At the writing desk

 

Perfect timing. As I sit resolutely at the desk this week, I am delighted to be able to direct you over to Cornflower Books, where I have been in discussion about the process: At the writing desk with...Deborah Lawrenson.

 

If you love book blogs and haven't yet discovered Cornflower, you are in for a treat. She always has an sumptuous array of books under discussion, new and old, as well as a home, craft and cookery blog illustrated with gorgeous photography. There's a great series of posts about Books and Cakes, in which she bakes to accompany her reading - very clever and inspiring. See for yourself! 

 

PS. In the interview, Cornflower asked for my advice to aspiring writers. "Never give up. Don't eat that cake," I offered. Clearly this is aspirational only. A real life interpretation is: "Don't eat that cake. Oops. Too late."  

Pantomime time!

 

Ooh, missus. Now this may be hard to explain to anyone who has never seen a British pantomime: The Ugly Sisters in Cinderella, played by two beefy men. For us locals, there's an added frisson in knowing that Trevor, in the polka dots, is our village postmaster and Steve in the fetching stripes and feathers is a builder and undertaker.

 

The months of rehearsals are over and they are finally live on stage this February half-term, as light flurries of snow fall outside. They're getting rave reviews, as is the panto itself, with its geeky, camp Prince Charming, mournful French chef Les Miserables and a murder mystery to solve along with the riddle of the shoe. As ever, Rob the Panto King has excelled himself with gorgeous original music along with the wit and wonder of the words.

 

And if I haven't been able to concentrate properly on book writing - blame them! 

In full flow

At long last, I printed out a first rough draft of the new book yesterday. This marks the point when it really starts to feel as if I'm getting there. When I got back to work in the second week of January, the words felt like the water from the mountain source above: coming out all right but freezing up on arrival.

The only way through is to keep going, even on the days when you really don't feel very creative or inspired. On days like that, I reckon that if I can smooth over some of what I've already written and come up with a few good new phrases, then I've done what I can. The good thing about having written books before is that you know that this is par for the course, and you don't give up.

Now there are more than 90,000 words to play with but these are, to bend Eric Morecambe's immortal line, "All the right words, not necessarily in the right order..." When I say it's a rough draft, that's exactly what it is - a right old mess in places. Now is the time for a cool head as I edit ruthlessly to see what remains. But it's getting warmer and the chunks of ice are gone.

The Sea Garden

As part of the work-in-progress I am taking great pleasure in "designing" a garden above the sea on the French island of Porquerolles. And as I have barely lifted my eyes from the manuscript these past two weeks - let alone written anything new for the blog - I thought I would share the mood board of this imaginary garden as I put it together this morning.

The setting is among rocks and Mediterranean pines and scrub, where paths wind down to the sea - or end in precipitous cliffs, or calanques.

 

The grounds surround an old estate house, grand but decaying, with a honey stucco facade and a pillared terrace at the rear which overlooks the gardens.

The garden needs restoration: old pictures show cypress walks and formal garden rooms but in the present they are overgrown and gloomy. The art of the designer will be to recapture the mood of the original while bringing back light and health to the planting.

Key to one part of the garden is a topiary arch that looks out over the sea, holding a clue to its meaning in the view it frames.

 

 

An old bassin, a raised pond edged with stone, lies before the arch. It has been neglected and so tall are the yew hedges all around that the water it holds is a glassy black, not nearly as inviting as this one...



 

...more like this in atmosphere...



 

I'd like a tunnel of purple bougainvillea, too...

 

 

..and some datura - or devil's trumpet - that dangerous exotic with poison lurking under its intoxicating night fragrance and its hallucinogenic properties.





 

The garden will have dark corners and surprises - so that when you emerge from the garden it feels like a release into the lightness and colour of the island.



 

What do you think - would this be somewhere you'd like to explore further?

The Perfume Studio

So are the mysterious perfumes associated with spiritual experiences real, or a biochemical reaction in the brain (as Vanessa asked, very pertinently, in the comments after the Benoîte Rencurel story)? I have no idea; both explanations seem equally interesting. My own experiences have occurred in two separate places, in two different countries, with a couple of years in between. There again, I am over-imaginative, so might well have made what I wanted of what had in reality a very ordinary explanation that I simply did not find.

On a more tangible perfume note, here's a starter kit to have a go at blending your own scent from The Perfume Studio, a small company in East Sussex. Each box contains six basic fragrance notes already blended, an atomiser and instructions, and you can chose from three moods: Fresh, Floral and Floriental. No question that I went for the Floriental, pictured here! 

Great fun at a very reasonable £29.95 - though there are more complex and expensive versions available, as well as lessons in bespoke blending. You can click through to The Perfume Studio and let your imagination go.

Mysterious perfume

   By August we were sleeping with all the windows thrown open. That was why, when I became aware of the scent, I assumed it had come from outside.

It was a voluptuous scent: vanilla with rose and the heart of ripe melons, held up by something sterner, a leather maybe, with a hint of wood smoke. The first time it stole into my consciousness I was half-wakeful in the early hours, in the act of coming around from one dream before settling into another.

    Gradually it faded, and I must have gone back to sleep. In the morning I examined every possible source but nothing came close to replicating that fragrance. I decided it must all have been a highly charged dream. (…)

   After an absence of about a week it returned, and continued to do so, though with no discernable pattern to its reappearance, and with slight variations on the ingredients of the scent. At times it carried essence of vanilla, sometimes a robust note of chocolate and cherries. It might linger only for a few minutes, but strongly, or less distinctly for up to an hour. Some nights it was carried off by a whisper of wind in the courtyard trees, an ethereal smoky lavender.

                                                                                From The Lantern

Following my last post about perfume and holy spirits, here's an extract about fragrance from my novel. A scent is at the heart of The Lantern, with its roots in the herbs and flowers that grow wild on the hillside, and the lavender fields beyond. Even when there is no spiritual dimension, aroma releases memories and opens a powerful sensory path between the past and the present.

The perfume in my book is a mysterious concoction that comes and goes with no obvious source. So I was more than intrigued by Strange Invisible Perfumes, a botanical perfumery based in California that uses only organic, wild-crafted, biodynamic, and hydro-distilled essences.

Using a strictly botanical library of scents, perfumer Alexandra Balahoutis creates enchanting fragrances with no synthetic approximations of essences that cannot be extracted, like gardenia and violet. Looking closer into her library of perfumes, I found one that is very much in the spirit of the imaginary one that I mixed, using only words on the page, for my novel: Essence of Ix – a “brambly, stirring, floral” with white sage, roses, blackcurrant, Californian lavender, wild honey, and French oak.

I've been asked many times whether the Lavande de Nuit scent I wrote about in The Lantern is available to buy anywhere. Sadly, this perfume exists only in my imagination, but I can offer the inspirations.

Obviously there are lots of lavender scents, but my favourite is from L'Occitane de Provence. It's rich and sweet, and authentically redolent of the region. I've also discovered the well-loved Catalan cologne Agua Lavanda by Puig that has the requisite sense of history, created in the early twentieth century in a modest local distillery.

 

The closest complex lavender perfume to Lavande de Nuit I've yet found is Absinthe Verte which is one of several scents in a range called A Taste of Heaven by Kilian. It's an unfolding blend of lavender and vanilla and thyme, with oak moss and a hint of patchouli and spices. Very lovely, very very expensive. But I happen to know there are samples at Saks 5th Ave in New York!

And then there's that fabulous old-timer, Jicky by Guerlain. Launched in 1889, it mixes lavender with a zesty sprinkle of citrus which dries into an alluring creme brulee note, but then after a while the vanilla hunkers down into smoky leather with a sexy animal note of civet. Dangerous stuff and a true inspiration for the fictional Lavande de Nuit.

Along with lavender, there's is a perfume called L'Eau d'Hiver in the Frederic Malle range: this has the white scents of almond, heliotrope and spring flowers. The woodsmoke and vanilla comes from Serge Lutens' Un Bois Vanille. It is possible to mix either of these with the lavender (spraying in layers on the skin) - quite fun to experiment with the quantities of each, but if you do, go easy as the last two are both strong and distinct and easily overpower anything in their way!

The online magazine The Good Life France has posted an interview with me today, in which the question about whether certain aspects of my novel are true, including the mysterious scent...you can read it here.

P.S. If you're a loyal reader and feel this post has a ring of familiarity, you're right; it's a re-edit and combination of several earlier posts that I thought worth putting out again to link with the interview. 

Perfume and holy apparitions

 

When I was wandering around the village of Risoul in the French Alps a few weeks ago, I picked up a clutch of leaflets from the Church of Sainte Lucie. One of these was for the Sanctuary of Notre-Dame du Laus and it proved an unexpectedly fascinating read. Here, as promised, is the story it told.

Benoîte Rencurel was born into a family of modest means in 1647 at St-Etienne d’Avanҫon during the reign of King Louis the fourteenth, an era of political, social and religious tensions. At the age of seven, her childhood cut short after the death of her father, Benoîte began work as a shepherdess. Before leaving to lead her flock of sheep up into the mountains for the summer, she asked her mother for a rosary. Unable to read or write, Benoîte spent the lonely days in the high pastures praying and living a contemplative life.

Ten years later in May 1664, she told the priest in her village that she had the most profound desire to meet Mary, mother of Jesus. A short while after, St Maurice appeared to her and told her her wish would be granted. The very next day she made the acquaintance of a gentlewoman who told her that she would take an interest in her spiritual education. For the following four months, this kind woman arrived every day at Vallon des Fours, close to St-Etienne, to answer Benoîte’s questions and teach her how to conduct herself.

On August 29, the woman revealed her true identity: she was Mary herself. After that a month went by during which Mary did not return. Then, at the end of September, she reappeared to Benoîte on the other side of the valley at Pindreau. “Go to Laus,” she said, “and you will find a chapel that exudes beautiful scents, and there you will be able to speak to me very often.”

Here are their statues raised on the hillside at Pindreau to commemorate that event:

The next day, Benoîte walked to the hamlet of Laus and easily found the Chapelle de Bon-Rencontre by following the trail of perfume. There, Mary stood on the altar and told Benoîte what she wanted her to do. She was to build a church and a priest house to receive pilgrims and hear their confessions.

The new church was built over the chapel between 1666 and 1669. The day it was blessed, Benoîte became Sister Benoîte and a member of the Order of St Dominique. She ministered to the pilgrims for the rest of her life, responsible for many cures and conversions, and was said to have the gift of mindreading - by all accounts the priests were astonished at the quality of the confessions she elicited!

For fifty-four years, Mary continued to appear to Benoîte, sustaining her in her calling. In addition, the former shepherdess saw visions of angels and saints, a mystical vision of paradise, and Christ on the cross. Along the way she did battle variously with the devil and with Jansenist priests, and died “full of joy” in December 1718.

Today Benoîte (pictured in this stained glass receiving her first rosary from her mother) is slowly being granted sainthood. The process of beatification was begun in 1981 and she was declared venerable by the Catholic Church in 2009. Evidence of her interventions and miracles is being carefully examined before the final declaration. The healing oil from the sanctuary lamp at Notre-Dame du Laus is said to cure many ills, as effective as the waters from Lourdes. The Sanctuary is open to all (click here for the website) and it is possible to request an application of this oil.

The "exquisite fragrances" of Laus are apparently still experienced. Inhalations of these perfumes are reported to bring a sudden, calm joy to the senses and encourage spirituality. Benoîte Rencurel smelled these fragrances when she saw the Blessed Virgin Mary, and the scents, which impregnated everything, persisted even after the apparition disappeared.