-tooled riot police went in, they all ran away. Call yourselves urban warriors? Pffffft.

The French veterans of May '68 could teach these kids a thing or two. For a start, as any experienced agitator will tell you, you need a barrel-chested rabble rouser to focus the crowd, preferably with a big moustache and a massive strike fund (or a famous actress) behind him. Or her. The moustache is paternal and reassuring, and stops the crowd getting nervous and twitchy.

Tariq Ali and Vanessa Redgrave demonstrating against the Vietnam war, London 1969

Lech Walesa leading the Polish shipyard workers to a historic victory, 1981

Heroic French anti-globalisation protestor Jose Bove doing what a man has to do in 1999

Pigeon-chested Russell Brand failing to look like Che Guevara while lurking timidly on the
fringes of the London G20 demonstration, April 2009

The French have always kept their hand in at organised resistance, going back to the German occupation, the Commune, and the Revolution, not to mention May '68. The British Isles, inviolate for over a thousand years, have grown soft and complacent. God knows what would have happened if the Germans had invaded in 1940. Had we woken up one morning, like the French, and found little tanks under our windows, I suspect our fathers might not have such a heroic reputation but our children would not be the lily-livered unwashed Trustafarians we saw on April Fool's Day.

So ultimately, it's all the fault of the Germans, who didn't try hard enough during the war.








* Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

CHOCOLAT

It is Christmas for chocolatiers. Here, in chocolate heaven, they have seasons, and fashions. At the moment the fashion is kind of minimalist, simple flat pralines filled with a flavoured ganache filling and sprinkled with something subtle and understated. The ganache flavours, or "parfums", are of late inspired by oriental teas, fruits or herbs.

"Frohliches Ostern von Manfred, Wolfgang, Gunther, Friedrich und Bert"

Until recently I thought Pierre Marcolini was the nec plus ultra of handmade chocolates. But I have been given THE most divine Easter egg by the KNOB.* It's by Frédéric Blondeel. We don't have designer shoes or handbags here in Belgium, we have designer chocolates. Freddie does such sublime flavour combinations as strawberry and basil, cloves and raspberry, coriander and green apple, green cardamom and blackcurrant, black cardamom, lemon grass and cayenne pepper, and - wait for this - green tea and SALT. He is the Ferran Adria of chocolate. His egg is so beautiful that I am not sure I can bring myself to eat it. Although I'm sure I will, in my hour of need.

(I once happened upon an ice cream shop, in old Palma de Mallorca I think it was, which made ice creams flavoured with prawn, avocado or Roquefort. This was back when Heston Blumenthal still had to stand on a chair to help his mum stir bacon and eggs into the cake mixture.)

A praline, by the way, is NOT the tooth-wrecking lump of chocolate-encased chipboard you get in a box of Milk Tray. It means simply a chocolate mould with a soft filling. As opposed to a solid slab of chocolate. It is the bread and butter of the chocolatier. Every chocolate maker lies awake at night thinking up new and exciting flavours to excite the customer's palate. They spend their summers designing the perfect oval, the uovo di tutti uovi. The bridal dress of the chocolate world.

Picture, if you will, a show to launch a world-renowned chocolatier's new collection. It would start with the humble tablette, working up through the simple pralines in milk, dark, extra-dark, the Christmas collections, the chocolate St Nicolas, the white pralines with fresh cream filling, building up to the Grand Finale with the the Easter Egg. Godiva, as filmed by Fellini.

Look on his works, O Thornton's, and weep. Happy Easter one and all.





*Kurt Nachtnebel Oompah Band

TRADING UP

The McStig of That Ilk

The Lodger has got a new computer.

It is fast. Very, very fast. I have to put a crash helmet on to use it. It is so fast that I can hardly keep up. I'm tapping away like a demented woodpecker but it is still gaining on me. It just won't slow down. I'm getting out of breath .... it's stopped and looking back at me scornfully. It's unpacking its picnic hamper and laying the table. Now it's eating its lunch in a very leisurely manner. It's -- oh, God -- it's -- HAVING A CIGARETTE. Now it's packing everything up slowly, and moving off again. And it hasn't even fired up its other processor yet. I am still tapping away.

Now me, I was built for comfort not speed. Back in the 1970's someone once said to me: "Yeah but you're like Centre Point you are". I never did understand what they meant. The good thing is, I've got my laptop back, although the N.P. (New Pooter) takes pride of place in the blogging corner, and Lilly the Laptop has been relegated to the coffee table.

Computers to me are like cars. I just need them to get a job done. Someone - possibly the same person as before - once said to me "Yeah, you'd be happy with a Lada, you would". I am to technology what the Lodger is to soft furnishings. He doesn't see the point of cushions, and his idea of decor involves covering everything in the Scottish flag.

The weather looks most promising so I am going to get Out and About a bit this weekend. I promised to take my aristocratic friend Baroness Ambroisine de la Touffe to a flower show at the Chateau d'Enghien tomorrow, and she's a rather exacting old harridan, so thought I'd better upgrade from the usual 3-door jalopy. A fabulous deal from the car hire place - a BMW 118d from Friday midday to Monday morning, unlimited mileage, for 85 euros. I had never driven a Beamer before today. I had a bit of trouble trying to work out where the ignition key was, before the nice man told me how to start it. Within seconds of putting the machine into gear I was IN LURVE. It drives like velvet. Like butter. Like champagne. It switches itself off at the traffic lights, and purrs into action again when I let in the clutch. It's all computerized. With GPS. I think I'll wear black leather tomorrow.

Like I said, cars are purely functional to me.