I dont know about you, but for me cleaning the house is akin to painting the Forth Bridge. It’s a never ending job that causes me to be in a state of non stop guilt. As you know I work full time and with my daughter out at college I have to ask my mum to help out during the week to let Bruce out for a walk whilst the house is empty during the working week. No matter how much I try to get done at the weekend, it’s never enough to have a spotless house – in fact I am always amazed if I drop in to see a friend unexpectedly and find almost everything clean, tidy and in its rightful place, just how on earth does that happen! I swear that even overnight things appear to jump out of cupboards and off shelves ready for me to tidy away again. My mum is of a certain age that she doesnt work anymore and seems to have forgotten the plight of the working mother, always happy to point out a ceiling cobweb that she had noticed the day before ”and is still there Julie” - although to be fair, I do remember her often ironing at 10pm when she was working. To be honest, I can always find much more interesting things to do after I’ve had my tea and the hands of the clock are approaching 7pm than starting to get the dust removed and the hoover out or the iron warmed up.

So on this note I have been interested to read recent articles that cleaning products have for some while been upping their ante on the fragrance front. Apparently we have been a little too blase about the standard lemon or pine household fragrances of old for far too long, and so the supermarket shelves bulge and groan with an enormous array of products such as washing up liquids that all more or less do the same job, but now we have a choice of winter spices, pomegranate & passionflower, tea tree & peppermint, green tea, apple blossom - in fact you could almost name any aroma and find it on the aisle ready to brighten your mood AND your dishes.

The happier you are – the cleaner your house (so goes the theory) and so manufacturers vie for our attention with the biggest brightest fragranced products enticing you to pop into your shopping trolley.

I have to admit to never buying a product without taking the top off (off the product, not off me!!) and smelling it first. The fragrance rather than the brand name usually has the sway factor for me, but I have yet to find the aroma that would really lift my mood whilst washing the pots. I am, however the eternal optimist, and so my quest continues to find that elusive smell that will elevate my mood so much that I will dance around the house every night duster in hand, smile on my face .

PS..If you find it before me, please let me know

And to finish off here is a little poem, penned by my own fair hand, that kind of sums up my cleaning regime!

Time for dusting, mopping and sweeping

Wiping and swiping, completely spring cleaning,

Cupboards are wiped and the kitchen is gleaming

then the alarm clock goes off – Oh no, I’m just dreaming!

Quick flight to Surabaya, only 40 mins but I gain an hour on UK time, so am now only 6 hours behind. So thats a whole day knocked off the jetlag recovery time when I get home – apparently it takes a full day for every hour of time difference to get your body clock back to normal.

Then its find a taxi, check it has seatbelts, get in, pay the fare and then as we set off we realise too late that the seatbelts are for show only and don’t actually work! So its a free white knuckle ride to the hotel, zipping from lane to lane, squeezing into impossibly tiny gaps with frequent braking participating in a couple of very close incidents along the way!

We arrive at the hotel at 9pm, so its a quick bite to eat in the hotel cafe and up to my room for 10pm. Oh good, free wifi – oh no – no signal at all!!!! Cant even get a strong enough mobile signal to ring home and check all is well….the joys of travelling.

Anyway its just a 1 night thing….I’m awake at 5.40am so I might as well get up as we are checking out at half 7…I feel like a proper business traveller!  No re-packing required….I only opened the suitcase lid!!

The mud flow is still going strong some 5 years after I last came to this area. It stems from an underground volcano that erupted in May 2006, and at its peak it was spewing mud out at a rate of 180,000 m³ of mud per day! The mud has a rotten egg aroma caused by the release of hydrogen sulphide, and as it continues to flow it is creating an unstable surrounding area as it begins to collapse in on itself. Geologists have predicted that Lusi as it is known in Indonesia, will probably flow for 25-30 years yet.

It has blocked one of the 2 main routes linking Surabaya and Malang (tonights destination), so the longer route will take almost 2 hours instead of an hour as it used to do (and in fact the journey was nearer 3 hours in the end!). The government keep building the retaining wall higher and higher to contain the liquid mudflow and the locals are very worried that the higher the wall, the weaker it gets and that at some point  the dam will burst free and swallow up more of the surrounding areas – villages and road links.

Our meetings in Surabaya included meeting up with an old friend and customer Mr Ah Lung….a lovely man and his wife who always lend us their driver and car when we are in town..he had recently visited the UK for the first time last month and so we spent an hour at lunch going through his photographs….many of them in my nearest city of Manchester, that I haven’t even visited myself!

Throughout Indonesia, there are many differing preferences for fragrances in general. Jasmine is always a safe bet, but some areas prefer it to be heavy and some prefer it to be a background note instead. Sweet candy like fragrances always go down well here  and light florals such as rose too. Grapefruit and sharp lime notes are deemed too sour, and cherry is too medicinal. Fresh, clean citrusy aromas tend to be found in most products.

As we make our way back to Jakarta for my last night in Indonesia, I am looking forward to a hot bath and a mojito before the long flight back to the UK. I hope you enjoyed my adventures here as much as I did

Bali next……

 I have been here once before in 2007, and i felt that it was a very spiritual place – I couldn’t really put my finger on why….. I hope that my second visit leaves the same impression.

Its night time when I arrive, and one thing I hadn’t noticed before was the shape of the moon. When we have part moons in the UK , we get a crescent shape, but the moon here is lit from the underside making it look like a large Cheshire cat smile in the sky.

As you can imagine its very warm here even at 9pm but guess what, they even have hoodies here in Bali! They are all hanging around the airport asking if you need any help with your bags. I arrive at my hotel and am given a beautiful free garland of flowers and a glass of fruit nectar! The flowers smell divine  – a combination of fragrant Jasmine blossoms and small red rose buds, and the aroma hangs around for 3 days (much longer than the delicious drink!)

The following day I am collected from my hotel by our local agent for Bali, Mr Benny and our Indonesian agent Andy for today’s visits. I notice that a lot of the trees and the roadside statues have checked cloths around them. I ask the reason for this and am told that they denote cosmic duality – the concept of good versus evil. The Balinese see the world in terms of opposites, night and day, good and bad, mountain and sea. One cannot exist without the other. The cloth is known as Poleng and is the perfect representation of this view – the squares are of equal size, perfect black and perfect white. Grey squares contain both black and white strands to show that you cannot have one without the other.

Most of the statues are also shaded by ornate parasols which are seen as symbols of protection for obvious reasons.

There seems to be an awful lot of activity around the temples and this is because there are many public cremations to be held today. In Denpasar alone there are a total of 40 bodies waiting to be cremated. It is a day of great ceremony –  all the villagers help to build the funeral pyres, even the children help to thread the flower garlands that will decorate the cemeteries  and the bodies. Cremations are an important and elaborate event in Bali, but because of the monetary cost, most people can’t afford to have their departed cremated straight away. Families therefore, often wait months for the public cremation so that the villagers can pool resources and have a ceremonious send off. I think the fact that everyone is involved whether you have anyone to cremate or not brings the village together as a whole and also de-mystifies the process of death….here it is always a celebration of life rather than a sad occasion. I like the idea of death being so much a normal part of life.

Our main business here in Bali is fragrance for Incense. The whole island has a fragrant aroma, with incense being burned on every street corner, in every home and every temple. It is burnt as an offering to the Gods. No-one knows exactly where the Gods might be at any given time, but the Balinese believe that smoke from the incense will find its way to the Gods, assuring that the relevant prayers and offerings will be delivered.

As I leave Bali on my way up to Jakarta, I spy a wooden lizard in one of the craft stalls at the airport. The lizard now adorns my lounge wall and is known to everyone as Mr Benny!

Next stop Surabaya and Jakarta…..

Arrived in Penang after setting off a tiring 28 hours ago. I have been assured that it will take less than 45mins to get to the hotel, and that elusive soak in the bath! As I set foot out of the airport, the first thing you notice is a peculiar aroma that pervades the air wherever you go in Malaysia and Indonesia outside the cities. It is a mix of heat, durian fruit and rokok, and once you have been here and smelled it, then you instantly associate the smell with the Far East.

Durian fruit is the Eastern version of Marmite – known as the King of Fruits, you either love it or hate it. Some people regard the durian as fragrant; others find the aroma overpowering and offensive. The smell evokes reactions from deep appreciation to intense disgust, and has been described variously as almonds, rotten onions, turpentine and gym socks.Most shopping malls refuse to stock it at all, as the fruit odour is so pungent that you begin to smell it a good 5 minutes before you even see it! Animals can detect the smell of the Durian up to half a mile away.

The Rokok are the local cigarettes, and even for a confirmed non-smoker as myself, the intense flavoursome mix of cinnamon, cloves, dark chocolate and smoky woods has a pleasurable aroma. You dont even need to get too close to the actual smoke vapour as the whole atmosphere is pervaded.

I have been watching Nothing to Declare in readiness for my trip – a ‘behind the scenes’ show of customs in Australia, and as I walked through the green lane, I could see people lined up with open suitcases and rows of packet foods ready to be confiscated. You’d have to be mad to try and smuggle anything into the country here and to be fair, they do give you fair warning on the plane – our captain told us as we landed that any drug trafficking automatically receives the death penalty! Well, that was enough to persuade me that the free peanuts I hadn’t eaten could stay on the airplane and so I fished them out of the pocket of my handbag and left them firmly on the seat tray!

I slept really well, the bed is very hard, just fine for my back! Woke up to the sound of rain lashing against the window, and sure enough a storm was rolling in….but its hard to feel hard done to – I can just make out the vague shape of a mountain range across the sea vista…..the sound of the sea crashing onto the beach below my window is a sound to savour no matter how wet and wild the weather outside.

I think its time to don a loaned sou’wester and go for a wild n windy walk!

I saw a lizard! I swear it was one of the komodo types, properly swaggering in the distance, but the moment I tried to find it amongst the rocks it completely disappeared! (when I mentioned it to Wong later, he thought i had been very brave to try and find it, brave warrior woman that i am!)

Tonight was a litte surreal, we started off with a trip to the Hard Rock cafe for our evening meal – which was fine in its own way, quiet though, and they sat us underneath Noel Gallaghers guitar, I mean come on, I’ve only just left Manchester – at least give me an American…. but hey ho, they did make an amazing Mojito

The evening ended with Nat n I waltzing on the dance floor to Pitbull, leaving poor Wong holding his head in his hands in complete despair!! Well – you only live once…..

Dont forget to stay tuned next week for my further adventures down in Kuala Lumpur.

It seems that all you need these days to make a splash in the fragrance market, is a wacky idea and then its all systems go.

There have been quite a few new launches that are using scent to help promote brands, and I have picked out some of the unusual attempts to share with you today….

Our nation as a whole has a reputation of being heavy tea drinkers, and so Tetleys have taken this on board and designed ‘Le Brew’ – a limited edition tea scented perfume. In addition to the tea note (which in itself isn’t unusual, think Elizabeth Arden Green Tea amongst others), the perfume also has notes of clary sage and oak moss which are designed to give the fragrance a fresh spring like feel. The bottle is available on Tetleys eBay site for the princely sum of £15, and in my opinion it might be a worthwhile investment just for the novelty value.

Never seen as a company to be out of the limelight, even Microsoft have jumped on the fragrance bandwagon with the launch of 2 fragrances under the umbrella name of Liquid Money. These are broken down into a his and hers duo set, and have been underwritten by Vice President Patrick McCarthy. Designed to enhance self confidence, the bottles are said to contain the aroma of freshly minted dollar bills alongside notes such as pink grapefruit and Hawaiian wedding flowers. The bottle is packed with shredded US dollar bills –  a brilliant marketing concept in my opinion. And in another shrewd move, Mr McCarthy has trademarked the word ‘Money’ in relation to fragrance, obviously with a view to launch further perfumes along the line.

The next one I found spins quite a tail (pardon the pun!). It involves a Parisienne butcher by the name of John Fargginay in the 1920′s. Apparently the story goes that he could elevate his customers mood by a secret blend of 11 pure essential oils and the addition of – wait for it – a bacon aroma. After a massive fire on July 4th, 1924, the recipe was seemingly lost in the realms of legend. Well, that is until now! The magical elixier has been recreated by a certain John Leydon, and there are now 2 versions in the range – Bacon Classic and Bacon Gold. The fragrances were launched in April and already there have been well over 5,ooo orders at $36 each, a nice little earner if you ask me.

And finally on another strange note, an Italian fragrance brand, Blood Concept, have launched a range of fragrances  based on different blood types. The designers Giovanni Castelli and Antonio Zuddas  have spent years perfecting the range. At the moment there are 4 main types, A, B, AB and O. Each has a metallic base tang that supposedly denotes the element of iron found in blood. Each is sold in a recreation of an ancient medicine bottle complete with dropper to give an authentic final twist. When asked what the original concept was the designers replied with the following…’the odours trace the evolution of manhood through time, and its evolution of information, history and mutation, so well kept in the vital flushing of blood’ ……..??? nope – I didnt get it either, but if anyone does then please feel free to explain in laymans terms.

I could carry on, as the norm seems to be the more unusual and fantastical the better but I thought it would be nice if we could get some ideas for scent marketing going ourselves just to see what we could come up with, go on…..give it a try and leave me a reply, and on that note i’ll leave it up to yourselves to check out the route Lady GaGa is going down for her new perfume!! Bye for now…..

Its at this time of the year that most people start to either look forward to or yearn for a good holiday (Icelandic volcanos permitting of course!). I’m looking forward to a break next week, it’s my annual family jaunt down south – in this case it’s going to be Dorset. I haven’t been there before as we usually head towards Cornwall and occasionally Devon, so i’m really looking forward it. I just hope the predicted heatwave arrives in time otherwise we’ll be the ones sat on the beach in Poole, hoods up, eating fish n chips, shivering and teeth chattering but determined to have our chippy tea outdoors in true British spirit – ‘because it is our holidays!’

So we have been having a chat in the office about holidays, and holiday memories, and whether certain places can be remembered by a specific scent.

Both Anne-Marie and Linda have said their main olfactory memory for Tunisia and Spain is the beautifully fragranced Jasmine, and for Greece the main flower memory would be Geraniums. Name any one of the seaside resorts around the UK, and you’ll remember the smell of hot sugary doughnuts, battered fish and chips complete with salt and vinegar and the smell of the sea and the ozone as you walk along the promenade. The smell of freshly cut grass reminds Aimi of all her summer dog shows and camping trips.

Mr Chris cant smell a fragrance by the name of Seychelles without remembering his holidays in North Wales. Its a scent that reminds him of walks along by the sea with the smell of ozone in the air. For Miss Chris, its the smell of that first smattering of rain as the heavens open after a long dusty dry spell, that reminds her of her festival days – one in particular actually, Billy Idol at last years Download festival who took to the stage just as the heatwave broke.

Any beach in the world usually has a lingering aroma of coconut suncream that you just cant escape. Companies such as Thompson and First Choice have utilised this information, and as you walk into one of their stores to book your annual summer holiday you will be blasted with the scent of suntan lotion as you walk in the door. Apparently this puts you in the mood for a holiday before you’ve even picked out your brochure, and therefore gives them the edge when it comes to securing a deposit from you before you leave the store.

They aren’t the only big companies using scent to put you in a feel good holiday mood. Fred Olsen apparently rubs coconut oil into the backs of  their seats to promote caribbean cruise sales. The big hotel chains cottoned on to the fact that their customers associate holidays with certain scents years ago.  Chains such as the Shangri-La,  Le Meridien, The Dorchester and Mandarin Oriental to name but a few, have all decided to make an impression through scent. Of course a comfortable lobby, beds and high quality service are essential, but among the more subtle cues, fragrance plays a big part. Data has shown that the subtle use of fragrance creates memories and drives loyalty to the brand.

You can even take a bottle of the signature scent home with you to remind you of your week in the sun.

Due to the global recession still being in full flow, even the budget hotels such as Travelodge and Holiday Inn have started trialling scented bedlinen in an effort to relax their guests. Aromas such as freshly mown grass, to remind you of summer, or sweet apple pie to remind you of home.

So i’ll keep all my senses on heightened alert next week to see what scent memories I can bring back from the hopefully sunny Dorset coast – unhurried mornings, restful afternoons and leisurely evenings. Let me know if there are any fragrances that particularly remind you of your holidays…….

I have a Norweigan friend staying with me this week. Her visit was only supposed to be for one night but because of the arctic conditions currently being experienced throughout the UK, she was unable to stay with other friends that she had also planned to see during her trip. You might be wondering what on earth this information has to do with work, but it was a throwaway comment made by Anette yesterday that made me think about the subject for this weeks blog.

The comment?…..well it was just this “I love staying at your house as it smells like home.”

After asserting whether that was good or bad and being assured that it was good as she felt comforted and secure and able to chill (no pun on the weather intended!), I started to think about the way different memories are triggered by the whiff of a long forgotten fragrance.

We’ve all been transported back in time after catching the scent of your grandmothers perfume whilst walking down the high street, or in the case of us Boltonians, the smell of a well known bakery permeating the atmosphere for miles around the factory site reminding you of hot cross buns on Easter Sunday.

Our sense of smell is truly amazing and is able to call up memories and powerful responses almost instantaneously. Most of the smell memories we have created are associated with childhood and this is simply because that is the period that new aromas are usually encountered. The brain then creates a link between the smell and a memory of either a place, an object or even a mood. Whenever you encounter that aroma again, the link is already there ready to ilicite that long forgotten memory.

Researchers such as Dr Yeshrurun from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel say that it makes good evolutionary sense for people to remember smells so vividly as our ancestors were so very much more dependant on their noses to avoid poisonous plants, rotten food or enemies than modern man needs to be in order to survive.

We have a full range of fragrances all waiting to send you on a trip down memory lane, whether that be liquorice twigs that we used to munch on from the local chemist, or the scent of freshly baked bread, or the crisp norweigan pine tree that served as a base for the annual christmas fairy to perch on. Just get in touch and we will be happy to help.