Petrina Binney's Blog, page 64

Day #104 Arpège by Lanvin

I love Arpège by Lanvin. It’s my favourite perfume. I always wear it. Now, I’ve done a bit of research, on account of this blog, and thus – I can tell you, it was first made in 1927, and combines notes of peach, orange blossom, honeysuckle, iris, patchouli, mimosa, geranium, vanilla and musk. And probably lots of other stuff.

Most of the time, I’m not great when it comes to identifying particular scents. I’m not totally clueless. I can tell the difference between a lasagne and a gas leak, but I really think you could blindfold me and leave me with several dozen bottles of perfume and I’d always be able to find mine.

However, there is some truth to the idea that particular scents smell different on different people. It must be something to do with how the perfume mixes with the skin. I couldn’t say for definite. I’m not a scientist.

Still, I have two buddies who wear the same aftershave. One of them smells intensely manly. It’s a very musty, musky, woody sort of smell on Big Kev. I imagine a woman less like me could catch a waft of Kev and immediately feel the need to book a hotel, and find some uncomfortable underwear and an awkward shape to make herself. And yet, the exact same bottle smells incredibly floral and slightly like candyfloss on Stevie. He still pours it on with abandon, so it’s still his signature scent.

Aimée tells me that a person’s natural smell is always there, at a point right at the top of their heads. If that’s right, her natural smell is vanilla. I know because I stood on the coffee table to give her a sniff. I did explain what I was doing. I didn’t just mount the table and run my nose over her head. I’m not that peculiar.

My natural smell, it turns out, is Imperial Leather.

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I don’t know what I was expecting her to say. “Soap,” somehow felt a little flat. However, it does mean that Arpège, on me, smells like it does in the bottle. I am, therefore, delighted.

And there you have it. Day one-hundred-and-four of #365HappyDays – Arpège by Lanvin.

Day #103 Epic Conversations About Sandi Toksvig

One of the best things about chatting to my mother was when she couldn’t quite remember someone’s name and had to have a crack at describing them.

I am blessed with a great memory, and can recall whole conversations verbatim. My mother was exactly the same. However, I have been told in recent years, that a person’s memory can be a bit like a computer’s hard drive. After a while, some information just doesn’t stick quite like it used to.

Here’s an example from about fifteen years ago.

 

Mother: I know what I was going to tell you. She’s going to be on TV.

Me: Who?

Mother: Her. You know her. That one you like.

Me: Which one I like?

Mother: Her. She’s on that other thing. You know her. On the telly.

Me: What — what sort of thing on the telly?

Mother: They have tables.

Me: (as if it was code) They have tables.

Mother: Tables, and they talk.

Me: Do they talk about tables? Is it like Antiques Roadshow?

Mother: No, they sit at the tables and talk.

Me: A panel show?

Mother: Yes.

Me: On TV?

Mother: (exasperated) Yes.

Me: What channel?

Mother: Oh…

Me: Are there adverts?

Mother: I don’t think so.

Me: So, a woman on a panel show on the BBC.

Mother: Yes. Her.

Me: What time of day is this panel show on?

Mother: You’re not always up.

Me: Okay, so – during the day. Woman, panel show, BBC, daytime. What does she look like?

Mother: (shaking her head) There are more important things.

Me: Is she blonde, dark, bottle-job?

Mother: Funny. She’s funny. She has a wonderful laugh.

Me: (counting on my fingers) Funny woman, BBC, panel show, daytime, wonderful laugh… oh God, do you mean Sandi Toksvig?

Mother: That’s her! And she sits opposite him on—

Me: Call My Bluff.

Mother: What’s his name?

Me: Who?

Mother: Chap she sits across from. Bald. Clever. Oxford. Something like a grain. Oats? Rice? Wheat. Maybe Wheaton? Or corn? (starts making faces as she drags out the R) Cor-n? Cor—n?

Me: Coren. You should see what your face is doing. Coren. It’s Alan Coren.

Mother: That’s it. And she’s married to him.

Me: (had to grab the radiator to stop myself from falling down) What?

Mother: Yes. Why else would they be opposing teams?

Me: There’s a frightening insight.

Mother: No because – he’s a man, she’s a woman. He was Oxford. She’s Cambridge. I think they’re married.

Me: Not to each other.

Mother: Yes, of course they are.

Me: (shrug) I imagine they both have wives.

Mother: Anyway, she’s going to be on Question Time.

Now, every time there’s an advert for QI or Bake Off, all I can think is: a great long list and ‘she has a wonderful laugh.’

As proof, I just found this on YouTube and I suspect it’s impossible to watch right through without giggling like a child. See what you think…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IK56aamK4Q

Day #102 An Accent

Let’s start with this, shall we? This guy is brilliant. Give it a listen…

 

Now, I’ll have mentioned on here before that I have an accent. Those of you who know me personally will know damn well I have an accent. What might shock you is that people who’ve known me for years can’t hear it.

I know.

How is it possible?

Usually, when I first meet people, I say hello. Promising start, isn’t it? But from that meagre little greeting comes a whole raft of, “Where’s your accent from?” as if I got it in a shop. I understand, of course, people are deliberate with their words because they don’t want to cause offence and lots of people are offended by everything.

I don’t let people guess anymore. Largely, because I know what they’ll come up with:

South Africa.

Canada.

Australia.

New Zealand.

Ireland.

I once had ‘Cuba’ but even the chap who suggested it had to admit, that was a stretch.

I’m Croydon to my core, but I’m not taking elocution lessons.

There’s a TV personality who looks like she might sue, so I’ll not name names, but she took speech classes and she sounds like a freaking robot. Yeah, you know the one I mean. No one’s inviting a voice like that out to dinner.

I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sound my godmother made when I explained to her on the phone that I have an accent. I had an easier time coming out.

“Are you sure you have an accent? Have you tried not having an accent?

“No, no. What am I saying? Some of the finest people in the land have an accent. Everyone seems to have one these days. Good for you, having an accent.

“I really wouldn’t have guessed.”

As it goes, I love an accent. I don’t care where anyone’s from, an accent suggests a history, perhaps art or danger or both. An accent, as well as the words we speak and the tone of voice we use, tells people who we are, and what we mean.

So long as they can understand us. And if they can’t, maybe they aren’t supposed to.

Day #101 Ice Skating

I used to love ice skating. I never learnt any twirling steps. I couldn’t skate backwards. I couldn’t cross one foot over the other. But forwards – I was something astonishing to behold.

It was great. It didn’t really matter that I wasn’t very good because I enjoyed it so much. I used to go with my friend, Alex.

Alex was my first friend. Although I know that’s a very cutesy statement, it’s also true. I met him before I started nursery school. I was two and he was three. I don’t remember a thing about it, but my mother made a point of introducing Alex’s parents to her other friends as ‘the parents of Petrina’s first friend.’

I’ve already explained how Alex loaned me his Atari when I was recovering from a skating-related twisted wrist, but I don’t think I mentioned how Alex’s dad helped us move to Devon.

When we left Croydon, we were a family of three – Mum, Dad and me, plus two dogs and half a dozen budgerigars.

My Dad drove our car, with the people and dogs in it, and Alex’s dad followed behind, all the way down the A303 in our decrepit old camper van, with two large cages, filled with the birds. As far as I recall, John didn’t stay, even for a coffee, but I think my Dad must have driven him back to the nearest train station.

Getting back to the skating… I was that awkward combination of chunky and shy, when I was a child. I like to think the years have improved me.

Now, I’m funny as well.

But my parents probably thought that some sort of physical hobby, with a lot of other people, would be good for me. I’ll say it: they were right. I got a lot fitter. I had a great time – nearly broken wrist notwithstanding. Also, in attending classes of around thirty other uncoordinated children (oh, yeah, there were classes), my confidence grew a little. People I drink with would never believe it, but I’m still working on that. I think we’re all a mix of desperately opinionated and worried about upsetting people. It helps if you can stop being so hard on yourself.

A smidge of wisdom for your Thursday. Take and enjoy.

Day #100 Walking Home With Sid

Can you imagine we’ve already got to day number one-hundred? Haven’t run out of steam. I’m clearly on a roll.

Anyway, day number one-hundred…

One of my best buddies from the Legion is a chap called Sid. He reminds me quite sharply of my father. He’s a good man, a kind man, and he thinks I’m terrific. All positive qualities, obviously.

I usually see Sid once every couple of months, when we have meetings at the Clubhouse. We put pints in for one another, get a little bit squiffy, and then we walk home.

He lives a little closer to the Club than I do, but he steers me to the main road by following the stars. Then, when we part at his corner, he follows the star he knows hangs over his rooftop, and I keep the North Star to my right. He taught me to do that, because he was in the Navy, so he knows everything.

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I’ll admit, it’s an easier walk when the weather’s reasonable. But it’s a quicker walk when it’s chilly.

Usually, because it’s so quiet round this way, when I walk home in the dark, there’s no one else around. There are precious few streetlights, only a few feet of pavement, and, once it’s gone ten, the village goes to sleep. However, there was a time, only once in all my years of drinking at the Legion, when I ran into someone outside the shop.

It must have been closing in on midnight and being a little bit tiddly and not expecting to see anybody, I think I was probably humming to myself. Which is basically singing but when I’ve forgotten the words. As I approached the walkway outside the shop, I saw nothing: quite usual. Then, from nowhere, a face appeared, ghostly green in the light of the estate agent’s window, smiled and said, ‘Good evening’. I jumped, almost completely out of my skin. Not a pretty sight.

I prefer walking with Sid. He’s got to be six foot tall and no number of Good evenings are going to mess with that.

There you have it – Day 100 – #365HappyDays – Walking Home With Sid.

Day #99 The Bust of Let It Be

I went through a period in my early twenties where I had a crack at life drawing. That didn’t really work out because I was mistaken for the model, laughed far too loudly at the implication, and drew someone who couldn’t have looked less like the model even if she’d been me.

I had a go at woodcarving, but that’ll probably come up in another post.

My favourite of the crafty things, though, was clay modelling. Again, the finished bust looked rather like Miss Trunchbull in Matilda, where the model herself looked more like Avril Lavigne. Shame.

The best moment was when I tried driving home, with the bust on a board on the passenger seat. I went round a corner too fast because my mobile started ringing and startled me, and Miss Trunchbull lost an ear being, as she was, still quite squishy.

However, the teacher, a poor wretch who must have lost heart when he saw the shapes that rising around the room, decided to give each of us a brick of spare clay to take home.

Once I’d got Miss Trunchbull back into some sort of order, I started on the spare clay.

I moulded a basic head shape. I made sure it had enough support at the base to not fall down and break its nose. And then – I took a cocktail stick and scratched the lyrics to ‘Let It Be’ all the way around the head.

It’s ugly as sin, but I love it.

Day #98 The Continuation of Hope

I’m pretty sure I’ve already written a post about being hopeful and carrying on regardless, but that’s not what I’m talking about today.

What I’m referring to is the continuation of hope despite all odds.

Warning: some of this is sad.

My mother had MS. Now, for those who don’t know – there are many different types of multiple sclerosis. Most people, I think, are familiar with the relapse and remission type, and the slow and steady decline. My mother’s was the slow and steady decline. It was a little bit like the ageing process in the worst possible sense; in that, it started when she was thirty. By the time I came along, she was almost exclusively in her wheelchair. I can’t remember a time when she could walk, although I’m told I should remember, at least vaguely. After my father died, she got a lot worse, and a lot more quickly than before.

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She had a button system to control her immediate environment. She could press the button to answer the phone, or turn on the telly, she could open and close the curtains and switch off the lights. It was a great system, found for her by her best friend, Graham – the psychiatrist who punched a seagull on my twenty-eighth birthday. (It’s a long story.)

The seagull was trying to steal a cube of butter. (Okay, not that long a story after all.)

Anyway, my mother’s way of addressing her illness was to own it. She was amazing. No part of the condition, nor what it did to her, could overtake her, because she owned the blasted thing. It’s a wonderful attitude and I think it helped her to look at it that way.

The other thing that made a lot of difference to her was her absolute conviction that there would be a cure next Wednesday. Now, I’ll admit – that was a tough one to live with.

Because, of course, there wasn’t a cure that Wednesday, or the one after, or the one after. And her disappointment, although brief, was crushing. However, within minutes, she’d shake it off, convince herself she’d got her weeks mixed up, and start focussing on the Wednesday after. She kept that feeling going for forty-two years.

As much as it is hard to see someone you love, broken but hopeful, it’s instructive. No matter how lousy things might seem to be, they might well be fixed by next Wednesday.

Day #97 Small Artistic Efforts

I’ll admit, I don’t fully understand the adult’s colouring book phenomenon which has seeped into the magazine stands and all across Amazon in the last couple of years. However, that’s probably because I’ve never been able to stay inside the lines. I suppose the idea is that it gives people something to do, something precise that doesn’t take all their concentration, but allows them a break from their day-to-day, in order to regroup internally and, ultimately, create something pretty. That all sounds perfectly reasonable, and if it helps people, then why the hell not?

Personally, I lack the flair to create a painted world. I wish, I so wish, I could. But I just don’t have that talent. But I have found a loophole.

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I have a paint-by-numbers kit. I haven’t done anything like paint-by-numbers since I was about ten, but here we are. It’s quite fiddly. And like anything fiddly, it promises a satisfaction upon completion that I demand it lives up to. Once it’s finished, I’ll update you.

So far, I’ve done about a third of the white-white bits. There are about eight shades of white. I’m talking about the lightest of the lot. It seemed the sensible place to start. They’re going to need a second coat because I can still see numbers shining through and that sort of breaks the illusion.

The thing is this: I’m pretty sure, if it works out, I’ll hang this thing on the wall. When people see it, I’ll expect them to ooh and ahh, and ask, “Who painted that, then?” And I will smile and tell them it was me. And as the surprise and intrigue whispers through their veins, I will admit, “It was paint-by-numbers,” and they’ll laugh and wonder how they’ve never seen this modest side of me.

I’ll know how.

Day #96 Placebo

My best friend was getting married up in Scotland. I’ll guess this was in 2001. It was early December and the weather was bitter up in Edinburgh. My brother, Trev, and I sang Nirvana as we walked down Princes Street, and I bought a vast number of trinkets from shops on Cockburn Street.


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However, later in the evening, when the sun sank over the horizon and the pavements were speckled with glittering white, we saw a handful of people, with nowhere else to sleep, setting up on sheet-cardboard in shop doorways. I bought one guy a blanket. Doesn’t make me a saint. Just means I have eyes.

But that time will be forever marked out, for me, by Brian Molko.


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I listened to the Black Market Music album on a loop for seven months. That’s how much I loved it. I didn’t find room in my head for anything else.

I love Placebo. They have such an original sound and clever lyrics and, okay some of it is very downbeat, but it’s sooooo good.

Here’s the link to Taste In Men:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QML71sBu1E

Still not sure? Here’s the Commercial For Levi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9MEAKnApmg

Over and over. On a loop. For seven months. Loved it.



Here’s the link to the album:

https://amzn.to/2D1c3Yf

Day #95 A Night On The Town

This is another ambition post, largely because, when I was younger, a night on the town would mean one thing and one thing only:

The Mexican place in Exmouth – several pints of Guinness – strip club – passing out in a bus shelter.

And it’s really only been in the last few weeks that I’ve changed my mind. If any of my brothers are reading this, we’ll probably go with the original plan for my fortieth because we’ve got to have something to look forward to, but otherwise…

A proper night out means this:

London – dinner with actresses – champagne (and I recently had a dream where I was doing tequila shots with Kim Bodnia, so maybe that, too. It’s up to him).

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Then, a film premiere or awards ceremony. Maybe both and then an after hours club.

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Depending on the type of music they play, I’d either sing or, if deeply enough in drink – dance. For everyone else’s sake, I hope they’ll have some mid-90s stuff otherwise, you’ll be stuck with me throwing shapes.

I’ll make it known now, on the off-chance it ever happens, I do intend to make a fool of myself.

Ambition, you see.